The Glenn Beck Program - Ep 188 | How Should Christians FIGHT BACK Against the Rainbow Mafia? | Spencer Klavan | The Glenn Beck Podcast

Episode Date: June 3, 2023

Sometimes, the only way forward is backward. For instance, the modern obsession with “my personal truth.” The solution to this destructive force, according to author and podcast host Spencer Klava...n, lies in ancient wisdom and the timeless question, “How is that working out for you?” Spencer joins Glenn to apply his expertise in classic literature and philosophy to the enigmas and culture wars of today, from the hubris of atheism to the rot of academia. And with a Ph.D. from Oxford, he knows a thing or two about academics. He walks Glenn through how the innovations of science have led to the religion of science, which in turn has bred horrors. He explains why he says, “Transgenderism is transhumanism.” And as a gay man, he responds to the destruction of truth in the name of people like him, including the possibility that Pride Month could be used to paint any dissenters as “Christian nationalists.” Spencer also walks Glenn through the big ideas in his latest book, “How to Save the West: Ancient Wisdom for 5 Modern Crises.” But, despite it all, there’s room for hope, he says. The decay of society may just be a great opportunity to make civilization better. SPONSORS: If you're one of the millions of Americans who suffer every day from pain, there is hope, and it comes in the form of Relief Factor. If you want a drug-free and natural way to get your life back, go to https://relieffactor.com or call 1-800-4-RELIEF to get the $19.95 three-week quick start.   Go to https://BetterSpectacles.com/BECK now to schedule a Tele-Optical appointment. You don’t even have to leave the comfort of your home. They’re offering an introductory 61% off of their progressive eyewear plus free handcrafted Rodenstock frames.   When you buy socks from https://grip6.com/BECK, you’re supporting American ranchers and American manufacturers and getting a pair of socks that keep your feet warm in the winter and cool in the summer.   Home title fraud is growing 2.5x faster than credit card fraud. You could be a victim and not even know it. Visit https://HomeTitleLock.com and use the promo code BECK to get 30 days of free protection. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:26 com or to your A healthy society is one that allows its citizens to guide themselves, to pursue a life of virtue and wisdom. And that always begins with the question that our kids ask us all the time when they're very young and it drives us nuts. Why? Why? It drives me nuts when my kids say it because it's about everything. Why is the sky blue? Why is that couch red? I don't know. but that drives me crazy now that those same kids growing up don't ever ask that question and think it's bad. I've based my career on asking questions because I want to know the truth and I can learn from people that I even disagree with. We can't know the truth unless we ask our way to it.
Starting point is 00:01:17 Today's podcast, the guest is an Ivy League educated PhD from Oxford in ancient Greek literature. He has an incredible knowledge of the classics, timeless stories from names like Dante and Plato and Aristotle, names like George Washington. And the important name of all time, most important, is Jesus. He is an editor for the American Mind. He shook cages with his podcast, The Young Heretics, a legacy he continues as an associate editor for the Claremont review of books. Oh, and he was raised by a friend of mine, Andrew Claven. I started reading his books just recently.
Starting point is 00:02:02 I didn't put the two together, you know. Okay, so two guys I know named Claven until about halfway through the book. This is an incredible book. it is how to save the West, which breaks down all of the struggling, the struggles that we are facing right now into five parts. You'll learn all about it. Fascinating guy. His name is Spencer Claven. Before we start, do you know that we see with our brain and not with our eyes? Our brain constantly senses what's happening around us. How and what we see depends on the strength of our own eyes, but it also helps the brain make optimal decisions. This is why you need as much
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Starting point is 00:03:53 Schedule your teleoptical appointment. Get your glasses now 61% off. Better spectacles.com slash back. I'm glad you're here. Such a pleasure. I was reading your book before I ever put together that Claven is also your dad, Clavin, who I know quite well. We've met before.
Starting point is 00:04:24 Right. I just saw this title and started reading about it. And I'm like, oh, wow, that sounds really good. It is a lot of times somebody who is perhaps a little overeducated has a little difficult time getting it to the dummies like me. And there are times I'm like, don't know that word, never heard that word. But the concepts and the way you take us through what's happening to the West and the way you tie it to all of the lessons of history through our philosophers is really brilliant and easy to consume. I don't know how you did it.
Starting point is 00:05:09 Well, thank you for saying that. It's really wonderful when a book makes exactly the kind of impact you want it to make. And that's very much my dream for this book. you know oftentimes somebody like me will hear from you know people who read my work or who listen to my podcast and a lot of the folks that reach out to me will preface what they say by saying I'm not that smart they'll say hey I'm not that smart but you know I'm interested in what you're saying or whatever and I've started to learn that the minute somebody says that I'm about to have the most interesting conversation of my week because what they really mean by that they actually they're selling themselves wildly short what they really mean by that is is I didn't go to the fancy schools. I didn't have, you know, the kind of prestigious education or upbringing or what have you. And I've been told that that means I don't get an opinion because I'm not an expert in anything. I'm not credentialed. And, you know, I am here to tell you, I have been among the credentialed people and nobody can believe dumb nonsense like an academic.
Starting point is 00:06:12 Oh, I know. Right. You know this well. And so to me, these great books, the works of the they're not there for eggheads like me to write PhD thesis about. That's actually not why they exist on the shelf. They're there for us. They're there to teach us how to be excellent at being human. They're there to make sense out of the catastrophes we face, since the world is constantly full of them. And if somebody like me who's spent a little time
Starting point is 00:06:40 kind of with his head buried in Greek can bring that to life for people, then I think I'll have... I mean, I remember, and I think I told you this, when I first read Plato, I was just, I was probably 30. I mean, I read it earlier, but then, you know, just read it for class. Sure. And 30, I was interested because I knew I was a dummy and I needed to actually learn things. That's the Socrates says that's the first step to wisdom. That might be the only thing we can have.
Starting point is 00:07:08 Yeah, right. And I was blown away how all of the questions I were asking were already asked. at that time. And that's what the whole thing was about. The search for truth, the search for meaning. And we've lost all of that. Yeah. All of that. We are told now, don't ask any questions. You just follow this. We'll tell you what to do. That not only is, you know, bad for the civilization, but it also diminishes the individual and their spirit. You can't be fully you if you're not allowed to go, well, wait a minute. That doesn't make sense and I don't agree with that. Exactly.
Starting point is 00:07:52 The minute they can tell you not to describe the world the way you see it, they have erased you. You no longer effectively exist if you can't say, you know, I think a man is a man, a woman is a woman, the most basic observations. This is why, you know, Orwell famously said that the regime will tell you two plus two equals four tomorrow and five today. right. And this situation, I have to take a little bit of comfort in thinking that, you know, the world has kind of always been that way. I mean, you, you and I have lived through some good times in America that maybe made us feel like this wasn't kind of the state of, the normal state of things. But, you know, the book starts out with Socrates. And Socrates, the great, you know, original figure in Athenian philosophy and sort of the birth of the, the, you know, the book starts out with Socrates. And Socrates, the great, you know, the great, you know, the great original figure in. And the birth of, that part of Western civilization was executed by the state, went through forced suicide for inviting people to believe in gods other than the city's gods, which when we're raising statues to abortion in New York over our courthouses, that kind of charge can feel very familiar, heresy against civic gods.
Starting point is 00:09:06 And for corrupting the youth, right, for inviting the powerful young men of the day to think about more than just gain or politics to actually ask what it all means. And when you realize that the guy who did that got killed by the state, you suddenly understand what kind of world you're living in. And we really are living in that world. In that book, The Republic that you mentioned of Plato's, he talks about the cave, right? This kind of shadowy world where we're all just staring at the manipulated kind of images
Starting point is 00:09:38 of our media and our elites and our... sort of pseudo philosophers. And he says, what would happen if somebody got out of that cave? What would happen if he learned to really see the light, to really see the sun? Well, he'd come back down into the cave. He'd try to convince people that they were being fed a bunch of lies and they'd rip him to shreds. In fact, they might even crucify him. It's an amazing passage because, of course, the other figure that does this is Christ.
Starting point is 00:10:02 Right. And get killed for it as well. But that's generally what happens every time. We seem to go through cycles where, uh, air, Everybody just agrees that this is what it is. And if you don't, you're a heretic and they stone you. And then later they're like, oh, wow, we shouldn't have done that. Right.
Starting point is 00:10:24 But let me start with the premise of the book, How to Save the West. Let's first define the West. What does that mean? Sure. Well, when I started writing this book, I told my friend that I was writing a book of the West and she said, oh, I love John Wayne movies. That's awesome. I said, not that kind of West.
Starting point is 00:10:46 Although I too loved in Waymoot. But this is actually a really important question. Because when you say, I love Western civilization, you will immediately be told that's a white racist dog whistle. Right. That's a code word for all the sorts of backwards. Colonialism and slavery. Like, yeah, systemic whatever, systemic transphobia. And, you know, the irony of this is that when I use the word West with that capital W, I'm actually describing one
Starting point is 00:11:12 the only ways out of tribalism. And that is to understand yourself as the inheritor of a tradition. It's a two-part tradition that comes from Athens and Jerusalem. And when I say Athens, I'm talking about those guys like Socrates and Plato, the great philosophers of Greco-Roman antiquity. And then crucially, when I'm talking about Jerusalem, I'm talking about the scripture that comes out of the monotheists of the Near East, the Jews and the Christians. And those two traditions, those wisdom traditions, which meet in the preaching of St. Paul and the conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity, spread throughout Europe, create the world that we are living in today, whether we know it or not, whether we like it or not. And if we decide that we're just going to
Starting point is 00:11:55 kind of get rid of all of that and go with whatever, you know, the world economic forum comes up with tomorrow, we cut ourselves off from this vast store of ancestral wisdom that you were talking about before. It's not a place. It's not a time. It's not a race. It's the communion of great minds. So it's perhaps more than that because it's, or simpler than that, because
Starting point is 00:12:21 Socrates, Plato, and the Jews are exactly the same in one thing. You talk to a rabbi or any really thoughtful Jewish person. It's all questions.
Starting point is 00:12:38 To find an answer, you ask them for an answer, and they're going to give you eight questions. You know what I mean? Yeah. But that's So that's Socrates, too. So it's really the West, if you say it's these two groups, it's boiled down just to asking questions, searching for deeper truth. Yeah, that's what makes them so annoying. No, it's, I know. I know.
Starting point is 00:13:00 You're like, can I just have an answer? I'm back at you. I know, I know. Straight answer to any of one of these guys. Right. But yes, I mean, that's. beautifully put and it speaks to what you were saying about. I knew that I didn't know things and so I went away and I read a great book. I mean, you think that that's like, you know, not rare. You're kidding yourself. That's,
Starting point is 00:13:18 that's the whole game. So I went through because I, I'm an alcoholic and I just spiraled out of control. Yeah. And when I got sober, I knew everything I believed was not working. Well, you know what I mean? Yeah. And so I had to figure out what the meaning was of everything. And there was so much I read that I didn't understand at the time because I was the typical American. When I read Emmanuel Kant when he said, there are many things that I believe that I shall never say, but I shall never say the things that I do not believe. I couldn't understand that world.
Starting point is 00:13:57 I understand it now, but I couldn't understand that world. And I've done a lot of pondering on why more people don't. because I just took everything out and went to the library and got the people who disagreed. I put councils together. And I'm like, okay, here's the topic. And I'll read everything. And then I'll start whittling it down until I find what I feel is truth. And I think people, because I know I did, I think people don't do it because, A, it's a lot of work.
Starting point is 00:14:27 B, you're afraid it you're not smart enough. you're afraid there's maybe there's nothing in me you know maybe I am just this and I know how to deal with that because it will change everything everything I mean you could tell me if I'm wrong
Starting point is 00:14:47 but it sounds like you're describing an experience of hitting rock bottom right I mean that that moment when you understood that there actually you know is truth something is real and it's not what I've been told and I better reach out for it because it's life.
Starting point is 00:15:05 Right. It's lifeblood. I mean, I suspect when you gathered that, you know, communion of minds around you to help you out of that pit, I mean, you were standing in a tradition with, you know, Machiavelli in exile when he writes to his friend, Francesco Vittori, that I summon the ancient men to speak with me. I enter the ancient courts of ancient men. I mean, this is part of the tradition. It's, in fact, the whole tradition is that sense that we're not alone, right?
Starting point is 00:15:33 But it has to begin with humility. And I think there's nothing that human heart hates more than humility. It's true of all of us. And sometimes it does take, I think, just smacking up against that wall before you get there. You said, you know, that the West is constantly on the, I don't remember how you said it, but constantly on the edge of failure. On the verge of collapse. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.
Starting point is 00:15:58 So when you say how to save the West, it doesn't necessarily mean how to save our country as currently understood. I think that's right. I will say we're always living out the eternal principle, seeing the great truths in and through the here and now. So I don't believe in indifference. I don't think it's a matter of no consequence what happens to our country. I think, like, there are good ways to vote and bad ways to vote and good ways to participate in policies and bad ways. But where you're right is my book does not contain a political program because I don't think that the West can depend on the outcome of any particular vote. I don't think none of this.
Starting point is 00:16:46 We don't have a, our politics are so screwed up because we don't know who we are. That's exactly right. Yeah. We have no idea. Yeah. Yeah. And so where do you start? start? Well, you begin with reality in the book. You begin with this question that we're talking about of absolute truth, right? And I think that once you... Can we play that for a second? Yeah. Who's truth? I just... Let's play this game. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, there's two answers to that question. One is my truth, right? One is, as I perceive the world and you perceive it otherwise. And the question is, well, okay,
Starting point is 00:17:27 what happens when we feel differently. And you immediately come to the realization that the only answer is that we should come to blows, that we should have a fist fight. Why are we here? Why are we talking? Right? We are at this table right now because implicitly, whether we acknowledge it or not,
Starting point is 00:17:42 we know that there's not just my truth and your truth, there's the truth. And it's somewhere in between us that as human beings endowed by God with the ability to see the world and experience the world, we actually have a claim on that conversation that we can't we aren't unintelligible to one another and one of the things
Starting point is 00:18:05 I kind of argue in the book and try to drive home for people is that those are really the only two options I think we've kidded ourselves for a long time that you could kind of speak fancibly about well it's sort of morally who knows what's good or bad yeah right thinking makes it so you know and this is all very well and good until they're at your or trying to take you to the camps or until they're taking you. So I will say, you know, the thing about Joseph Mengla, all of his horrid, horrid experiments, they were all lawful. And all of the medical society, they were for that.
Starting point is 00:18:42 I mean, they eliminated anybody who was against it. But they all thought that was good. So when you say, well, who's good? Well, I mean, the hope for me is bad always just. eats itself, rots from the inside. You know what I mean? Yes. And it fails.
Starting point is 00:19:02 Eventually, it fails because you're breaking universal truths. Yes. Well, one of the great defenders of that idea, Iris Murdoch in the 20th century, became the kind of objectivist about this stuff that she became because of the death camps, because she saw the horrors of Nazi Germany and understood that there was no universal. in which that was anything other than evil, that there was a kind of bedrock of reality that she was hitting up against in that evil,
Starting point is 00:19:35 which meant that there was something called good. And the big secret is that we all act this way. We all implicitly acknowledge this when we wake up in the morning. Why do you pour your coffee? Why do you get out of bed? Well, you want something. And if you chase that want far enough down the road, you're eventually going to end up in some territory
Starting point is 00:19:57 where you just say, well, I just think it's good to whatever. A lot of money, have a lot of sex, whatever, right? And this is why, crucially, the Bible says that the fool hath said in his heart, there is no God. It's not because atheists are especially stupid. I mean, we're all about as stupid as one another. But what that verse really means is if you tell yourself, you don't have a God, if you tell yourself you're not
Starting point is 00:20:21 worshiping something, you've made yourself a fool. You're kidding yourself, right? And that good, which Plato identifies with truth, right? That the sun which you see when you emerge from the cave is not crucially some sort of material fact about the world. Although there's this much serotonin in your bloodstream right now, right? No, it's an actual immaterial absolute. It's this is good and that is bad. And again, you know, some sort of bring in conversation with the scripture, right?
Starting point is 00:20:48 The woe to those who call evil good and good evil. This is kind of the first stage of everything. It is the sort of thing that you actually have to decide in advance that you're going to say that whether you make a million bucks or whether they come to... Take you away. When you were little, you've been braced some affairs in court of recreat. Always in trying to negotiate and do make a change. The apply Negoti-Titre TD you permit to renouet with this instinct. With, without operation gratite, no amount of minimum and no free mensual.
Starting point is 00:21:22 You're made for negotiate. And the TD is there for you aid. All right, back with Spencer in just a second. First, as we're talking about truth, I don't ever take on a client that I don't personally use or know somebody that personally uses and loves the product. I never did commercials for relief factor because I didn't use it and I didn't think it would work for me. But I had tried absolutely everything else to get out of pain. My wife was the one said that she's not going to listen to me wine anymore unless I tried. everything and I said honey it works on inflammation nothing ibuprofen never touches my pain not only has it
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Starting point is 00:22:52 2010 because I felt these times were coming again. And I asked the kids and the whole family, make a decision now who you are. If you don't, the line will keep moving, you know, and it only gets harder. Right, right. But if you don't lock it down and say, this is my line. Okay. This is where we go from truth to, you know, to, you know, You're living in a fantasy world to danger. And I think that once you have spent some time in introspection and prayer about that question, you can then have a lot more liberty to kind of discuss and compromise and be free to... Sure.
Starting point is 00:23:42 I mean, once we have agreed together that there is such a thing as truth, for instance, then we can have all sorts of arguments, disagreements. So how do you deal with? with people who say there is only my truth and your truth. Well, to me, the greatest philosophical question in the world is, how's that working out for you? I just adopted a new philosophy just recently. Trying to raise my teenage kids.
Starting point is 00:24:11 I went to their therapist and I'm like, what do I do? And he said, first thing you need to do, when they say something, you just say, huh, it's going to be fun watching how that works out for you. And I've used it on everything now and it's so freeing. I mean, because it's really the irrefutable argument. And it goes back to what you said, that good sort of produces fruit and evil eats itself alive. Right. And, you know, this was one of the great kind of benefits of the Socratic method that you were talking about before, just asking those questions.
Starting point is 00:24:46 Huh? So, you know, Heraclitus says that everything is in flux, that nobody can know anything. except for what they perceive in the given moment. Well, where does that lead? And eventually you get to the student of Heraclitus who can only sit in the corner and move his finger because he can't say anything out loud because he can't affirm any truth.
Starting point is 00:25:04 And so to me, the answer to the question, how's that working out for you is everywhere. Weirdly, the kind of decay of our society is a huge opportunity here. Oh, I know. Right? I mean, like, yeah. I just, if people would use the scientific method,
Starting point is 00:25:22 Right now, it's everywhere. It's everywhere. You might just trust the science. Right. Yeah. Right. And for a civilization that makes such an idol out of a certain kind of scientism, we are remarkably allergic to trusting the evidence of our senses.
Starting point is 00:25:41 To just like acknowledging and admitting. This comes from the idea of experts, you know, at least in America. starting in the progressive era that there is a scientific way to do everything. And no, there's not necessarily a scientific way for everything. Absolutely. And even, I mean, and we know this. Science is right until they're wrong. Famously, yes, that's kind of the whole point of the thing.
Starting point is 00:26:17 And this is something so crucial. There's a lot about this in the book, actually, that, you know, when I talk about scientism, I'm not talking about, like, the iPhone. iPhone's great. You know, I'm glad I have one. I'm glad I, you know, don't have some terrible, you know, I'm glad I don't have dysentery right now. All this is, right, right, right. When I say scientism, what I mean is the belief that science, material science, gives an exhaustive account of reality. And you can find people saying this all the time now. I mean, Richard Dawkins and the beginning of his book, The Selfish Gene quotes as paleontologist, all the good answers to all the,
Starting point is 00:26:51 the important questions were thought up after Darwin, right? This was everything, you know, Muhammad, Christ, Jesus, Aristotle, all these guys. Forget them. Scrapin. It's all about bodies in motion, matter in motion. And by the way, this is not something that the great architects of the scientific revolution believed. This is not what Johannes Kepler thought. It's not what Isaac Newton thought. It's not even what Galileo thought. I mean, none of these people would have said to you that the only thing that is real is what can be proven by scientific experiment. And if you really think about that for a second, it has to be the case that there's something. above science, giving logic to science or else, why would science work? Why should this work? But one of the things that this has done, because it's actually impossible to live this way, because you actually can't operate as if you're just a chemistry set inside of the meat sack, right?
Starting point is 00:27:38 Is that it has turned science into a god. We have no, we're not allowed any of God, and so we have to worship the science, right? And Dr. Fauci says, priest, I represent the science. I mean, these are not scientific statements. They're correct. They're theological statements. Correct. And that's basically where we're at.
Starting point is 00:27:52 And the last time this happened in the 1930s, where science became the God, which we taught the Germans, it didn't work out well. And I don't understand on the other side how some people will dismiss science. I mean, I have no idea how God creates. I have no idea. Nobody does. But I do know this. You can look at the universe and understand enough the universal language is math. Right. And math is all of it, which would mean that God would be the ultimate scientist. Sure. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:28:42 Yeah, yeah. There's something. There's what he has. But then he also uses math to run all of this. Well, Kepler described himself as thinking God's thoughts after him, that he was basically just catching up with God and discovering how planets, you know, right, right. Move around the sun. And this has to be the case if you think about even what math is, like the idea of two doesn't exist anywhere in the world. There's no two in the world.
Starting point is 00:29:12 You can't touch two. You can't see two. Two is in your head. Two is a concept. And the idea that you can use that and add numbers together and a rocket ship will take off. can only be the case of the human mind is tapped into something much more profound. But to your point about, you know, Nazi science, right? And science as a god or as a kind of religious activity,
Starting point is 00:29:37 it's important for us to understand and remember that that looked just as good to them. Oh, I know. As like transgender surgeries for teenagers, looks to the people, you know, it looked just as good to them. First transgender surgery was Viarmat. Republic, 1925. Right. And this is something, I mean, the fact that that's true should give us, first of all, pause about, you know, all of our moral, moral convictions when it comes to sort of, oh, yeah, we're just going to. But you can also now find people saying things like,
Starting point is 00:30:10 oh, well, there's authoritarian eugenics, and that's bad. But there's, there's liberal eugenics, too. You know, there, I was reading a book by a big transhumanist scholarly, et cetera, said exactly this, that it's okay when the good guys do it, right? That's the problem essentially with the... Well, they were the good guys. They were in Hugo Boss suits. Yes, right. They thought they were doing just fine for themselves.
Starting point is 00:30:33 Yeah, and so this is something that, you know, I have this thing I call the, if I had been there fallacy. And if I had been there, fallacy goes like this, you know, those benighted slaveholders at the American Revolution, those evil Germans, you know, if I had been there, I had been there. I would have been an abolitionist. I would have been.
Starting point is 00:30:56 How arrogant of you? Well, right. Would you, like, what was your reaction when you were forced to sign the diversity oath? What was your reaction when, like, COVID? What's your reaction when you buy an iPhone? Yeah. I carry Apple products. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:31:13 I wrestle with this all the time. Sure. I know they're made by slaves. What makes me any different than the people in the 1800s? Sure. They knew that product was made by. slaves who's just far away I don't see it they had a bunch of arguments for right I mean and and this is sort of the tragic vision of human life that I think Jerusalem contributes to the West you know you talk
Starting point is 00:31:33 about what are the things that we get from these two strands of Western civilization the the sense of man's brokenness and the humility that comes with that and the introspection that comes with that is a very Judeo-Christian thing I would say it's just this idea that like all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God It's the only way you stand a chance in hell of making any moral progress of the real kind is to know that, as Soltchenitsyn says, the line between good and evil runs through every heart. I mean, and it's a sobering thought, surely. I think that's why we're in so much trouble. Because we are even, you know, devout Christians who, you know,
Starting point is 00:32:25 do all the things are not necessarily the most humble. And, you know, it's when we're not talking to someone because they're just wrong, I don't want that, whatever it is, we are showing our arrogance that we're saying that person, even in their error, has nothing to teach me. Absolutely. And the sheer hubris, the sheer arrogance of saying, for instance, that, you know, this country was founded on white supremacy, right? And which we've both now just acknowledged that there are, you know, terrible sins in the past of every human civilization, ours included.
Starting point is 00:33:17 Having said that, to look back on this enormous inheritance that does not actually begin in 1770. that reaches back into Athens and Rome and Jerusalem as well, right, to produce this incredible hot house plant, you know, and to say, well, those guys weren't as nice, as good as me. And so I'm going to start a fresh. Year zero begins with me. It's like, who even taught you to condemn slavery? Who even told you that all men are created equal? The founders told you that.
Starting point is 00:33:53 Most people haven't thought that throughout most of history, most of time. And so I absolutely agree with you that moral certainty, arrogance, self-regard, it's got to be our kind of central. We don't fix ourselves unless we fix that. Right, right. You don't ever open the Republic after you've, you know, hit rock bottom unless you really understand that there's, like, it's not going to come from you. Like, you're not going to fix things. Want to go electric without sacrificing fun? That's the Volkswagen ID4, all-electric and thoughtfully designed to elevate your modern lifestyle.
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Starting point is 00:35:08 And he loved the belt so much. He was telling everybody else. And everybody was like, could you make me one? Blah, blah, blah. So he started. And then he thought, I should start a company. And so he went from belts and he now makes wallets. And then they got into clothing, but they wanted to start small.
Starting point is 00:35:22 So they started with socks. But everything they do is done. here in America. It's a true American experience. The idea was not starting a company unless we can do it here in America. So the socks, when you buy their socks, you're supporting the American ranchers who raise the specially bred sheep that will produce the modern wool that the American manufacturers will wash and process it. And then another American group will weave that into a sock. That's what you're doing business with. American business owner. who have accepted the risk that comes along with only using American made products and American labor, but they do it right. Grip6.com slash Beck. Grip6.com slash Beck. Let me talk to you about Christian nationalism a bit.
Starting point is 00:36:13 Okay. I think, do you know Big Tea traditionalist, opposed to small tea traditional? Fill me in. So, Big Tea traditional. Traditionalist movement from Europe, really Russia. Yeah. Comes from Putin's advisors. And it is the idea that we have flushed all tradition down.
Starting point is 00:36:40 Okay. And so we're going to wipe everything out because we're the ones that can put it right. Yeah. Yeah. And it's so slippery because when you first start looking at it and you don't understand small tea and capital T traditionalism, you can fall into the wrong side quickly because all they're saying is we have to restore the things that are true. We have to restore the things that are good about our society. Yep. Yep. But then it's always coupled with and that's why we need to get rid of
Starting point is 00:37:15 him and him and her. Yeah. And by the way, like I should probably run things. Correct. Correct. So the next charge, especially in this, you know, pride, month. What concerns me is the Christians, because the government is trying to make everybody into a Christian nationalist. Absolutely. What is it? How do you know the difference? And how do we maneuver? Yeah. Well, certainly the extremists of the kind of alphabet people. are behaving in doing everything that they can to radicalize
Starting point is 00:38:02 us basically you and me right to make us feel embattled to make us feel like you know the slippery slope was there from the beginning we should never even have departed from like you know just we probably never have departed from England you know for that matter you know and and and it's very very easy
Starting point is 00:38:26 It makes a lot of sense, I think, to look at that and say, well, let's just get rid of all of it. And my problem with this is get rid of all of what? Like, how far back are you going to go? What exactly do you want? And I think a lot of the, for me, the ambiguity, the sort of uncertainty and unclarity about the term Christian nationalism is that there's this sort of charge. We've got to get rid of all of this stuff. and we've got to reestablish tradition, which I largely agree with.
Starting point is 00:39:00 And we've got to use the force of the law to do what? To do what? Right? That's my question. And whenever somebody starts talking about Christian nationalism, and to me, you know, what I want us to be as Americans.
Starting point is 00:39:15 And I think that that does not mean we have to simply let a thousand flowers bloom. Everything goes. Like there are no rules about anything. It's just liberalism unfettered. You know, that's not what the American founding is. But it does mean that among our inalienable rights is liberty and that these choices that people are making, even the ones that are wrong, they're going to have to be free to make if we want to stay the country than we are. They just, the government should be so small that those ideas, the wrong ones, die off small instead of being propped up, propped up until they're gigantic and we all fall.
Starting point is 00:39:52 Well, I think there's another dimension to this. you tell me what you think about this, because I've been towing thinking about this a lot, especially as this like carnival of grotesquery that is Pride Month begins to unfold before us, and this is going to be in the news all the time. If we're not just going to say, okay, like it's time for a Protestant Franco, we're going to, like, you know, if we're not going to do that, what are we going to do? What's our counter program? And I think a big sort of category that's missing here, you know, we say, oh, we're going to,
Starting point is 00:40:24 to outlaw this and we're going to make this legal. But what about the things that we're going to honor? Maybe there's like a range of things that are that are possible, right? Maybe, you know, like I believe quite firmly, like one man and one woman raising a like their kids is the ideal. I just want to throw in in case people don't know. You're gay. Yes. Sorry. Yeah, I should probably have put that out there. I'm gay. And so I'm obviously not doing the thing that I just said is the ideal. I obviously also believe it should be legal for people to do a ring of other things, right? No place. And so that leaves us with this question, right, which is how, is it possible for us to have room for kind of the quirks and weirdness and eccentricity of humanity, which by the way, we all participate in sharing to some degree.
Starting point is 00:41:18 None of us lives in the ideal. is it possible for us to acknowledge that, to let people be people while honoring what is the center of civilization, which is a male and female procreative love in a family? And I think the answer is it has to be yes, but we have to elevate some things over others. My marriage is not the same thing as a heterosexual marriage, even though I am very happy in it, even though I believe. it should be legal, I don't think that it should be identical with or honored at the same level with a straight marriage. So I, so yeah, this is a tricky part. Yeah. But I think, I mean, I'm just down to, I've whittled so much away.
Starting point is 00:42:06 It's like, what are you trying to save? If you're a conservative, what are you conserving? Yeah. What brought us together, what made us successful and what made it work is we all agreed on the Bill of Rights. and if you just do those, you're not going to be happy. Sometimes it'll cut against your way. Sometimes it'll cut the other way. It's not going to fix everything.
Starting point is 00:42:31 But if we have just that roadmap, that's made for the government, but it's really a roadmap for all of us. I shouldn't spy on you. I shouldn't be able to have power over you. I shouldn't curb your speech. Yes. So I agree with this. I think the Constitution is what it is because it is the operating system of the country.
Starting point is 00:42:54 Right. And as you say, if we do that, we will have made a big stride forward. To me, there's another part of this, which is that the Constitution sits in a cradle of culture. And the founders knew this. John Adams famously said this Constitution is not written for anything other than a moral religious people. And so if we're going to be able to do the Constitution, we have to give serious attention to our culture. that's what I'm talking about. I'm talking about honor and values. What do we encourage in people? What do we invite people into? And we've developed this terrible mania that treats ideals as insults.
Starting point is 00:43:32 That if you say to somebody, the best thing you can do is, you know, raise a family and start, you know, then somebody said, how dare you? Because I can't do that for whatever reason. I'm, you know, I'm infertile or I'm gay or I'm whatever. And these things, like, it's actually possible, I know, because I'm living this life. It's possible to say, I endorse and affirm that as the ideal, even though I have to be true to and honest about the ways in which that's not my life. So I know and work with a lot of gay people. Sure. And I've always, I'm much more libertarian than anything else. I've never been against gay rights.
Starting point is 00:44:13 but I will tell you the people I know are as shocked and horrified by what's going on in the name, in their name why aren't we seeing more people stand up? This is a very important question and of course we've already now talked about the sheer force of social conformity
Starting point is 00:44:39 and intimidation. So there's a big part of that. But there's also, I think, a fear that there's no place to go. There's nowhere to go. Right. That you can't say these people are not my people. You know, basically the Americans are my people. And I, like you, speak every day to people that are just horrified by what's being done in their name. And the thing that I constantly say to them is, okay, so say that. Stand up and say, not in my name. And I do think that it's very, very difficult for us to see this because the loudest and the craziest voices are so visible. It's very, very difficult for us
Starting point is 00:45:28 to grasp that this is going on. But I really do believe that just as civil rights was weaponized by the radical left, just as women's economic equality was turned into, led us basically into this insane bacchanalia of transgenderism. So too, the kind of legitimate requests for recognition and
Starting point is 00:45:55 full citizenship that were made by gay people have now been very effectively wielded as a Marxist political project. And that's like a hell of a drug. So yeah, it's it's a really, to me, it grieves my heart a great deal.
Starting point is 00:46:13 But I also think that, as you say, there are more of us with us than you might think. So my fear is on all fronts, because they're cowards. I don't care what you believe. Cowers all everywhere that just want to be left alone. Yes. And now is not the time for that timid spirit. Right. But it's what usually happens.
Starting point is 00:46:39 people are like that. Yeah. So out of all of history and all of the things you've seen over and over, what's the answer that we should be looking at right now? What should we be doing to exercise that muscle to say that's not true? And I can't sit by. The only thing I can think of is God. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:47:02 Well, amen. I mean, absolutely. There is, to me, this is unfortunately indispensable. and this is like very, also very delicate because it's like it creates this, sort of coalition of people that might, you know, think that I'm sort of the representative of all that's gone wrong and that I'm, you know, we all are. Yeah, well, tell me about it. Right.
Starting point is 00:47:25 But it is certainly true that even before you get into questions of denomination, before you get even really into questions of, you know, which Abrahamic faith, the belief that there is something beyond the material world is indispensable. Solsternetson, the great Soviet dissident, observed this in the Gulag, in the camps, that it was the people who thought there was something above Stalin who could stand up for him. Of course this is true. I mean, G.K. Chesterden says, you know, the Marxists get us exactly backwards. Religion is not the opiate of the masses.
Starting point is 00:48:01 It's the only thing that soberers you up. more powerful than politics. Yeah. And so that is certainly a necessary first step. I also think something else Sultaninson said is, you know, in those days of the camps, we wished that we had just said something when it was easier, when we still, and so the question is, you know, what, what can we do? If we're too afraid to speak up, he says, at least live not by lies, right? at least don't say the lie. And I think that's not too much to ask if you believe there's something beyond
Starting point is 00:48:38 politics in the material world. But if you don't think that, if you don't think that the leftists are basically right, if you don't think that we should all just bend the knee to whatever power or, you know, dominion is kind of most powerful in this world. And that's kind of the option.
Starting point is 00:48:54 Those are the options on the table. So yeah, I absolutely agree with you. If you were, I mean, if this were being done in the name of Christ, I would have just as much problem with it. Of course. And I don't think, you know, I wonder how many people on the left actually believe the stuff they're preaching. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 00:49:17 Yeah. I think the leadership does. Right. But how many of the people, because what new evidence do you have that pedophilia might be a okay lifestyle? Right, right, right. What evidence did you receive that has opened your mind to that? Yes.
Starting point is 00:49:34 And what sort of links this together for you with, like, sort of gay rights? You know, like what he was? I mean, this is where the slippery slope people start to look as if they were always correct, you know, because now suddenly people are making these appalling, appalling arguments. But the interesting thing is, you know, in the 80s, when gay people were sort of starting to make noise about this, it was the conservatives who would say, well, gay people are just, pedophiles, right? Gay people just want to groom your kids, essentially. Now, if you say, don't groom my kids, don't come into my school and try to, the left will say, you're just
Starting point is 00:50:12 against gay rights. You're attacking, well, really? Are those the same thing? Right. And is, right? Is, like, are you suddenly saying that, like, LGBTIQIA rights include the right to take children away from their parents? Because if you say that to people long enough, they'll say, call me a homophope. Call me a bigot. Like, you come for that. If the only other options you come from my kids, call me any name you want, you know. And so this is the, this is a catastrophe for actual freedom loving normal people, including gay people. And the only way out of it is, yeah, courage and, and just constant disavowal. Like, this is really not in any way. This is the worst caricature of everything that was said about us. And it's,
Starting point is 00:50:55 yeah. It parody is impossible. Exactly. Exactly. Your home's title is online. And once a criminal grabs it online and it's really simple to do and forges your signature also really easy to do. It is a race against time to stop him or her before he takes out loans against your home or worse, sells it out from underneath you. So when was the last time you checked on your home's title? I'm thinking because it was mine. I don't know when we did the home title. search when I bought the house, that's no good. Nobody is watching it. Nobody has seen it possibly
Starting point is 00:51:32 for years. And the folks over at home title lock demonstrated to me how online criminals can get you. In minutes, they found the title to my home, forged my signature, stating that I had sold my home to them. And they did it. And they said it was easy. And I have a lot of protection around my home. You need somebody watching this. Home title lock, they do it. And they do it the best of anybody out there. Go to hometitlelock.com right now. Find out if you still actually own your home. You do not want to be a victim of this. Hometitlelock.com. Promocode, Beck. Let me take you to one because we're going to run out of time. I can spend days with, oh my gosh. You lay out, just lay out the five crisis real quick. Yeah. So the first one we've
Starting point is 00:52:20 talked about already, reality. Is there a truth and a falsehood? Doesn't matter who says otherwise, but can we progress by half measures toward truth? Second one is the crisis of the body, which we've been talking about. And in that section, I kind of offer my theory of the case for why this transgender extremism is actually a totally different beast than the American project of civil rights. What is it? Actually, what it is is transhumanism, that what we're really dealing with is an ancient offer, an ancient split between body and soul.
Starting point is 00:52:51 That what you are being told is you are a divine spark. You are not your body. Your body is nothing to say about you. Actually, it's probably a burden. It might be a mistake. And so what you need to do is reconfigure your body until the divine spark within you can float free. And guess what?
Starting point is 00:53:07 It doesn't stop at transgenderism, right? It's actually much, much more than that. It's about using the tools of the state and technology to totally unmake the human person. That's a very, very old problem, and it never works out. And again, with Ray Currack. as well, who is trying, I believe, to recreate his father, bring him back to life. They don't see it.
Starting point is 00:53:36 Many do and think it's inevitable that mankind is over. But they also, I mean, when I asked Ray, what if I don't want to upgrade? Yeah. Because he was talking about, you know, things like Neurilink that is just around the corner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What if I don't want to uplink? Right. And he said to me,
Starting point is 00:53:59 why would anyone not want to? Right. I said, because maybe I like who I am. You know what I mean? I like, I don't, I want to be who I am. Yeah. He said those people will be a danger to themselves and to society. Right.
Starting point is 00:54:17 That's a little frightening. Sure enough. Sure is. And I do think that one reason why it's, important not to get bogged down in the kind of carnival of the politics of it all is, you know, and not to fall into this trap, essentially, of saying, like, the problem is sort of, you know, every gay person ever or whatever, you know, is that we have bigger fish to fry. What you just described, that's what's coming down.
Starting point is 00:54:49 Correct. And so the meaning of life. Yes. What is alive? What does that mean? But the line is going to get slippery. Yes. Because AI and technology, we will be able to do things to our body to correct and fix.
Starting point is 00:55:14 Yeah. And where is the line on that? Right. Well, this is where it actually becomes. urgent to think about ancient philosophy, right? The ancient idea about a human being that I talk about in the book in this section is called hyalomorphism. And it's from the Greek word, hulae meaning stuff matter and morphae meaning form, shape.
Starting point is 00:55:41 In the works of Aristotle, this beautiful idea emerges that what we actually are is a union of those two things. That's what everything is. You've never seen a circle without any, that wasn't made of anything. You can't even picture one. You can picture drawing one an ink in your head, whatever. And just as a circle can't float free of any matter, we can't float free of any matter. There is no kind of abstracted gender identity, divine spark, like kind of code, perfect code, whatever.
Starting point is 00:56:11 There's actually what you are, which is an embodied soul with a telos, a purpose, and that is to exercise your reason in choosing the good, right? I mean, this is one reason why, by the way, human liberty is really actually important, because without that choice, unless you're making the right choice, then you're not actually, there's no you there in the equation at all. It is possible to restore and even enhance the thing called a human being. And we're going to be faced with choices. I can't even predict exactly which choices we're going to be faced with them. But they're going to be big, right?
Starting point is 00:56:51 And it's not going to be enough to simply say, just shut all the AI down, shut all the everything. Like, it's not going to happen. You know, AI, the country, individuals, is it good or is it bad? When it comes to that, the answer is yes. Yes, right. And so the question becomes, what is your North Star? What are you, the rubric you are using to shoot? And unless it is, I am actually, as I am, already a complete entity.
Starting point is 00:57:21 I am a fusion of body and soul. I'm a rational animal. And the tools that I use and the enhancements that I take on are all with that purpose in mind. Unless we're saying that, then we're nothing. Then we're just primitive machines, essentially. And we will be, you know, kind of expunge as a danger to society. So I think that is the real dividing line on this sort of question. If you can say that a human being is an irreducible gift of God.
Starting point is 00:57:51 It doesn't get to be wished out of existence. Then you'll at least have a rubric to go on when you're making these sorts of decisions. That's a hard climb from where we are right now in a quick amount of time. Okay. So those first two, give me the other crisis. The crisis of the body, the crisis of meaning, which is about whether the things that we say and do refer to anything outside of the physical world, everything we've just been talking about, is there something beyond just kind of evolution and means all the way down, or are we actually referring
Starting point is 00:58:30 to something? And then finally, the crisis of religion, if we're referring to something outside of ourselves, outside the world, what? What are we talking about? Can we go back to the crisis? Yes. Of meaning, that was the last one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you start to say, okay, it's all great that there is such a thing as truth. It's great that there's a human being in a human body and these things are real and matter. You have to begin to ask what's the point of it all? What's the purpose here? And there is an answer on the table that is kind of everywhere in the atmosphere.
Starting point is 00:59:08 And it's the answer of Richard Dawkins, whom I sort of mentioned earlier, that actually all that's happening all the time is we're just sort of reproducing and imitating one another. This is where we get our word meme. It now describes this thing that we spread around on the internet. But it begins with this idea that all human life, all human culture, is actually just a kind of game of imitation and replication because evolution explains everything. And what an empty, empty, meaningless world.
Starting point is 00:59:42 Indeed. And the problem with this is that all of the things that we know to exist, like virtue, love, goodness, they are nowhere to be found in that description of the world. And they'll always play a kind of double game or sleight of hand where they'll sort of sneak this in and say, well, you know, isn't it great? Dawkins says, isn't it great that we can make good choices, even though our biological programming is just turning along like a kind of script? And you think, well, what's a good choice? What does that mean? You've all just said that everything is this kind of endless game of imitation and replication.
Starting point is 01:00:18 The ancients also believe that human beings were constantly imitating, mimetic animals. It's called that we're always sort of bouncing off of each other. We learn by imitating one another. But of course, the obvious implication of this is if we're imitating something, there must be an original. There must be something that we are copying or referring back to in all of our efforts. And then you can say this is a better thing than, that, right? This is a more effective
Starting point is 01:00:46 tool than, right? Well, if it wasn't that way, we would have died off a long time ago because we would just spiral down. Right, we would be another kind of blip on the evolutionary. We're not. We're actually evaluating things according to a higher plane. And when
Starting point is 01:01:02 you can start talking about that original that you're copying, then the copy has meaning. Just like when I say words, right, if those words refer to something outside of me, they have meaning. If not, they don't. And those That's the crisis of meaning, is this kind of elimination of that original copy that we are all supposed to be referring to. How many times in history do you see these five things in crisis mode and the civilization survives?
Starting point is 01:01:33 Well, the civilization goes on in some form. Right. Okay. But country or... Yeah, yeah, yeah. I would say it is the rarity. It's the exception, not the rule. But I would say that there are some. I actually think that our revolution is one. I would say that the Protestant Reformation
Starting point is 01:02:06 represents a crisis of many of these things and that your mileage may vary. You have some countries that do very well in some countries that don't out of that. But, you know, I won't lie to you or sugarcoat it. These things come with turmoil. They come with very serious, you know. But it's not impossible to pass through those periods of turmoil and emerge in revival.
Starting point is 01:02:35 And I hate to keep going back to this, but the difference is God, right? The difference is if you believe that you're actually going through something for a purpose. As the founders did, right? They felt that God was essentially not. doing a new thing that they were being called to live out the fundamental truths of nature and nature's God. If you believe that, I think you stand a chance in hell of coming through something new. I will tell you that about five or six years ago, I just came to the conclusion, they are so far ahead of us. You know, catch up is going to be miraculous.
Starting point is 01:03:13 And I'm thinking for solutions and comes to my head. Well, Jesus knows about it. So maybe Jesus is coming back. And it was weird because I actually looked at that as, you know, everybody says they're living in the end days. But, you know, maybe this time. And it gave me a way to jump over the darkness and say, it's all going to be used for his purpose one way or another. No matter what happens in the end, this will be used for good. Yeah.
Starting point is 01:03:51 I have to tell you, this moment of kind of artificial intelligence and transhumanism is the first time that I've ever thought, yeah, I can see a plausible scenario in which that is what the book of Revelation describes. Me too. And I'm so wary of that because of what you. you said that everybody. I know. Yeah. I mean, but I know everybody thought it. The apostles thought it.
Starting point is 01:04:21 Yes. And, you know, his time's not our time. Whatever, I get it. But, you know, they say no man will know the time. Well, you did give us a lot of signs to look for. So you are telling us something about the nature of this thing. At the very least, you're telling us that this thing, which is going to reach its pinnacle in Armageddon. Apocalypse is has this certain character.
Starting point is 01:04:49 And so like it looks to a certain way. And so when you see these things, this is kind of like that spirit is on the move. And I would say that, you know, once you are telling people that there's no difference between what they're doing and what chat GPT is doing, that it's all just a kind of,
Starting point is 01:05:07 you know, outward form of meaning and inside. It's just numbers crunching or it's whatever. That's what these guys think we are, though. Often, yes, indeed. And so then you say, well, okay, so I'm going to upload my consciousness into the cloud or whatever. Whose consciousness? Who, right?
Starting point is 01:05:25 Well, who is the person that actually is having the inner life experience that you're describing? And once you realize that, you understand that actually transhumanism is the end of humanity, right? It is. It's the consummation of, and if you do think that people are going to be forced into a choice between, you know, endless promised pleasure at the expense of their individual humanity and kind of limping on in our fallen but but god ordained you know human forms um that does sort of look like apocalypse that looks like a great split down the middle between the humanity and those that remain human will you know will look so carry on and those that don't will sort of evaporate into nothing anyway this is all i mean
Starting point is 01:06:11 this is all. But I, you know, I've been saying that this, all this technology I don't think is the mark of the beast, but it's, it will, this is the kind of technology that the beast will use. Absolutely.
Starting point is 01:06:31 You know what I mean? Right, right. And the thing that the technology being used, the philosophical premises behind a lot of the technology is satanic. That's certainly true. That's like we're just, machines or whatever. So I know a lot of people who used to be atheists. I think atheism is just so
Starting point is 01:06:50 arrogant. I know there's not. Well, okay. I'd rather just, I understand I'm agnostic. I don't know. I have no idea because I'm agnostic on a lot of stuff. Sure. You know what I mean? Right. But they, a lot of, you know, they're my friends, so they're wired maybe a little bit differently. but, you know, they didn't ever agree with me and many things. But they are recognizing evil for the first time. Yes, of a supernatural kind or not. Yeah, I think so. Okay.
Starting point is 01:07:25 I think so. Because I mean, how do you describe evil? You could say, historically in a petri dish, you could say what they did in the concentration camps, that was evil. That was an act of evil. Right. But there is something else happening. here because it's growing and hypnotizing and it's so cultish. I mean, it's crazy. I do agree with you and I think you almost can't talk about it accurately without using spiritual categories. That's
Starting point is 01:07:59 sort of what's happening. It seems to me is that unless you talk about demonic forces, you're going to be talking in circles. You're going to be kind of using language. that's less accurate. It's like you can kind of develop all these sort of neologisms and terms to talk about what's going on, but they'll be less accurate and less descriptive than simply saying there are demons and there's a statue of one in New York. You know, it's a sort of, it's really weird because it just, I don't know, 10 years ago maybe, I swore off using the word evil. Because I said, you know, I described too many things as evil and right. You know, this action is evil. And I said, evil is a different thing altogether.
Starting point is 01:08:42 And I find myself using it a lot now. And I check myself every time. But there's no other way to describe something that is so destructive to everything. I mean, it's battery acid on everything good and decent. Right. And it's just multiplying like crazy. and showing the results of misery, and yet it continues to grow. And it uses everything good and decent to its purposes.
Starting point is 01:09:16 There's another characteristic of evil. St. Augustine says of evil that it is only ever and can merely be a privation of the good. That there's no like sort of absolute existence to evil because God makes things that exist and God makes good things. And so all evil does is it twists and distorts and takes away and destroys. And if you think about it, there is a character to an absence. Like if you have a wall and then you have a hole in the wall, the hole is like a thing, even though it's not a thing, right? And that to me is a perfect description of a lot of this stuff, the kind of parody of, you know,
Starting point is 01:09:57 American equality that gets now twisted and transformed into equity, all of the ways that the, you know, civil rights movements have been hollowed out and worn as a skin suit by people. who hate this country, who hate one another, who want us to hate one another, just this constant grasping desire to tear other people down. I mean, these are all hallmarks of evil. And you don't actually, one of the great benefits of talk of demonic possession or that sort of language
Starting point is 01:10:27 is that you don't actually have to say this person is irredeemable, you don't have to say this person is, you know, you can say there is a spirit at work, and when you align yourself with that spirit, you do evil. I mean, these things are just, seem quite clear at this point. Just, we've got two minutes left. And so I just have to ask you this personal question.
Starting point is 01:10:47 Yeah. I love your father so much. I love your dad. Me too. And so bright. And I love you just the same. I mean, you're just tremendous. So wonderful to be here.
Starting point is 01:10:58 And I never met your grandfather. Did you meet your grandfather? Oh, sure. Yeah. Puba. What an amazing. Claven. You know what I mean?
Starting point is 01:11:10 There is something that generation, when, my goal, because we've been, we've had abuse in our family, we've had really tough go in the Beck family. And my goal was to just stop
Starting point is 01:11:26 all of that and try to put some good into the family hoping that the next generation, because it takes generation, to change. Yeah. Man, Glenn, when you say that in my heart, it's like, you know, the, I am,
Starting point is 01:11:43 I am the product of somebody doing exactly what you just described. I wouldn't be here. I wouldn't be who I am. I wouldn't have the joy that I have in my life. I wouldn't have the sanity that I have if both of my parents hadn't taken it upon themselves to, by clinging to one another, and eventually, as they found faith, by clinging to God, to provide. plant their foot in that river and change its course. You know, I mean, this is something,
Starting point is 01:12:11 I loved my grandfather to death. I'm not here to knock him in any way, but my dad and his memoir talks about the sort of struggles that he had in his family growing up and also just the kind of, again, the demons that took hold of him in his sort of early youth. And no, I, you know, my dad and I have this joke that were not related. We say Spencer Clayton, no relation because but I would be nothing with that. I mean, I'm very lucky that I'm not just, I don't just love my father. I mean, everybody kind of loves their parents sort of by nature. But I'm friends with my father.
Starting point is 01:12:48 And that's one of the greatest gifts of my life. It's just a beautiful thing. So I, you know, I'm honored to be here with you. And I'm very touched that you have that aspiration because I'm sure you're going to do it great. Thank you for coming. Thank you for having me. Just a reminder. I'd love you to rate and subscribe to the podcast and pass this on to a friend so it can be discovered by other people.

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