The Eric Metaxas Show - Senator Josh Hawley

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

What is the state of Manhood in the 21st Century? What challenges plague the modern man? Senator Josh Hawley, one of America’s leading constitutional lawyers, joins Socrates in the City host Eric Metaxas to explore the meaning of manhood in America, the value of godly masculinity, and the cultural challenges confronting men today. Drawing from personal experience and insights from his book Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, Senator Hawley discusses the essential roles men are called to fulfill in society—ranging from husband and father to warrior and priest.

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Hey there, folks. Welcome to Tuesday, May the 6th. Today, we've got two things today. First of all, some of you know that I recently interviewed Senator Josh Hawley in Palm Beach. It was one of those conversations that when you do something like that, you just think, I want to, I want to, I want to, I want everybody to hear this conversation. It's just too great. So we're going to be playing most of that conversation today on this program.

I think we have time to play the whole conversation. You can see the video of it at Socrates in the city.com or at the YouTube channel of Socrates in the city. But we're going to play that for you. It was just, you know, it was just great. So that's number one. Number two, we are today and this month raising money to free slaves. Yes, you heard me say that. In Africa, there is slavery today. Now, let's think about this. We have

actual slavery. There's evil in the world. In case you think it was like, you know, eradicated, no, there's evil in the world. But by the grace of God, we get to be a force of good. We get to represent God in the world. And we get to free slaves. And we do that every year with Christian Solidarity International. So right now, is the time right now this week. We want you to go to metaxis talk.com. You'll see the banner at the top of the page. This is an opportunity for you and your family to participate in the modern day abolitionist movement to literally free slaves, not to advocate for their being freed, but actually to free them. CSI has done the work over the decades. They have the relationships,

and they bring this about, and it is just glorious. But they need you to participate. They need us to participate. Suzanne and I will participate. I ask you and your family to participate because it's the right thing to do. It's very rare that you get an opportunity to do something that's just so obviously wonderful and clear and true and good. Freeing somebody who is literally enslaved right now is amazing.

So if you want to go there, right now. I would encourage you to go to metaxis talk.com at the top of the page, metaxistalk.com. Right at the top of the page, metaxisotocot.com, you'll see the banner. You can give monthly. You can give a lump sum. It's tax deductible, which is itself, you know, pretty wonderful. But I know there are folks out there you could give a lot. And I know the folks that can't give so much. You can give monthly, but this is a great opportunity. So I want to exhort you, please, today to go to metaxis talk.com. I'll remind you throughout the show today because I really, I can't even believe that this is a reality in our world.

And so we've got to do something about it. So the fact we have an opportunity. There's also a phone number. I'll give you the phone number, 888-253. 253, 3522, 888, 253, 3522. Be a modern-day abolitionist, folks. You get to be that.

You get to be a modern-day abolitionist. Metaxistocococcom. You'll see the banner there. Every $250 that is given, freeze a slave. So you can do part of that. You can do 250. You can do many multiples of that. It's between you and God.

but I want you to take it seriously, please. So the website MetaxistalkisTalk.com. And again, 888-253-3522. 888-253, 3523, 888-253, 3522. 888-253, 3522. Okay, so in a couple of seconds, we have my conversation in Palm Beach with Josh Hawley. You can find out more at Socrates in the city.com.

Today, some of you know, my guest is Senator Josh Hawley. At least he claims to be a senator. A lot of people do, but I am pretty sure he is. He's from Missouri. Now, I want to tell you a little bit about his background. He went to Stanford and then went to the Yale Law School. And I have contempt for anybody who's been to Yale Law School, but I thought, I'm going to let it go for tonight.

He clerked at the Supreme Court where he met his wife. Isn't that cute? Until you find out he met all three of his wives in the same, exactly the same way. What are you going to do? I'm not here to judge. In all seriousness, he met his wife, Aaron. She was also clerking at the Supreme Court. I'll be honest.

I've never clerked the Supreme Court. and my wife doesn't even know what that is. She's right here, I can say that. So he met his wife, Aaron, clerking. They were both clerking at the Supreme Court. They have three lovely children and two wretched children that he never mentions.

So anyway, after that, he was a First Amendment lawyer. He worked at the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. Some of you may know about the Beckett Fund for Religious Liberty. They are heroes. He's been a law professor. He was the Attorney General. of Missouri, and then of course now he is the senator from, is a senior senator from Missouri. Now, if you're familiar with Sockney City, you know that we don't normally talk politics.

So tonight we're not talking politics or current events. We're talking actually about Josh Hawley's book on manhood, which I think, yes, there's a copy right there. I, you know, it's a funny thing. I'm a writer and a darn good writer. And I have to tell you, that's what they say. But the best people say that. And they say it emphatically. But the fact is, because I host a radio show,

and I get a lot of books. And a lot of people write a lot of books on a lot of important subjects. And, but they're not always well-written. Do you know what I'm talking about? You probably don't read books like that. That's kind of the point, right? Is that there's so many books that are published, and many of them by wonderful people on important subjects,

but they're not well-written. And I want to say emphatically, particularly before Senator Holly comes out here, what an extraordinary book it is that he has written. I read it, and it really is extraordinarily well done. Again, speaking as a writer, it's very impressive, not just what he says, because everything he says is important, and we'll talk about it tonight, but the way he says it, I just want to publicly commend him for writing it in a brilliant, very, very readable fashion.

So I'm very excited to be here in Palm Beach. Thank you for coming. And I'm thrilled that Senator Hawley was able to make it. So Senator Josh Hawley, would you please join me on the Socrates in the City stage? Oh, look, there is. So you really did write this book yourself? I did. For better or for worse?

it's all because it's I wouldn't say this publicly but it's a sloppy writing job I'm speaking as a professional wordsmith you really you really didn't uh you should have gotten help you should have gotten help yeah now you can't afford me Josh you're senator but I can

I can only insult you if I think the opposite of what I'm saying I was saying just what a wonderfully written book it is and what a joy it was for me to read about something that I care about so deeply and to have it be readable not having it be drudgery. So I want to ask you the first kind of softball question. They will all be, they will all be softball questions, but the first softball question is, what possessed you, Senator Josh Hawley, to write a book on what some might think of as a controversial subject

in this day and age? Well, the real answer is I've got two small boys at home, Eric, as you were just saying. What did you say? I have three beautiful children and two terrible. And two rotten kids, yeah. You never mentioned that. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Actually, there's only three. But I've got two small boys at home. So you didn't mention them just now again.

You know. It's terrible. Shame on you. They're your kids. You should, you know, should acknowledge them. Elijah and Blaze are my boys' names, the ones I'm going to acknowledge, at least. And really, the book started as me as a father and as a Christian father, thinking to myself, as my boys are getting older now. What is my obligation as a father to tell them about what the call is on their life, particularly

from a biblical perspective what the biblical vision of manhood is and that's really how the book started and the book is it's really simple it's just a series of stories from the bible basically walking through the biblical vision of manhood and i wrote it to be honest with my boys in mind mike lindell and the my pillow team want to say a big thank you for your continued support this spring they had a huge allotment of their famous bed sheets set aside for the big box stores but guess what? The stores didn't come through again. So Mike's doing what he does best, passing the savings on to you. That's right. No middleman means you get wholesale pricing on their top of the line, Giza Dreams and Perkale bed sheets. Listen to this. The Giza Dream

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promo code Eric or call 800-858-0263. promo code Eric. Conversation from a few weeks ago with Senator Josh Hawley at Socrates in the city. Before we continue that, I want to remind you today we need to go to Metaxus Talk. and click on the banner to help free slaves. Metaxistalkis talk.com. You'll see the banner. We're working with CSI.

We really need your help. Please, metaxistalk.com. God bless you. Here's my conversation with Josh Hawley. Well, I think because it is, to some extent, a book of stories, that's one of the reasons that's so readable, because you're not just laying out ideas, but you're actually giving them flesh. but let's, I want to start even with the title. I mean, the title of the book is manhood, the masculine virtues America needs.

Why did you frame it that way? Well, I think that manhood, masculinity, I think, has been under attack in our culture for a long time and has been under attack in our country for a long time. And you can, you know, trace this back as far as you want, certainly in the 1960s. But I think the overwhelming message that men today hear, and maybe especially young men here,

is that they're the problem and that masculinity is the problem. So if you're a young man, you're told everything that's wrong with our culture, and of course our friends on the left think a lot is wrong with our culture. So climate change, that's your fault. And systemic racism, that's your fault. And the inherent oppressiveness of American culture, that's your fault. And our terrible history, that's your fault.

And what I wanted to do from the beginning is say, no, actually, manhood is a good thing. And we could use more of it. Yeah. And manhood is a biblical. thing and that's that's really what the book is about but yes there are particularly we need more virtue in general society but there are virtues that are particularly masculine virtues and so we ought to celebrate those and we ought to hold those up to young men in particular and say this is something worth aiming for this is something worth living for by the way you want to change your destiny

the destiny of your family the destiny of your country live like a man and the way the Bible reveals manhood. So what are, you know, you refer to these masculine virtues? Should we go through a few of them? Sure. What are some of them? Sure. Well, and there's the virtues of a husband and of a father, a warrior, a builder, a priest, and a king. And that's, the book is built around those. And there are different roles that I think we see biblically. The men of the Bible were called to play. And I'd make the claim in the book that I think every man is called in some sense to inhabit these roles and to take on the virtues, take on the character traits of these roles.

And so, you know, a husband, for instance, I mean, I talk about my own story as a husband and learning what does it look like to live for somebody else, not to put yourself first, but somebody else first, what does it look like to live in a self-sacrificial manner that ultimately mirrors the Lord?

You know, these are the kind of things that are, it's hard, as every man who's been married before more than 30 seconds knows. You know, it's typical work, right? as every woman who's been married to a man for more than 30 seconds knows, right? I mean, being a husband is hard work if you're going to do it well. But these are the disciplines of character and heart and mind that men have pursued down the millennia,

that transform us as men, that God has called us to, and that ultimately can transform our society. It's interesting because, you know, I have to be careful what I say because my wife is right here. But in all seriousness, if you ask me, like, what is the most important thing in life to me? What is the hardest thing in life? Being a good husband and being a good father, it seems clear to me that that is the hardest thing. It's easy to do great exploits, but that requires humility, self-sacrifice. It really is, and it's been so denigrated in the culture.

I mean, you know, going back, as you said, to the 60s, but you, it seems to me, from having read the book, that you were raised in what we would think of as a pretty traditional environment, your family. Yeah, very much so. My parents gave me the great gift of loving one another, of staying together, of loving me. I have a younger sister. And, you know, I took it for granted at the time. Now, being married, having children my own, I realized more what they did for us. Yeah.

Just by doing the day in, the day out work of loving one another, of working. on their marriage and providing that home and that stability for us. And I tell some of the stories in the book about my family. And, you know, again, part of this is this book, again, is it's kind of a, it's a love letter to my children. And so I put in there some of the stories that, frankly, I want them to know about our family. You know, some good, some, some, it could use areas of improvement. But just to see, what does it look like to be a faithful husband or father?

I want to make a point just about fatherhood as well. it's no coincidence, I think, that when you look at the Bible, God's plan for the redemption of the entire world really kicks off in a big way. In Genesis chapter 12, what happens in Genesis chapter 12? God calls Abram, who will become Abraham. And the first thing, he's already married, the first thing that God says to him is,

I'm going to make you a father. He changes his life, he calls him towards fatherhood, and that is the launching of his plan that will follow through. We know all the way to Jesus Christ, but becoming a father, Eric, was critical to that. And really, Abraham, what do we call Abraham? Father Abraham, his whole journey is really the journey towards the self-sacrifice of fatherhood.

And I think there's so much in that that we can learn and imitate as men. Now, had you heard that in a sermon or something, because that's one of the things that I marveled at in reading the book, I thought, I've never really seen it framed that way before. I mean, it's to me absolutely correct, but I had not ever seen that before about Abraham. Well, you know, really it was, to be honest with you, thinking about my own journey, and I tell a little bit of my story in here, thinking about what it meant to be a father.

And, you know, I just, I grew up, again, in the household that you mentioned. I always wanted to be a dad, you know, I just thought, ah, it's going to be awesome to be a dad. I'd think about what am I going to do when I have kids one day. And then I tell the story in the book, my wife and I, and I got her permission to tell the story, but our first pregnancy we lost, she miscarried. And that was a brutal experience. For me as a newly married, pretty newly married at the time, not a father yet, that was such a turning point moment for me because it made me realize fatherhood's a gift.

It's not something that you can control. It's not something that you are entitled to. It's a gift from the Lord. And when he calls you to it, he changes you. And it drove me to think about Abraham, Abraham, and how the Lord. called him and changed him through the gift and calling a fatherhood. So that, it started a journey for me in thinking through that and the thinking of my own life, okay, how am I going to get ready to be a father? How am I going to accept the gift of

fatherhood? And how am I going to be faithful to that with my children? You talk a lot in the book about the, you know, the crisis of masculinity. And this is something, I mean, no kidding. I wrote a book about this, a different kind of book, which we were talking about in the green room called Seven-N. men because I realized there's clearly a crisis of masculinity in the nation, in the culture, in the West, and there's so many ramifications. Everything bad follows from that crisis. And in my book Seven Men, I tell the stories of seven great men, because if you just tell the story of a great man, God's idea of what makes a great man, we kind of, you pick stuff up, even if you're not

making the point, you just kind of pick up what made him great, what made him great. And And it is, when I wrote the book, which is 2013, I guess, I realized there is, and has been a real crisis of masculinity. We need to put forth positive models, and it's very important to do. And so you do that a lot in this book. But what was it? Because you talk about some students that you had when you were a law professor, where you began to see the kinds of problems that result from confusion, about what it is to be a man. Yeah, I had the privilege for several years to work as a law professor.

My wife and I both, actually, and I learned a lot from my students in a lot of ways. But one of the things I learned is I had a steady stream of young men coming into my office. You know, I asked about their grades, ask about the work. But then they'd get to talking to me, and I saw over and over again, these young men were often bereft of father figures. They didn't have a lot of purpose and vision for their lives. It's interesting. The young women, very different.

The young woman much more switched on. They had a sense of what they were wanting to do, where they wanted to go. But the men, a lot of talent, but they would come in, many of them. They just didn't know. There's just this sort of lethargy and lifelessness. And I just, and I realized after a while they didn't have a vision for their lives as men. And so, you know, I can remember one young guy who came into my office and talking about how he, he was saying, well, I like your class and this is great, so on and so forth.

But then he started talking to me and he said, you know, but I often show up. your class drunk. And I said, whoa, and my class is not early in the morning. And I was like, or late at night. And so I had said, well, tell me about that. And what he, as it turns out, what he said was that, you know, he had a very serious problem with alcohol. And I was the first person, which was, I felt blessed to be trusted, the first person he told about this. Yes, yeah.

But he felt he had nothing to live for. This was the bottom line. The bottom line is that what, he got drunk every day because it's just what he did. and, you know, his life had no particular purpose in it. He'd had a tough time at home. This is a kid with enormous talent who'd already had a successful career and decided to go come be a lawyer and was, by the way, great at it. But here he is going home getting drunk every night, so heavily drunk,

but he's still hung over by the next morning because that was just his pattern of life because he had nothing to look forward to. And I just, I saw iterations of that story for years. And I thought to myself, what is going on? with our young men. And so, you know, I tried to do my small part for them as the Lord gave me opportunity and brought me into their lives. But it really made me think in this book, part of what I want to do is hold up that vision for what healthy masculinity looks like. It's something to aspire to and to be excited about because this is how we leave a legacy as men. And I think men need to

hear and see. Today, you're listening to my conversation from a few weeks ago with Senator Josh Hawley at Socrates in the city. Here's my conversation with Josh Hawley. you talk in the book about Epicurus. Talk a little bit about that. There's a bad idea of because, I mean, Epicurus, an ancient philosopher, an atheist really at bottom. And Epicureanism, I think, is something that's infected our culture. And it's basically there's two points to it. Number one is it's essentially atheistic. And number two, it's really focused on pleasure. And I think that we live in an age of what I call in the book Epicurean liberalism, which is we live in a liberal culture, but, it's inflected with those two Epicurean ideas of. It's essentially atheistic, and it's very focused on pleasure, personal pleasure, personal satisfaction. The problem with it is that you can even see this in Epicurus' own view of physics. Epicurean physics said that he understood and saw the world is made up of atoms. Which is very impressive for somebody 24 centuries ago.

Incredible. The conclusion he drew from it, though, is incredibly depressing. He thought but the atoms moved totally at random, and therefore our lives were totally random. The planets moved at random. The stars moved at random. He thought that governed the world, and essentially all of our life is random and therefore meaningless. Now, all you have to do is recite that.

You can hear the echoes today. How much of our culture thinks that. So many young men think that. I think that that Epicurean idea is really a nemesis. It has woven its way into our popular culture, and we need to root it out because we don't live in a random universe. We live in a universe of purpose.

We don't live random lives. We're called towards purpose. And I think that's part of the message we need to do. No doubt about it. But, I mean, it follows logically. I mean, I've written a lot about this. We were just talking about my book is atheism dead. If you believe there is no God, life is inherently unavoidably meaningless.

And what do you do? You can either kill yourself, which would be logical, or you can just live for pleasure, which is kind of torturous to live that way. because it's so bleak and sad. But it follows, and it's why, you know, at the heart of the vision you lay out here and that I talk about, God somehow has to be at the heart of it. Even if somebody is not a dedicated, theological, sophisticated believer, just the idea that God made me, I have a purpose.

Like, that used to be in the drinking water of the culture. It was basically there. Even if you weren't very serious about your faith, It was in the drinking water of the culture that I have a purpose in life. There are things worth living for, dying for. That was part of the culture. That went out of the culture, basically, roughly in the 60s. I mean, I would say that's the, you know, you can go backwards.

But in a sense, that's what it out. And we've not recovered it. We've not recovered it. I tell the story in the book of a man in Sydney, Australia, who, after the First World War, came back to Australia. He was not a believer. He converted, came to know Christ. and he made it his mission to go around and to write everywhere in Sydney the word eternity.

And he would do it every night. He would go and he would write on all these public buildings in chalk eternity. It's such a beautiful picture, I think, of what we're called to do as believers. There is an eternity. Our lives can matter for eternity. I think this is something that men especially need to hear in our culture. Your life can matter for eternity. It can change the future.

of the world for eternity. Now that is something to live for. And I think for those of us who are Christians, for those of us who believe, even if you're not a Christian, but you believe in fundamental foundational truth, we need to all over our culture, we need to go and to write the word eternity,

everywhere that we go and to hold up the hope that that represents. I don't know if that's a uniquely masculine thing, but the idea that I have to have purpose and that courage and it seems to me at the heart of what it is to be a man as far as I can tell. And what we're talking about is how that's gone out of the culture. How can you talk about purpose when you don't even know, am I a random, is my existence meaningless and random? If you believe that, you know, and again, it's kind of funny. I was joking around, you know, you went to Yale law

school. When I was at Yale undergrad, I always say that they never came out and said, life is meaningless, but they acted as though we all know that. And what is the solution? The brave solution would be to blow your brains out. But they would never go there. They'd be like, you know what, get a good job. And, you know, on the weekends, there's like alcohol and sports and, you know, we'll get through it. But don't ever look into the bleak. abyss of whether there's meaning because there is no meaning. And that, you know, that follows from Darwin and on and on and on. And we're living with the fruit of that right now. And that's, that's everything you're talking about. But it's just unbelievably bleak. And I guess I'm wondering

whether it has gotten bleak enough that, that more and more people are saying, okay, it's not working. It's, I mean, I think it was, you know, even Elon Musk has been talking about how we need to have more kids. We need to have it. People are sort of getting that this, the bleak, secular, Western European idea that, you know, don't have too many kids. It's all over. Somehow, for most people, at least, they know it doesn't work. There's just a sense that we need something else. I think it's 100% true. And, you know, what do children represent hope for the future? I mean, this is a culture that does not welcome children and in which you can look at our own culture, Western cultures, fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer and fewer children.

You know, that really says something about the fundamental hopefulness or lack thereof of a culture. So, you know, I think you can see this point, though, about people realizing that there's got to be more than this. Just in the behavior of young men ages 18 to 24, there's been recent surveys, as you and I sit here tonight, recent surveys that show that all of a sudden young men are starting to go back to church or going for the first time.

You know, the religiosity of Americans, which has been declining, has now halted and begun to rise, and it's due almost entirely to young people, particularly very young men. Now, what does that tell you that they've been raised in Christian homes? No. It tells you that they've looked at the situation you've described and brought up and told there's no meaning to life. You've got to make your own meaning, which basically just means self-medicate. They've looked at that and they've said, I want something more for our life. And that's an incredibly hopeful thing. Today you're listening to my conversation from few weeks ago with Senator Josh

Hawley at Socrates in the city. Here's my conversation with Josh Hawley. Well, now the downside, of course, of all this, well, one of the downsides is you do get genuine toxic masculinity. You get people like Andrew Tate. Correct. He is a classic example

of how you have men lost. They know that, you know, the feminization of men or the denigration of real masculinity. They know that's bad, but they're turning many to him. And it's a false, bloated, hyper-trophied

cartoon version of masculinity. It's not manhood. It's kind of like boyhood. It's a cartoonish thing. But I know you touch on that in the book. I do. That bad idea. A horrible idea. It's a form of idolatry and you know it's fake because it's all about me. It's all about self. There's no sacrifice in it. There's no real strength in it because there's no sacrifice in it. It's all about how can I be God? which is just the same version as Epicureanism.

You know, it's just Epicureanism with a different face. You know, Epicureanism, as our culture presents, it's very soft, it's very self-indulgent. But that's what this false, I hesitate to even call it masculinity. That's what the false vision of Andrew Tate is, too. It's all about how can I make me happy today, and that's going to be, I'll just dominate other people. There is no denial of self.

There's no taking up of the cross. There's no serving to others. And there's nothing that really costs you as a man. about it, we were talking about it a second ago, what is it that really hurts? Where is it that really costs you? It's when you deny yourself and you say, I'm going to put her first. I'm going to put my children first. That's tough as a man. Why? Because that costs is something. And you know that a masculinity is fake when there's no cost in it. And I look at these fake alternatives. There's no cost of that. It's just another form of self-indulgence. We need to say the young

men, it is good to sacrifice. That is noble. And if you do that, again, that sacrifice will. It will change your character and your heart. And it will change the lives of the people around you. And we seem to know this innately because no one can escape, even if you don't acknowledge it intellectually, that we are created in God's image. So we're stuck. Whoever you are, whatever you think intellectually, you are created in God's image, or at least some of us know that. And you can see how people gravitate towards self-sacrifice because they somehow innately know if there's meaning in the world,

that's got to be it. So honor self-sacrifice. I think of why Islam has been very attractive to men in prisons. Why? Because it's very demanding. It's kind of interesting, right? It's very demanding. And they just know, I am made for something, you know, I want to be a warrior. I want to struggle. I don't just want to exist. And so there are all kinds of, whatever, false solutions. but they kind of betray that longing that every especially young man has for their lives to count somehow. Yeah, exactly. No, I think that's exactly right. And we've got to speak to that longing and tell the truth about it, which is that your life is meant to matter. It is meant to matter for eternity. And, you know, if I could, the story of the Bible, I mean, it's right there in Genesis.

It's right there in Genesis 1 and 2. The Bible, there's a throughline story for men in it. What is it that Adam is called to do? you know Adam God creates Adam and he puts him in a garden and then he says to Adam you guard this garden you tend that you take care of it and here's the part we often miss you expand it into the whole world Adam is supposed to take that garden and Eden and he and eat together are supposed to work to expand it why so that the whole world will become a garden where God can dwell so from the very beginning men are called with the purpose to God into the world to subdue it to fill it which is what God himself does in the first six days of

creation and to make it a place that is beautiful, that glorifies God, and that is ultimately a temple for God. That is the most enormous vision imaginable. It is still true for us today. Men, I think there's something deep in our psyche. We resonate to that. We say, yes, we know we're supposed to go out into the world. Yes, we know we're supposed to confront evil. We know we're supposed to subdue it.

We know we're supposed to build something glorious. God wired us that way. We need to remember and recall those narratives so that we can give them to me. today. That instinct makes me want to acquire Greenland. There. I'm just keeping a real. I'm only one, I guess. I'm just keeping a real. No, but it is kind of funny because part of the joy of the current president, and if you're watching this in the future, Gerald Ford is who I'm talking about. But it seems that the current president taps into this

in a way that's really dramatic and it's really appealing. And it's also shocking, having lived for decades in a world where nobody thinks that way. It's kind of funny. I interviewed Peter Thiel at Socrates in the city, but it's about five years ago. And he was talking about how there hasn't been anything dramatic in science or technology for like 50 years. They're like, you know, we invented jet planes and then what? Nothing. Kind of. You know, like in some way, except for the computer. But but in some ways we lost the ability to dream. You know, we put a man on the moon and then, you know, we didn't really, something happened in a way.

There's some kind of stagnation in the culture because, you know, obviously, if you were born in the mid-20th century, suddenly you get a 49th and a 50th state. There was that sense of dreaming and we want more, which I think is innate, I think in human nature, but especially as Americans. We, on some, now, of course it can go wrong because we're not talking about manifest destiny, really, but that is something that God put in us and that God put in men in particular. And we know that it can go wrong, and we have heard the litany over the decades of how it can go wrong, but we've forgotten how it can go right.

And so I feel like we're in an exciting cultural moment. I think that's right. And you mentioned going to the moon. Just think about it's one of my all-time favorite speeches by anybody ever. President Kennedy's very famous moon speech that he gives at Houston Rice University. What does he say? He says, we choose to go to the moon and to do these other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

There is something in that that is thrilling to us as Americans and has been. And I think you're right. The current president taps into that, you know. He's very retro in that way. And it's incredible. It's unbelievable. It's wonderful. And it's tough.

tapping into that desire to, yes, we want to do hard things. Yes. We want to go out there and conquer a wilderness. Yeah. We want to go out there and conquer a frontier. And that is true for us morally as men as well. And this is what men need to hear the message that, listen, the great adventure of your life, the greatest wilderness you can conquer, is the wilderness of your character. As you form that, submit it to God, form it into the character that God means for it to be.

You know, this is, you want to talk about frontiers, you want to talk about subduing a wilderness. start with your soul. And that will, that is what will leave the ultimate legacy for eternity and also for your family and those you love. I want to ask about your upbringing. Were you raised in a solidly Christian home? Has this been part of your life from the beginning? Yeah, I was. I was.

My parents gave me that great gift. Both of them are believers. I don't know a time when I didn't know about the Lord. I can remember. You never had a moment where you put the crack pipe on the altar? Yes. Because you need to do that, Josh. Well, we could maybe do that.

Nice to light tonight. Yeah, I mean, this is... Today, you're listening to my conversation from a few weeks ago with Senator Josh Hawley at Socrates in the city. Here's my conversation with Josh Hawley. I remember when I was five, I remember sitting on my dad's knee and, you know, praying the prayer, praying to accept Christ. And then when I was 12, it was my older boys age now, making more public profession

and faith. But my parents gave me the most beautiful thing they could give me, which was their love for each other and their love for the Lord. And they introduced me to him at an early age. And as, you know, I look back on it now, and as I talk to younger men about starting families, you know, there was nothing dramatic in what my parents did, but what they're day in and day out, loving each other,

loving the Lord, loving my sister and me, showing up that my life is what it is today because of that. And I hope that I can give that to my children. And again, you want to talk about decisions that matter for eternity, often it's not the grand things, it's the small things that we do day in and day out, where we make the choices that shape our character and that shape the lives of those around us. And as men, there is nothing more profound we can do than that. There's no doubt about that. It's funny because my dad passed this a year ago, 96 and a half.

And he, just his being a faithful husband and a good father, it's hard for me to overstate the effect that that had on me. It is just, it's impossible for me to overstate. It's everything. It's everything. And I think that, you know, we used to live in a culture where that was a thing. That was kind of what men did. And somehow it's bled out of the culture over the decades till now we are where we are.

Talk a little bit about the value of work, blue-collar work and your grandfather. There's some great stories in the book about that. that. Yeah, you know, I think one of the things that every man is called to is to be a laborer, is to be a worker, be builder. And I talk about my grandfather, who's actually first generation of our family born in the United States, his family, all Norwegian immigrants. He was a farmer. His whole life long, you know, he wore blue overalls to work every single day, you know, one of the guys who showered when he came home from the job rather than showering at the beginning of the day. And I never knew him not to have the soil of Kansas, which is where they homesteaded. under his nails and he was proud of that. He was proud of the manual labor that he did and he loved to work. And I learned something wonderful and beautiful about the Lord from him, which is that the Lord loves to work. He's always working.

He calls us to be workers. My grandfather, I can remember one of my earliest memories with him is going out in the fields. And for those of you are not from farming backgrounds, you know, this is in Kansas where it was dry. you had to irrigate and so you had to do this thing where you'd go and you'd change gates it was called and you'd tap these gates and open up the water flow and then you tap them close and close it so you know as a kid cheap labor free labor so he put a hammer in my hand he said you know he'd show me how to do it son go down and do this and i can remember doing that with him and at the end of the time at the end

of the evening which often when we'd be changed gates twice a day at the end of the evening we'd be standing there and grandpa would lean on a shovel and he'd look out at his fields and he would say just look at what the Lord does. And what I learned from that is he loved to work, he saw value in it, it gave him purpose every day, and he knew in a deep sense, he was no theologian,

but at a deep sense he knew, he was cooperating with God in his work. That by working, he was bringing forth something from the earth that God meant for him to do, and he loved it. He loved it. And that, I hope,

gave me an appreciation for all kinds of work, especially for men who work with their hands, and we need more of that in our culture. You know, for our culture for too long, our popular culture, we've kind of denigrated people who go out and who work with their hands. We need to celebrate that. And we need to celebrate work and say, this is something God's called us to. It's how we cooperate with the Lord.

It's how we fulfill our vocations met. Folks, you've been listening to my conversation with Senator Josh Holly, it's Socrates in the city. I want to remind you before we go to the break, please go to metaxis talk.com today. Metaxistalk.com. You'll see the banner at the top of the page. Metaxistalk.com. The phone number 888-253-3522. 888-253-3522. Please be a modern-day abolitionist. Join us, 888-253-3522.