The Pete Quiñones Show - Episode 1206: A World on Fire w/ Firas Modad and Ron Dodson

Episode Date: April 27, 2025

157 MinutesPG-13Ron Dodson is Principal Owner & Portfolio Manager of a Texas hedge fund.Firas Modad is a Middle East and geopolitical risk analyst.Pete invited Firas and Ron to join him in examining the state of the world, particularly in light of the tensions the United States is experiencing both domestically and abroad.Firas' SubstackFiras on TwitterRon at the American ReformerRon's SubstackRon on TwitterPete and Thomas777 'At the Movies'Support Pete on His WebsitePete's PatreonPete's SubstackPete's SubscribestarPete's GUMROADPete's VenmoPete's Buy Me a CoffeePete on FacebookPete on TwitterBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-pete-quinones-show--6071361/support.

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So thank you for the support. Head on over to freeman beyond the wall.com forward slash support and do it there. Thank you. I want to welcome everyone back to the Pekino show. All right. Got a little panel going here. Ron Dodson's back. Seems like we haven't talked to each other in two weeks.

How you doing? Yeah, I'm doing great, Pete. Thanks for having me. And for the first time on the show, Firas Modad. How are you doing, sir? Very well. Thank you so much for inviting me. Pleasure to be with you. No problem. No problem. Ron, you've given your rundown on who you are. Firas, why don't you tell everybody a little bit about yourself? Sure. I'm a Middle East and geopolitical risk analyst. I try to help clients understand the

commercial impact of geopolitical change and what it means for them doing business. And this has led me down a bunch of interesting pathways as I've had to learn about religion, culture, human nature, and came to certain conclusions, which maybe we can touch on during this conversation. Sure. All right. Well, wow, there's a lot of places we can go and I have a feeling we're going to be here for a little while. But Ron, what's on your mind? Why don't you start us off? Oh, gosh. Okay. Well, I just have to say I get to be guests on some really cool podcasts, but I am super excited about this one. The interview that Ferris did, oh, a month, six weeks ago that made the rounds on YouTube was utterly fantastic in a long form deal. So I found his thought, cogent and willing to step outside of what you normally hear in, you know, I. I am a what amounts to a risk our portfolio manager. I have a hedge fund and a family office. And so we traffic in a lot of the same kind of ideas as assessing geopolitical risk.

But I was very impressed at his ability to not just stay in that very narrowly defined lane, like when you read the guys from Goldman or whatever. And those are all smart people. But I was very impressed. So I'm excited about this. I've got a piece coming out in Claremont's American mind about the realist. I don't know when this will drop. When this stream will drop.

Tomorrow. Okay. So it should release on Monday or Tuesday in the American mind. And I'm going to be making the realest case against attacking Iran. and I'm so my what's on my mind is is realism making a comeback. I was very encouraged to see Michael Anton, another Claremont guy, get placed on the technical side of the negotiations with Iran. He comes from a Straussian, but a realist bent on the Straussian school.

So I'm, I'm very interested to hear what, Fedoros has to say about along those lines and just, shoot, we've got a lot to tell. This can go a million different directions. I love what he had to say about his Christian faith. And that's very important thing to me. So there's a lot of stuff to talk about today. That's a very, very kind introduction, Ron. I really appreciate it. Thank you. on Iran, I think what's happening now is that the Islamic revolution has failed and there is no need to end it militarily because the consequences of that are going to be quite severe.

So let's sort of unpack that a little bit. The whole project of Khomeini and Khomeini, the leaders of the Islamic revolution, was to export that revolution to the rest of the Middle East. East. And Khomeini, over the last 30 years, 40 years of his reign has had a great amount of success in that, as president and then as supreme leader. He helped establish and set up Hasballah and strengthened it quite significantly. The American invasion of Iraq paved the way for Iran to expand into Iraq itself, and the civil war in Syria gave the Iranians a very important say in that country. And then after 7 October,

and the subsequent wars with Israel, this all came crashing down. Hezbollah was decapitated and severely weakened. It underperformed militarily very badly, in part because it didn't listen to its own military command. The military command of Hezbollah had said, don't go into a war of attrition with Israel. If you're going to go into a war, throw it all in, go quite extreme from the outset and then try to get a ceasefire. Instead, Hezbollah played this cat and mouse game with Israel along the border and a year later, it was more or less defeated. And it signed a ceasefire that is indistinguishable from surrender. Ferris, let me ask you a quick question.

Let me ask you a quick question on this. Do you see the Iranian, what amounts to, in Western terms, Iranian Trotsky, you know, a Trotsky type of, of, of, of missionizing what their project is. Do you see it as chiefly a Persian project or a Shia project? Both. And I think that the two are inseparable. The distinguishing feature of Iran was that it tried to make itself into a pan-Islamic power. So the emphasis on opposition to the United States and Israel,

which went against the Shah's policy of alliance with the U.S. and Israel, was partly intended to position Iran as a pan-Islamist power rather than a Shia-only power. And so if you look at Khomeini, he was highly influenced by Sayyat-Kutub. Sayyat Kutub is one of the main ideologues of the Muslim Brotherhood, and he's the guy who really introduced the violent element into brotherhood thinking

with his declaration that the entirety of Muslim society was now de facto apostate. hence the importance to re-Islamize societies and bring and through that re-Islamization process raise the importance of Muslims globally and make them into a global geopolitical player as opposed to a theater for the competition of other great powers which had been the case starting with the decline of the Ottoman Empire in the late 1700s. So this was a reaction to their own decline. They looked at themselves, said, okay, clearly we're not practicing Islam correctly. Otherwise, God would be with us and would not be

allowing us to get humiliated. The answer is to reform ourselves. And Khomeini was influenced by this idea, hence the importance of imposing Islam and society. So you have this revolutionary project and this missionary export of Islam to the rest of the world, and so particularly the export of militant Islam to already Muslim societies, rather, the export of militant Islam to already Muslim societies, with the aim of strengthening them in a geopolitical framework. With the fall of, with the defeat of Hezbollah, things were still acceptable, but with a fall of Syria, that meant that the Islamic Revolution had really been defeated in its project of confronting Israel. Now the challenge is that if they make a deal with the Americans, it's a double humiliation

because the whole idea of the Islamic Revolution was to confront America and Israel. So if you've lost the war against Israel and you're making deals with the Americans, why is there a revolution and why is there a revolutionary regime that is quite burdensome on the Iranians themselves, and that's had some important economic successes, but people are suffering because of the inflation and this is what they're focusing on, the effect of sanctions and geopolitical weakness on the currency and how that affects day-to-day life. Because the average man on the street is, at the end of the day, prioritizing his family first, and his own standard of living.

So this is the challenge facing Iran. If they make a deal, it discredits them. If they don't make a deal, it could break them because of inflation and unrest and because of a potential military strike. So in a way, long... Can I interrupt you for a second? It seems like if the more,

I'm using this term very lucid secular, would be pushing back against the religious, and they get in bed with the U. It seems like they would have to get in bed with a foreign, possibly with a foreign power in order to defeat these, to defeat the radicals. Does that mean they become just another proxy of the West, or the United States?

Look, the big threat for the Iranians now is the Turks and the Pakistanis. So this is where I wanted to this is where I, exactly where I wanted to go on this was the, uh, the, I don't know if you saw a foreign, was it the foreign minister of Pakistan just yesterday. Very revealing in an interview said, hey, look, we've been doing all this stuff for the US. Obviously through USAID, that gets cut off. And now they're like, well, I guess those aren't our bosses anymore. We're going to go, uh, I'll see if I can find the clip, put it in the show notes. but it was quite revealing. It wasn't your typical, you know, slide of hand kind of talk.

You had the same with the Saudis several years ago. When I had the Ubeah, the foreign minister at the time, said, look, we supported the jihadis in Afghanistan together, and we were fully partners in the export of jihad because this is what the Americas wanted us to do. And now you're criticizing us for wanting to change. So what do you see as the, What's the chief dynamic between Erdogan and Iran right now?

How is it, does Erdogan still have a view of having this basically, you know, visions of former Ataturk grander? What do you, what do you see going on there? Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th, because the Liddle-Newbridge warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite LIDLL items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Liddle New Bridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl,

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And he slowly dismantles the military deep state. and these secularizes Turkey de facto, even if not the Jule. He hasn't been able to reinvent a political system in the same way that Khomeini was and to create a fully new Islamic constitution. But his vision... Well, I was just going to say, so is it very... Are they on similar track with Egypt, although Egypt seems very dependent upon the U.S. form? an aide.

No. Egypt has a big fight against the Muslim Brotherhood, whereas Erdogan is the region's main sponsor of the Muslim Brotherhood in partnership with Qatar. I didn't realize the Muslim Brotherhood is weakening in Egypt. It's

not that it's weakening. It's that they 've locked everybody up who dares think and express views supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood. It's just that they've re-establish the totalitarian police state that tolerates absolutely no dissent and no disagreement. But for the Turks, their project is to become the leading state of the Muslim world

and to lead the Muslims of Central Asia, the Caucasus, the Balkans, the Middle East, and Africa in order to become a global power. the big problem that Turkey faces is an economic one. Their current account deficit is constantly too big. With Iran being weakened and the U.S. looking to the possibility of leaving the region, there is a solution which is for the Turks to annex Kerkuk and northern Syria, Kerkuk in Iraq and northern Syria. Because already Iraqi KRG, the Iraqi Kurdistan region is a Turkish dependency.

more or less. And so by controlling the energy resources of Kerkuk and the Turks have the technical know-how to develop that oil and expand its production very dramatically, the Turks would no longer be reliant on Iran and Russia for energy,

which is where they currently are. And they would plug their current account deficit and they'd be able to stabilize their economy. They're an agricultural power. Is Russia getting pushed out? Russia made a deal to get rid of Assad. That's my read of the situation.

My read of the situation is that there was a Russian-Turkish-Israeli deal to get rid of Assad and figure out some kind of new delineation post-Assad. The precise cultures of that are not clear yet. Are they going to keep that deep water port on the med is my question? It's a very vulnerable location right now, given how Syria has changed. And yet, despite the intensity of Russian Air Force strikes against the Syrian opposition, the jihadis who are now ruling Syria, they haven't touched the Russians. And the only explanation is that the Turks said, don't you dare?

Which is why I'm of the view that there was a deal. Remember, Turkey and Russia are partnering in Africa. They're working together to kick out the French and to kick out the Americans and to sort of generally expand that into their sphere of influence. Right. Which puts them fight with Turkey. Well, and this puts them in, this puts them butt up against the Chinese expansionary moves in Africa as well, which is one of the areas I wanted to talk about today. So since we're, because I find that, I find where American interests are exactly in that is hard for me to know. You know, we used to be a little more involved, not me personally.

My, let's call it expertise is more over in the Pacific Rim. but in in africa where exactly the levers are currently uh because i do see russia wanting to be involved there i know turkey is has moved on the bases on the on the east on the eastern side uh to try to exert influence but where they're coming up against you know uh what china's trying to do and get done look i don't know enough about africa to see say. But what I do know is that the area where the Turks and the Russians are cooperating is the sort of Sahel region and is the Sahara region. So they're not yet in a situation where they're directly butting heads with the Chinese because a lot of the Chinese interests

are in the Congo or in South Africa are basically further south in the Africa. Well, yeah, where the right, they're looking for the minerals are. Or the war the minerals. Exactly, exactly. So so far there isn't a conflict there so far. But I think it's worth recalling that China and Russia are natural rivals. And it's only extremist liberalism with its obsession with both countries that drove them together into an alliance. going against any sort of common sense, which would have always said,

don't let the biggest industrial powerhouse enter into a full alliance with the biggest natural resource powerhouse. Because the consequences of that kind of alliance dominating the Eurasian landmass are going to be extreme for a maritime power like the United States. this is elementary except that everybody from Clinton through Biden completely didn't see it that way

first they opened the door to China and they kept on harassing Russia in areas where I mean if you remember the Balkan conflict and the conflict over Bosnia Hezbollah every few months when one of their big leaders gets killed by Israel they then revealed that this guy was actually a commander in Bosnia as well and that he was fighting in Bosnia against the Russians

with the US Air Force overhead. So the way that the United States has sort of used radical Islam extremely cynically has been very destructive while at the same time backing Israel to the hilt and opening the doors to migration. This is just suicidal policymaking. This is just stupid. And it's not even stupid.

It's malicious because there comes a point where you stop thinking that these are mistakes and you start assuming that these guys are genuinely doing something destructive because they believe it benefits them and it enhances their power against everybody else, particularly their own citizens. So this is where we are right now.

And, you know, striking Iran means that Turkey becomes stronger, means that Pakistan becomes stronger, means that China becomes stronger. And I don't see how that's in the West's interests. Yeah, I don't either. I make the point, I have a piece coming out next week. trying to make the realist point against striking Iran. And I would go so far as, you know, I think Mad tends to work. So I would, I would almost go as far as, you know, John Mearsheimer makes the argument,

I think pretty cogently that that you need a three-legged stool for long-term stability in that area in that part of the world. But I have, you know, do I think it's going to happen? Yeah. Is this just that? Is this just leftover Cold War thinking? Because when you look at Russia becoming, you know, allied with China, it almost seems like, okay, well, the one thing they didn't want is Russia to become allied with Europe. And especially Germany.

That's the one thing they don't want. They don't want Russia and Germany to be allies. So if they're still stuck in Cold War thinking and they're still fighting the Cold War, essentially, and the reason they want to go after a race, is, well, because, you know, the ties to Russia. It just seems like this is just antiquated thinking. There's, you have a bunch of people there who are still fighting a war that ended 40 years ago. And they don't see what the bigger picture is when you have all this threat,

where everything should be concentrated in the Pacific right now. Ready for huge savings? Well, mark your calendars from November 28 to 30th because the Liddle Newbridge Warehouse sale is back. We're talking thousands of your favourite Lidl items all reduced to clear. From home essentials to seasonal must-habs, when the doors open, the deals go fast. Come see for yourself. The Lidl Newbridge Warehouse Sale, 28th to 30th of November. Lidl, more to value.

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Search Trump-Ireland gift vouchers. Trump on Dunebiog, Kush Farage. I think there is an element of that. The obsession of Iran is driven by Iran's own obsession with Israel. And there is something that has to be said about Iran, which is that it's the only country in the world where in the constitution it says, we must continue the jihad until the word of Allah

governs all of the world. And that sets up an institution to pursue that jihad. And that's the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps. So Iran is unusual in that respect. I mean, we know that jihad is mandatory for Muslims against unbelievers. We know that that is sort of part and parcel of Islam. But it's the only Muslim state that actually codifies it and sets up an institution to do so,

and that institution gets to decide its own funding and to be prioritized above all others. So there is something exceptional about Iran. But at the same time, I suspect that if Iran was obsessed with Myanmar rather than with Israel, there would be a lot less attention given to Iran. Yeah. I tend to agree with you. Yeah.

Yeah. U.S. policymakers are quite blinkered. In one sense, they're blinkered in their obsession with Russia, even though Putin is within the Russian spectrum, a liberal-leaning leader. He's not one of the hardliners by any means. And yet they're absolutely obsessed with weakening Russia and pursuing Russian influence everywhere.

And so they go crazy in support of Azerbaijan against Armenia. Even when there is a genuine ethnic cleansing of the Armenians in areas that have always been Armenian. Yeah. Yeah, it's terrible. And so they completely decide to, American policymakers decide to completely ignore that. They commemorate the Armenian genocide of 100 years ago,

but the ongoing ethnic cleansing of Armenians, they completely ignore. Okay, that seems stupid. With Iran, yes, it's a dangerous regime that's been exporting instability, but it's also a reaction to the fact that Israel is an expungentist state that is incapable of living in peace with the Palestinians, and the Palestinians are incapable of living in peace with the Jews. so there is this reality to how messed up and interlocked this conflict is

and this was one of the reasons that brought me to Christianity you can't you can't look at this conflict long enough and not see the role of religion in it and you can't look at the pointy-headed nerds that insist that there is going to be a two-state solution and that solves any everything and ignore that actually because of the way that religious Zionism works and the way that Islam works, it's impossible for there to be a two-state solution. The contested areas are the holiest areas. Hebron, where Abraham and the patriarchs are buried, Jerusalem, the city that

started it all, the West Bank, which is full of a million and one holy places to the Jews and to the Muslims and to the Christians. And so saying that no, you're just going to draw a line and hand it over to your religious enemies is impossible. So we look at these conflicts with a very incorrect, unrealistic, unrealistic, tragedy-free lens that's very materialistic and says, you're just going to divide the land, you know, give them the holy parts of Jerusalem, and then we'll call a new area Jerusalem, and that would be a way to get a two-state solution, which is what Barak sort of proposed to Arafat

in the Y River negotiations. Are you crazy? I mean, really? The only solution to this is religious conversion. So I thought I'd at least start with myself. This is the reality of the conflict in the Middle East. And appreciating that reality should inform our thinking about everything else. And it should make us thank God that there's a Russian leader who wants to at least in public be Christian and endorse Christianity and have good relations. with Catholicism and have good relations with the West in general, rather than driving him into the arms of godless Chinese who, as party policy, wish nothing but harm upon the West.

Yes. Well, let me bring up the controversial thing. There are a lot of people who have infiltrated the United States government who have centuries-old ethnic animosities towards Russia. Yep. I mean, when you look at their backgrounds, I think one time I had counted like 12 of them from what were with in a, their families were within a 10-mile radius of LeVov.

Okay, so these people are still upset about Kemmelnitsky from 1652, and they want to destroy Russia. I mean, how do we get past this? I think we get past this by being honest with ourselves in the following sense. And I really want to choose my words carefully. Different religious groups have different priorities, different interests, different identities. Liberalism pretends that there is no problem with every important envoy to the Middle East being Jewish.

When practical experience suggests that this is going to bias opinions in a particular way, in the same way that if you sent a Muslim Brotherhood member to be your envoy to the Middle East. So liberalism tries to paper over the fact that there are divisions in worldview. and that your ancestry and current beliefs are both important to how you think. You're not raised in a blank slate. You're not raised in a desert.

You're raised in a context, in a particular way of thinking. And this is important. And the Jewish people have a very important historic memory. And so the fact that you have this old hatred that is still alive in some, and it's not a general thing, it's not that every single Jew is this way. That's not the point, and that would be a silly argument. But it is the case that if you are particularly interested in this issue, and you are drawn to it to the extent that you want to join the Foreign Service

and participate in decision-making, you are probably motivated. It's a self-selecting issue. It is a self-selecting issue. It's a self-selecting issue. And so if that happens and you are motivated in this way, then there should be a degree of caution. But liberalism is a self-selecting. essentially a system without immune system, is a system without an immune system, because of the

assumptions that it makes that everybody comes in with a complete blank slate. And you see this across the board. In the United Kingdom and the home office, there's a Muslim network that has hundreds and hundreds of members. Given the importance of immigration, it is absurd that this kind of thing is allowed. It's an absurdity. Because you know what the motivations are going to be. The problem has been that in a way we're beginning to be, or Westerners are beginning to be aware that Islam is a problem.

But given the historic legacy of Christian Jewish relations, particularly in the West, it's impossible to say that, look, if somebody is Jewish and very supportive of Israel, you want to take their contributions to Middle East policy with a grain of salt. Not because they don't know, not because they're evil, not because they're stupid, but because they have a stake in this issue and a deeply personal one. And maybe they're right. And maybe what they're saying is absolutely correct. but there must be at least some discussion of the topic

and yet any kind of discussion that in the same way that Muslims globally will support Muslims in Palestine and therefore you see that Jews globally support Jews in Israel any kind of equality that comes not from hatred or from moral equivalence but from a healthy respect for human nature

is seen as hatred or hostility or antagonism or something or the other. I say this about myself. I'm a naturalized British subject. I know I'm Lebanese. I'm not under any illusions about who I am. But I took an oath and I try to respect it. And I want to be loyal to the monarchy in this country because that's the oath that I took. At the same time, if there was a conflict between the Crown and the Catholic Church,

I accept that I will be torn over this. I project the same onto others, not out of malice, but out of an understanding of human nature. And I think we should be able to say this, and I think we should be able to discuss this maturely. and if there is a self-selection process that is happening that is informing policy on Russia and on the Middle East in a way that is driving together an Islamic Russian-Chinese alliance we should A say this and be humble enough to understand that a united Eurasia is too large of a military and political and economic

challenge and is therefore a threat to the West. And so any policies that delivers that should be analyzed correctly, including what's driving it, and should be countered with a policy that says, no, no, let's see which of these countries we can bring on side through some realism, through some humility, to avoid a situation where the West is isolated. in a fight against the United Eurasia. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area

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Well, in Ferris, this begs the question, the next domino to fall, obviously, would be India. It would be, if that alliance were allowed to really solidify between a United Eurasia, then India would, it would be in their interest to participate in that. And so I think that is one of the reasons you'll see, I think the U.S., the decision makers in the U.S. are seeing this flash, you know, this oncoming train flashing in their dreams and are doing everything they can at a late stage to try to get Curry, Indian favor, pun intended, sorry. I didn't want to laugh, but that was amazing.

I had to. I had to. I didn't want to laugh, but I was well played. Very well played, sir. Thank you. So, anyway, so I think that explains part of, you know, the Pakistan. The Pakistan, I see it a bit differently. Okay, let's hear it differently.

I think that what China is trying to do is to prepare for a day where it can defeat India, rather resounding. Sure. and Pakistan's hatred of India is quite legendary and it goes it's a sort of reciprocated you know not to pick aside here I personally would always pick monotheists over pagans that's a point of principle as far as I'm concerned but that's a different conversation but I think that India is a bit of its own island and will want to play its own game, in part because the reawakening of Indian national pride as part of the Hindutva and as part of the...

Hindu nationalism. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Isn't going to allow them to be a passenger in a geopolitical context. they want to be their own player. There is a discussion to be had as to how seriously India can actually expect to be a player. I find that I tend to be much more negative on India than others.

I don't think that it has the kind of culture of excellence that has begun to develop in China that's sort of deepened really in China that allows them to be the same kind of contender as China is. And I partly attribute that to the chaos of Indian religion, which there is no Indian religion. There are Indian religions that sort of all get labeled as Hinduism. But Hinduism isn't one thing. It's sort of dozens and dozens of different things and different branches that sort of all go in all kinds of different directions.

and the internal animosities within Indians, between Indians over caste, and this is a country that has one of the largest Muslim populations in the world, something like 200, 250 million Muslims. So its ability to pull itself together in a unified way and act in a concerted manner in the same way that China can, okay, accepting that different CCP provincial branches do their own things, while pretending to obey the central government, et cetera, et cetera,

fair enough. But in India, the level of chaos is much, much greater. And I think that that comes with a geopolitical cost in their ability to execute on the projects that they commit themselves to. Okay.

Do you think that part of the lack of perspective in the West to these issues in India, is partially due to the fact that most Westerners, their sole interaction with Indians is with Brahmin, because that's mostly who... I think that's a big part of it. I think Westerners aren't aware that most of the Indians that they're dealing with are from the highest echelons of Indian society,

and that underneath that there is an awful mess. Yeah, I interviewed an Indian gentleman who was after he graduated in India, he was educated in Britain. His name is Giant Bandari. And he basically said, the West has not met the average Indian yet. Quite, quite, yes. If you go to the Gulf, you encounter, a very different kind of lowercase Indian. And you sort of see a much bigger Gulf, pun intended,

between the Indians in the West and the rest of India. When you meet Indians from impoverished backgrounds, I mean, poverty has an effect on everyone everywhere, fair enough. but I don't think people appreciate exactly what rural India is and where it is in terms of its development and how far it has to go. And I think that it's impolite to talk about religion and it's impolite to talk about religion affecting culture and even more so about religion affecting behavior. yet in my experience as an analyst, I found that this is the single most important factor in understanding how cultures behave and how cultures are different.

So I think that betting on India to counter China is a bit of an unwise bet and that you're better off working with the likes of Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines. South Korea, Japan, South Korea with all of its problems, including a big chunk of, you know, of the demographic cliff, that's for sure. And the demographic collapse, obviously. So I'm not a, you know, India superpower 2020 kind of guy. I just, yeah, you just hear a lot of it. I think due to the, to Indian influence in the, uh,

you know, the, those who have immigrated here tend to, the ones who have done well, have tried to make their voices heard. And there are some, there's some democratic power. You know, maybe I'm sensitive to it because in DFW is probably, I think, is the largest South Asian concentration in North America. So where I am in Dallas. and it's they make their voices very well

and I get along with everybody, I get along with anybody. It's not that. It's just, you know, a whole different set of presuppositions. You mentioned the whole monotheist versus pagan thing. That becomes very evident if you're trying to do business. Very evident.

Yes. It's a joke in the U.S., but it's a joke that's true about the Patel. hotel cartel, you know, north of 40% of all extended stay hotels in the United States are owned by ethnic Indians. And it's a pretty interesting phenomena that has gone kind of unnoticed. Air grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area. Your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans.

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Infoise skyd a slash speeds Look this is something that the West is beginning to wake up to As someone from the Middle East You automatically know that you're going to do people who are from your community a favor wherever you can because the other communities are a doing the same way and be out

to get you and this is deeply ingrained in the Middle Eastern mindset and this is one of the reasons for the backwardness of the Middle East the fact that this kind of diversity prevents the emergence of a high trust society High trust comes from deeply shared interests and deeply shared values. And the values precede the interests, because unless you look at the world in a similar way, you're not going to identify interests in a similar way. So as the West diversifies its demographics, it's realizing that actually the rest of the world doesn't really operate this way.

and you're seeing it right now. I mean, now in London there are protests by Indians outside of the Pakistani High Commission and vice versa because of an incident in India-Pakistan. And there's a real fear as to how much this is going to spill over into the streets in places like Leicester that are highly mixed between Hindu and Muslim and Pakistani Muslim. So this idea that you're going to treat everyone equally, regardless of their blood relation to you, is simply stupid. But Westerners have been sort of programmed as one of the consequences of the Second World War

and the atrocities of the Second World War, that you're not meant to think of ethnic kin first. But that is a very strange and destructive exception. You're supposed, you're biologically wired to think of your own people first. The Christian revolution is in part based on the idea that you're not going to be tribal because the Catholic Church banned cousin marriages in order to end tribes and tribalism. Several hundred years later, this sort of created the society that we know today. But the rest of the world doesn't operate this way.

The rest of the world mostly operates on marrying your cousin, for marrying someone that your family knows very well and trusts very well. Ferris, I think this is something that's rarely appreciated in American philosophical Christian intellectual circles. And that is because everybody has a hard time holding two things in tension, much less three. You know, we all are looking for that simplistic heuristic that's going to explain everything, right? And real life is just not like that. This is why we believe in the Holy Trinity. That's right.

The Holy Trinity is meant to confuse your mind and to make it clear to you that there is something that is transcendent in a way that you will never comprehend. And that the truth is not accessible to you in its fullness. and therefore you must constantly strive for it and try to meditate on it in order to be able to get any kind of understanding of the world. That's right. Whereas the... Yeah, anyway, I could go on about this for a while. Well, no. What I was just saying is that it is true that

the Christian West has shown that ordered liberty, not radical licentiousness, but ordered liberty is a blessing and will unlock incredible wealth and productivity and blessing on people. But on the, and yet outgroup, but that can't metastasize into radical outgroup preferencing, which is what you're saying and let's ever. But on the other hand, you go the other direction and radical, radical in-group preferencing strikes against ordered liberty. And so this this intellectual philosophical battle,

which Christianity is supposed to make you struggle with. It's supposed to make the wise ruler hold these things in tension. Instead, we see this pendulum that just goes back and forth. And it's a real, you know, I hope that it doesn't take radical suffering. in order to get this ideal ideal back. I question whether that's the actual case. But we need to embrace the biblical idea of wisdom and holding these things in tension. Again, family, state, and church are three legs of a stool.

and due to, you know, the Nick Land talks about the institutional jealousy between these three, that, you know, you either see fascism, radical fascism, which prioritizes the state above all. I'm not talking about guys who have a strong nationalistic view. I'm talking about, you know, the state above all, kind of a hyper-Musilini idea. Or you see ecclesiocentrism to where the church is, is. so superseding over everything else that there's no place. It even pushes out the family. Or you see these weird radical in-group tribalist things.

And the truth is you've got to have all three. And that is just very, very difficult for in a democratic society for people to get their arms around because it doesn't sell. It's just very, very hard. Let me go a step further. Yeah. let's hear it. Radical tribalism is the default setting. If you accept that you are genetically 98% chimpanzee,

what you see there is radical tribalism. If you look at all other cultures in the world, from the case system to the way that nepotism works in Korea and China, to the way that family, conglomerates are the norm in Japan, to the way, et cetera, et cetera, you see that the default setting of humanity is tribalism. And you see that this is the starting point for all of us. And you see in Christianity when Christ emphasizes that if you have a disagreement with your brother,

go and fix it before you go and pray, well, the reason that example is used is because that's the default setting. tribalism and caring for your brother and cousin first is the default setting. In Lebanon, we say, me and my brother against my cousin and me and me and my cousin against any strangers. So that's the initial wiring that you have. The state in most parts of the world is monarchy. The default government system is monarchy, which is the elevation of one family as the leading family of all of the other. others. And that always comes with its own religion and religious tradition that says that

ties worship of ancestors to well-being and sacrificing for the ancestors to keep us safe and so on and so forth. These are the default settings of humanity. When you understand the default settings, the extent to which Christianity is revolutionary becomes slightly easier to perceive because God is no longer the God of a single people. He is the God of the Jews and the Gentiles, all of them. And because conversion is no longer dependent on blood, but is available to all of the world,

hence the miracle of Pentecost. A distributed spirit, yes. And the king is no longer just the head of his own family. He, according to the Old Testament, has to write the law himself, to copy the law of God himself and meditate on it all the day long and think that it is God's law that he is there to implement. and the antithesis of tyranny is the implementation of God's law, which is justice for all, on an equal footing. So when you understand the default setting of the world, you understand that every single aspect of Christianity is revolutionary.

But Westerners have been so Christian for so long that they view that extreme revolutionary idea as the default setting. and because they no longer practice Christianity and read the Old Testament and ask themselves, why did we transition from the angry God of Genesis and Exodus to the merciful God of Christ? And don't try to see that evolution and how God shaped us. They assume that the sermon of the Mount is the default setting of humanity. Fair. So what practicing religion makes you dumber is what I'm saying to you. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. That's really good. That's great stuff. Well, when I think, let me go ahead, Peter. What I think happens is that people who are brought up in the Christian West now look and see what the Christian West has become. and what you just said about it being revolutionary, they consider that to be subversive. They consider that to be the reason why all of this,

why the West has fallen is because Christians are pussies. Christians won't fight. Christians allowed this to happen, and it's all because, you know, hey, it's open borders. And, you know, if you have a natural law, that law applies to everyone. So if everyone has the right to travel without being, you know, without being, having violence put upon them, well, then that law, that law applies to everyone and why do borders exist? If Pentecost, if Pentecost brought the whole world together, then why?

Then I guess the Tower of Babel was reversed. And now there's no, everyone should be speaking the same language and everyone should be together. And then Christianity is the enemy because Christianity, the revolutionary spirit that allowed this to happen. Airgrid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid, is powering up the northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area, and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November.

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but you're also seeing a huge increase in conversions to Christianity and especially to Catholicism, with people realizing that really, if you don't want to degenerate into barbaric stathism, and a barbaric form of racism as opposed to the natural human racism that says, I prefer people who are like me to strangers, because that's my default human setting. For some, there is an appeal in that. But for those of us who want order and to balance order and liberty,

rather than worship order for its own sake, then the answer is Christian thought. The answer is serious Christianity that contends with the difficulties of the Old Testament and understands God's wisdom in the severity of the Old Testament and that embraces the charity and love and forgiveness, their say of the New Testament, but within their proper bounds, you forgive a killer after he's executed or when he's on his way to execution because you balance forgiveness and justice.

You forgive to not turn yourself into a hateful rage-driven demon. That's why you forgive. You don't forgive to say, well, I'm happy that my son's killer is walking free. That's just demented. That's another kind of demonic lethargy and demonic complacency that says, well, I'm indifferent to justice. I'm indifferent to love. I'm indifferent to the fate of my children. And therefore, I choose to just forgive and forget. You can forgive without forgetting while demanding justice.

And I think that is the correct balance. You don't let your tragedy turn you bestial. You demand justice because doing justice is serving God. And you balance the two together so that you can recover from tragedy and continue to serve God. and I think fundamentally if I wanted to characterize the biggest problems of the West the one

that I see most is lack of balance, lack of temperance. If you're free, you're too free. And if you want order, you worship the state. Neither of those is a correct answer. This is why

what Ron was saying about balance, about balancing family, church, nation and loving all three of them are and learning how to serve all three of them and to give each of them as it's due is really the only way to go about it Ron is absolutely right you're seeing the rise of a pagan Nietzscheism I think as a reaction in some of this it's in, you know, the left and right. It's a reaction.

It's a reaction to Jewish power. That's exactly what it is. If you ask them, they will tell you. They will say, I am not going to worship this Jew who was so weak that he allowed himself to be killed when Jewish power is destroying what my ancestors built. Yeah. Although covenantally, I think the intelligent, I mean, this is, you know, I know this is going out, but modern Judaism and covenantal Old Testament temple worship are two

different things. And I can still have respect for, you know, the Jewish fellow who I interact with and so on and so forth, and still have the opinion that Old Testament temple worship, the Old Testament, Tabernacle and Temple Caltes, and modern rabbinical Judaism are just two different things. They don't see it that way, but I think the Christian, I know, Pete and I were just on a stream together about dispensationalism, and dispensationalism has kind of put a wrench in this understanding. But Christian understanding historically is that, look, we understand that this is this modern thing is a reaction to Jesus basically making the world believe in the Hebrew God, that he was the Messiah. He proved himself as the Messiah because he fulfilled all this stuff, not just in the resurrection,

but the world believes in Yahweh. And so, anyway, but that's a very difficult conversation to have because you get all this social pressure and suddenly you're anti-some, you know, and that's unfortunate because my argument always back is, is, hey, look, I can be a gentleman here and we can disagree. I know you're not a, you're not a Christian. You don't believe Jesus is a Messiah. We can have a, we can have an adult conversation about this, but you tend to get shut down pretty quick. And I think the way forward, the way forward on all these issues is if we could be just a little more honest about these things.

The same way. Yeah, go ahead. I think what you need is an adult relationship, not an adult conversation. And I'll explain what I mean by this. When you're in the Middle East, a lot of people pride themselves on having friendships across religions and across different sects. And having grown up with these kinds of friendships, it is an objectively good thing, and these are real friends.

But every time there's a war in Lebanon, each community goes to its own villages. Now, some of these villages are mixed, but when there's a conflict, each side stays on its own side of the village. None of them are so mixed that they would be sort of, the neighborhoods would be fully intermixed. There is this neighborhood for that sect and this neighborhood is for that sect. And it stays this way. Why is this a more adult relationship? Not that I want the West to become Middle Eastern, although it seems that Western leaders want the West to become Middle Eastern. That's a terrible thing. Yeah, that's good at say. But this is an adult relationship because what people understand is that in times of crisis, you're going to be first and foremost

loyal to your own. That doesn't preclude the possibility of heroic friendship. That is, you go out of your way to save someone who is out of your own community and to do things that are good for someone out of your own community. That doesn't preclude that possibility, nor does it make it less good. It is objectively good. However, you are aware, constantly of the fact that their relationships may turn sour at a communal level, and in which case you will follow your own group and your friends will follow their own, and that might lead to all kinds of different tragedies. So it's not just about adult conversations, it's also about adult relationships,

and part of these adult relationships is the recognition of the different as different. because again, it's important to emphasize the rest of the world recognizes this. Similar to recognizing men and women are different. Exactly, exactly. And we don't understand that distinction. And perhaps the good news is that now that we're sort of backing away from the men and women are the same nonsense, we are going to explore differences in a more adult. way and in a more mature way and in a more realistic way.

My concern always is that we as humans are extremists by nature, especially in a group. And that therefore, rather than realizing that we're different and figuring out a way to navigate differences constructively, we then decide that, okay, here we go. and it turns into more extreme elements. And I think that people constantly warning against the rise of extremism and calling any kind of recognition of difference extremism are really contributing to the possibility

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Brought to you by Insurance Ireland. Yeah. the that the the the denial of the monster in the room gives room gives the very uh lessening of defenses in order to protect yourself from it yeah yeah so absolutely you mentioned going back a little ways you mentioned uh Serbia what do you think of the uh you know people have noticed the Romanian shenanigans in their election. What do you think of the same thing going on in Bosnia? I haven't been following that to tell you the truth. I haven't been following that, but I've seen clearly that the EU has decided to drop the fig leaf of respect for popular will

and popular sovereignty. Right. And I think that is a, it is kind of them to be more honest, And I hope that everybody else can be more honest as well. Because if we're discarding the idea that there is respect for the popular will and there is respect for what the public wants, then there is going to be a reckoning. And they can no longer pretend. Yeah. They can no longer pretend to sort of have popular support. They are ruling in a manner that is contrary to the interests of the public.

and they are increasingly abrasive and unashamed in doing so. And the danger is that the more they continue down this path and they've shown their willingness to crack down on dissent and they've shown that they can try to ban Marine Le Pen from running from elections and they've been trying to overthrow Viktor Orban for a decade now, the more likely it is that there's going to be conflict around this in a way that they don't predict at the street level. And that is especially the case with the import of enormous numbers of people

from hostile cultures who don't understand what the West is and have no interest in it. Right. So they're pushing towards They keep saying that any kind of opposition to them is extremist far right And in doing so, they are in a way animating the possibility of the rise of genuine far right.

Yeah. All these characters between AFD and And the Bosnian fellow and the Romanian fellow, these do not seem like far-right figures. They seem like pop, they seem like right-leaning populists. They're not anti-liberal. They're not anti-liberal, right? Right, Fierrez, you'd say that? No, no, no.

I wouldn't call somebody like Nigel Farage anti-liberal. Most of Marine Le Pen's assumptions are liberal. So I don't see the, I don't see that a true alternative has emerged. The idea that the AFD led by a lesbian is somehow far right is genuinely insulting to the far right. Exactly. And it's also insults to the own intelligence. Yeah. I thought Zamur was pretty interesting.

Zemur was definitely interesting. Yes. Yes, but he didn't. I think that part of the problem is the extent of public apathy. And I think we sort of need to be honest about that as well. One of the things that I noticed when I came to the West was that you constantly find people in their 30s and in their 40s trying to relive being 21. And that surprised me. And then I joined in it myself, to my shame.

But that was one of the things that I initially noticed when I got here, and it just didn't really make sense. The other thing is that, for the most part, there is a culture of complacency and keep your head down. I mean, the reason I'm self-employed is because I told my former employers that, no, men can't become women, and no, the West isn't racist. And this was enough to get me reported to HR. and I was told in no uncertain terms that HR said that you can't be a manager in this company. And so there's going to be a merger soon. Why don't you take a package and buzz off? Is that fair enough?

Were you with one of the big banks for us? No, no. So this kind of what surprised me the most really was that among thousands of employees, is it seems that I'm the only one who said anything. And I'm not Western. I'm Middle Eastern. And I don't say this to brag, but I say this to say that

nobody can save you. You've got to stand up for yourselves. Yeah, agency. Well, let me ask you, Fittas, because I was listening to Carl Benjamin the other day, and he did a very, very long, long rant. And at one point, somebody asked him this, and the reason it's,

it stuck out to me so much is because a friend of mine has a friend in Britain too, an academic in Britain, and this person made the same exact, within three days of each other, I heard two Brits say this and two very educated, very smart Brits say, somebody asked him and said, does anybody love England? Doesn't anybody love England anymore? And he said, and this other person said, it's not that they don't love England anymore. They don't love themselves anymore. Yeah.

And it seems like... If you don't accept divine love, self-love becomes narcissism. In the same way that you must balance love of country, love of family, love of God. You can't love yourself in a healthy way without divine filiation. without accepting that you're a son of God and are loved by God. Otherwise, your self-love becomes like Indians and Pakistanis bragging about how great their own country is, and then you look at the country and you realize, hold on, what?

So there is this reality here that the loss of religion, which has been embraced fully by the elites, I mean, in Britain it was the Conservative Party that turned civil unions into homosexual marriage, as if such a thing could exist, that it would be the conservatives to do this, shows you how far the love of God is from the elites. And within all of the Western leaders that are trying to revive the West, I think the only person who speaks about faith in a Semis in a semi-serious way is El Salvador's president.

The other is, I mean, I believe that Trump felt something divine after he was saved from the assassination attempt, but I still don't think that's well developed. And you look across the West and who are the opposition parties, Nigel Farage doesn't mention God. As far as I'm concerned, Marine Le Pen mentions culture. cultural Christianity, as does Zimur. The AFD is literally led by a lesbian. I mean, we can stop there.

It's only Orban, who's also serious about religion and about his faith. These are the two. Say again? Yeah, I know, I know. He's reformed. I know. I know. He'll get there.

You'll all get there. You'll all get there. We're waiting for you. His family's all Catholic. Right. So this kind of not loving themselves does have spiritual roots. And in a way, you mentioned the sort of issue with the Nietzschean right and all of that. Well, that's exactly what the right is going to look like without God.

It is going to be Nietzschean. It is going to be racist in. not in a natural love for your friends and family way, but in a somewhat more hateful way. And it's going to have consequences. So you need God back in the political discourse. This is absolutely necessary. I think in Britain there was a liberal Democrat leader who apparently turned out to be Christian. And they just kept on attacking him for that until he resigned.

kicked him out. But aside from King Charles, who whenever he mentions Christianity, has to insert Islam into the conversation, no public figure in Britain that I'm aware of mentions Christianity. And this to me is very dangerous. It's very, very, very dangerous. You need to love yourself and your friends and your neighbors and your community. in an ordered way and that order comes from above. Yeah, otherwise you get positivism and that's just fancy

that's just fancy tyranny. You know, the idea that whatever we say goes because just because rather than you discover that which is true and law is, is a radical difference that is I don't think fully appreciated, especially by the Hoy Palloy in, at least in the U.S. I don't know about, you know, we're seeing. And so, so as a result of that, you're seeing, you know, the controversy over the judicial in the, in the U.S.

right now. And it's, it really boils down to that. Do we, do we create law or do we discover law? So, and, and that's a, I want somebody to talk to mention that, at least at some level. So, yeah, I don't know. That, that just came to me while we were talking. Air Grid, operator of Ireland's electricity grid is powering up the Northwest. We're planning to upgrade the electricity grid in your area and your input and local knowledge are vital in shaping these plans. Our consultation closes on the 25th of November. Have your say, online or in person. So together we can create a more reliable, sustainable electricity supply for your community. Find out more at airgrid.i.4 slash Northwest.

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No, you're right. You're right. I guess I got to keep the conversation going then. Sorry. No, no, no problem. I wanted to go back to something because you had mentioned very early on in this conversation fit us that talking about how the liberalism, the concepts of how the concepts of liberalism

basically they need you to accept. they need you to almost take that on as like the new religion. And you mentioned family, we've mentioned family as being first and foremost in everything. You're going to prefer your family above everything else. That's what liberalism has to do, right? That's what liberalism has been doing for the last hundred years is tearing all that foundation out. And it's torn to foundation of family, of church, of, you know, they wrote about it in the book, the authoritarian personality.

The Frankfurt School, Theodore Adirno, those guys, saying that basically if we don't want fascists anymore, we have to tear down the family, we have to tear down the church, we have to basically tear down men. So if that is the default of what most, even people who are MAGA, most of MAGA is liberal.

And they're, you know, if you try to tell someone who's MAGA, you know, you know, we really need to, you know, reverse Obergefeld. They may be like, okay, we need to reverse the law. But the whole attitude behind homosexuality, we can't attack that. So, I mean, how do you go forward? How do we deal with this?

I don't have a clear answer for you. But I think it's important to liberalism is animated by an erasure of difference and distinctions, first and foremost. And I think emphasizing difference and distinctions as being ordained by God and as being a good thing is important. The second point I'd make is that the erasure of men isn't going to result in what is hoped for by the liberals. It's going to result in the emergence of much more animalistic, unbounded, merciless men with a mob cheering them on to help them avenge themselves against the excesses of liberalism. So there's got to be an answer here that sort of says, we see what you're doing, we think it's absolutely wrong. Here is the

truth. And the truth starts with Christ, and it starts with the idea that natural law recognizes family, nation, differences, distinctions, and their importance. Men naturally strive for hierarchy. This is part of how we are, and it helps us and enables us to function. If I know my job, I do it better than if I don't know. And so if someone tells me what my job is, that actually helps me in a way. And ultimately, that comes from God, who gives us our ultimate functions. But there are intermediate steps here. I don't know what works now.

Yeah. Farras, you mentioned, you know, liberalism erases distinction. But Christianity has the answer for this, because at Pentecost, when the, as Pete mentioned, a minute ago. When the curse was undone, it wasn't undone in a way to erase difference.

Yes. It made difference part of the answer. In other words, everybody could hear the mighty deeds of God in their own language via either a miracle of hearing or a miracle of glossolalia,

you know, of tongues, probably the latter, the former, but there's some theological difference on that. But the point is, is that the different ethne, the different groups remained even. And so that seems lost. In other words, there is a celebration of there is a manifold glory in all these distinct distinctions remaining. and being distinct.

I mean, with some admixture at the edges. And I think that Christian thought being so in the West, being so subsumed into John Locke, the tabula rossa, which is where all this flattening comes from, I think. And Locke wasn't a terrible guy. I'd radically disagree with that, posit. But I think a recovery of just, oh, the story is all these distinctions remained.

And yet there was still this reversal of Babel. You know, that does seem lost. I think, firstly, you are absolutely right in everything that you've said. The second point that I would add is that even though the liberals keep on preaching equality, they do not live by it. If you look at the Labour Party, this is the single most nepotistic cabinet

and set of political appointments that has ever happened in Britain, in modern Britain. They are by far the most nepotistic. Across the board, you had the head of the civil, service, do a hatchet drop to get rid of Boris Johnson, and then her son, and then she becomes Kier-Starmer's chief of staff, and her son becomes a Labour MP, dropped in out of the blue.

You have husband-and-wife teams. One of them is working in communications, the other one is in control of the ministry. And that you have rinsed and repeated ad nauseum. The Labour Party decided to appoint a Ghanaian to be their trade representative to Ghana and a Nigerian to be their trade representative to Nigeria and on and on and on. And you see this and you kind of go, well, guys, this is obviously nepotism. You see it in the United States with a Pelosi family and her relationship with Newsom and all of that.

You see it with a Kumo family. You see it with a Bush family. You see it with the Clintons. So these guys preach one thing and do the other constantly. Across the EU, it's just one big gravy train. One massive gravy train. And then the assumptions underneath a lot of what they're actually doing today only work in a Christian society.

So we've ended up in a situation where instead of having original sin, we have slavery, racism and sexism, and homophobia and whatever it is, these various isms. And you go and try that in a Muslim society. Like try and tell the Muslims that slavery was wrong. You can't because Muhammad himself owned a bunch of slaves. And it's permitted fully in the Quran and it's not been superseded by a New Testament. it's not been turned around by a New Testament. It's something that's still fully embraced.

There is this guilt that, okay, the West didn't treat the people that it's subjected to its empire well enough. But it treated them better than anyone else did and better than they treated each other. I mean, African slavery was primarily an African affair before the Arabs and before the Christians stepped in. and the people who ended West Africans were pretty good at it. And the West Africans were very good at it. And the people who ended it were the Westerners. And they went as far as to end it for the Muslim world.

So where did that impulse come from? You see the same with how these holy groups have been made into the Holy Victim. In the Catholic Mass, Christ is the holy victim. And I think it's the same for you reformed guys. So he is the holy victim. He's the Lamb of God. And this has been replaced by being black or being gay or being Muslim or being a minority

or being this, that, or the other. Even though technically now they're using the term global majority. So they're not a minority anymore. But anyway, you see it with transness. I mean, transgenderism is a spiritual claim at heart. The idea is that there is something within you that is different from your appearance. and that this is the real you. As Christians, we call it a soul,

but they, the perverts, call it gender identity and try to sexualize it in a way reminiscent of how Islam sexualizes paradise. You know? And you look at it and you're like, guys, this is nuts. You can't go this far. This is a little bit extreme.

Cancellation. It's just excommunication. That's all it is. And it operates in the same way because you don't get cancelled for deindustrializing America. You don't get canceled for the financial crisis. You don't get canceled for any of that. You don't get canceled for, I don't know, selling weapons to evil people.

You get canceled for not professing the correct dogma. So it's a sin of blasphemy that gets you canceled. it's not an actual crime that you commit. And that's exactly Christianity. That's exactly Catholicism. If you do something bad, you confess it and you seek justice against yourself, if you're sincere in your confession. Whereas here, whereas what gets you excommunicated in Catholicism is blasphemy, is going against the dogma of the church. And it's the same exact thing.

So it's important to point out to people that even the framework of the extreme liberals is fundamentally Christian. And it's important, if you want to counter this sort of passivity, to explain to people that everything that they think about the world is Christian. It's just that it's a five-year-old understanding of Christianity. Yeah, it's an inversion. It's an inversion of Christianity. And to the extent that they're trying to be charitable towards strangers and so on so. It's a five years understanding of Christianity. It's not a mature, realistic, grounded understanding of well-ordered thinking that animates Christianity, the faith that sort of built the civilization.

And it is a real. Yeah, it's a real religion. Yeah, Ron and I have a mutual. Yeah, Ron and I have a mutual friend Charles Haywood who sometimes Charles will make the argument that it's not a, a real religion because they're not willing to die for it. Oh, but they are. They're willing to spiritually die for it. And they're also willing to basically cut off their body parts for it. They're willing to cut their lineage off for it to, you know, sever. They sever their, they sever any connection they have with the past or their history. So that is, that's a

worse than physical death. Yeah, absolutely. That's a form of, that's a form of. That's a form of. of death, yes. Yes. Do you mind if we pivot a little bit to Asia? Because I would love to... Pivot to Asia. Where'd you get that from? So I would love your thoughts on... The extent of dad jokes in this podcast is really...

Hey, it's Saturday. It's Saturday. So... Absolutely. It's when we're taping at least. So listen to me sound old when we're taping. When was the last time any of us used tape? So do you think it's my posit that a more regionalistic reality is coming regardless, just as much as anything, as much as you have populism on the rise and so on and so forth. but you also just have the changing calculus of power projection in that it's much, it's just, I can overwhelm these multi-million, multi-billion dollar defense systems with very cheap weapons.

And so an extended global supply chain and the offshoring of critical manufacturing, forget the jobs question. Let's just talk about strategic strength and that all these things are going to, that it is impossible for the U.S. Navy, even though we have 10 carrier groups, it's that only maybe four or five of which are ever in the water at the same time, can police all the different choke points of the world. That's coming to an end. These are no longer functioning power projections, but more of power totems.

If you touch my carrier, we're going to nuke you kind of idea, which is silly. But I see this in Asia really driving part of the new reality of a new regional hegemony rather than a global hegemony. What do you think about that? I think let's start with. Yeah, I think that's a great introduction. And I think you're absolutely right, and that the West can, the United States can no longer be the policemen of the world, especially given the level of industrialization and the sheer extent of dependence on China. And the fact that China is ahead of the United States in a range of technologies, the Aussies identified 64 critical technologies and claimed that the Chinese are ahead in 57. If that is true, then it is really a very hard time for the West right now.

And so it makes sense to try to decentralize responsibility a little bit. Because if you look at China, they've got a border dispute with everybody around them because of the 9-dash line. they've got a dispute with India, they've got a dispute with the Japanese and this puts them in a position where their sheer strength encourages others

to band together against them. The United States has been trying to get to that outcome but in an incredibly clumsy way and really the main obstacle to that outcome is a medical intervention. And it's much harder for anybody to challenge China if it's allied with Russia, the world's greatest natural resource superpower and nuclear power. So this is where the Trump doctrine comes in. If China has built this alliance with Russia and Iran,

largely as a result of Western policy, and this alliance naturally dominates most of the Eurasian, landmass. Because if you're in Central Asia, good luck, buddy, you're stuck. Iran, China, and Russia all around you, you're going to do whatever they tell you. And these resources get to feed the Chinese manufacturing behemoth and become captive markets for Chinese exports. This has been the result of Western policy. This is the legacy of Clinton, Bush, Biden, Obama. You know, the answer is to dismantle this legacy, and that requires a reconciliation with Russia and a reconciliation with Iran to finish these problems. And when you see the world this way, the location of the border between Russia and Ukraine is an unimportant detail.

The point has been conceded that countries get to invade each other in annexed territory. and the law of conquest, the fact that we expect conquerors to be civilized is another one of these Christian revolutions, because normally they're just Mongols. But you can't have a world in which invasion is illegal because it's just not how it works. This is different from policing a society. You're policing international relations, which are naturally violent and chaotic. Well, and this is why the neoliberal impulse is to not a race, but regard difference as immaterial. Because in order to remove any what Schmidt would call way of life that, you know, what I talk about in common presuppositions to try to keep it, because I think it's ultimately theological. whether you're an atheist or devout

your politics is still driven by political theology. You can't get away from it. Yes. Yes. So what Trump is trying to do with Asia is to at least

begin to dismantle this behemoth by saying to the Ukrainians is to pound sand and now that Iran's regional project is defeated, make a deal with it, solve these problems. It becomes then a lot easier to deal with China.

You have countries like Vietnam, like the Philippines, like Indonesia. They don't really like China because China doesn't have allies. People forget this. China only treats the world commercially. They see Iran down because of sanctions and they try to make. milk it for every dollar, ignoring completely that this breeds resentment. They see that Russia needs them and they try to bleed it for every dollar. That's how they are. Their relationships are deeply. Say again. The South American fishing is the one I think that should be getting tons of attention

because they are raping the ability for the ability for. for the South Americans to feed themselves from, you know, from a... It's conscience-free, emotion-free exploitativeness and empathy-free, and empathy-free. They don't give a damn about anybody. So reducing American pressure on everybody else, including reducing American defense of Japan, might be helpful because if Russia is free from San Francisco, sanctions, the Japanese manufacturing machine is sitting right there, ready to compete with China. And they're willing. And Japan and Russia are also a formidable combination against China.

And Japan, Russia and Vietnam is a very impressive combination. And so you constrain the Chinese by giving the Russians and the Iranians options so that they're not dependent on China. and again, I have to emphasize this, the stupidity of the previous presidents who pushed this alliance together, who created it, unnatural as it is, through their arrogant, idealistic posturing. Through empty words.

Well, and the structure of sanctions, which not only forced this alliance, but also remove the sponge for us to export our inflation. So it absolutely came back upon. And that, you know, the Eurodollar issue, that's a little technical. We, you know, we could talk about that. But just think of one of the benefits of the World Reserve currency is you create out there, this ability for you to push your inflation out.

Now, I think we would all agree. You shouldn't be printing all that money to begin with. But we live in the world. We've been given. And to create a sanction regime, which basically takes that sponge and cuts it, cuts half of it off, was insanity. You know, actual inflation, you know, they reported, oh, it got up to 7, 8%. It was double that, at least. the way that they cheat about inflation data and about every other kind of data has become truly third world.

Oh, and the employment data in the final days of the Biden before the election was so, just look at the series of revisions. It was so bad. But, you know, again, I don't want to get too, the point of this talk isn't to get super technical and in the weeds. but it's, you know. I think you have a smart audience. They'll understand it. Okay. I think the point that you're making is that they've been deceiving us about inflation and about employment for political ends.

And then at the same time, you hear people, you hear people from the liberal right talking about the sanctity of depoliticized institutions. If even economic data is being lied about for political ends, then let's sort of end this discussion. And let's remember something that is very important, again, to sort of answer the liberals and the soft-bellied, the yellow-bellied liberals on the right. States can't operate without a dogma. No institution can.

In the private sector, that dogma has become make-a-buck. Fair enough. In a state bureaucracy, to organize something of this magnitude, if only speaking from sort of practical utilitarian perspective, to organize something of this magnitude, there must be shared principles. There must be a shared set of beliefs. Otherwise, a behemoth of the size,

what the federal government has two, three million employees all considered, A behemoth of the size cannot operate without a dogma, without a set of beliefs, without a set of assumptions. These assumptions throughout the West have been deeply left-wing liberal, hostile to the idea of national identity and hostile to God. There can't be a serious political movement that aims to correct the situation without recognizing this reality. and therefore they must come in with an alternative dogma otherwise they end up in the same kind of chaos of the first Trump term where selections were made not on loyalty or ideology but based on trying to appease different branches of the Republican Party

and keep things in line and the net result was factionalism and a new secretary of defense and a new secretary of state every 10 minutes So you must have a commitment to dogma And what dogma are you going to promote exactly? Restore the West. What is the West? Is it the Vikings?

Is it the Germanic tribes? What is the West? The West is the union of Jerusalem, Athens and Rome And it cannot be understood in any other way. And that is Christianity. Now I'm not going to say that's Catholicism out of respect for you, but we know that it is.

Without that animating dogma that says we recognize their realities that have always been there and we recognize them in the light of Christ, any prospect of reform is seriously

dimmed because it's just going to be tinkering around the edges leading to factionalism, leading to chaos, leading to incompetence, because there isn't a a cohesive ideological position. There isn't a hymn sheet that everyone can sing off of. You're never going to be able to plan for every contingency.

You're never going to be able to sort of have a way of dealing with every single government department. You're going to need a set of operating principles. You need to articulate those, fair enough, for your own geographic context. But there has to be an intellectual bedrock underneath. them. And that's not going to be provided by, you know, make Britain great again, make Germany great again. That's not going to do it. It's not going to be done by slogans. It's not going to be done by slogans. It's, as Plato said, the righteousness that produces or the justice, same word in the Greek, dikaisun, same word Paul uses for righteousness in the New Testament, can only be provided with,

it has to be alien. In other words, there has to be a standard that is outside the individual, which is exactly what you're speaking of. There has to be that target. There has to be that bat signal. For us, it's the cross. Yes. It's, and, and, but a nation cannot be its, it, it, it cannot be its own telos.

It has to have that, that alien, that outside of its, a beacon that it is working towards. And I mean, this is what got Plato and Aristotle run out of Athens, you know, and constantly on the run because was this idea. I think they were ultimately seeing pointing towards a, realizing the Pantheon was a disaster. There's a monotheistic ideal, even if they didn't have the language to completely put their arms around it yet. But that's what we're, that's what we're talking about is that's the recovery.

Yes. And under that light, you set your own national policies and you fix your own local issues and you sort of define your priorities based on your situation. But there is a guiding light above all of that. There's going to be a guiding light. You just, whether you like it or not, it'll just be this. each, you know, again, all politics is theological. Yes.

And if, you know, you can, you don't have to love Carl Schmidt. He was just, but, but that third essay in that political theology book, everybody talks about the other essays. But the third essay in that book is, is critical because it describes reality in that all politics are secularized principles derived from your understanding of who God is and how he works in the world. And so you tell me you're an atheist. Okay, I'll tell you what your politics is going to be. It's going to be a material dialectic that is that treats me as a bag of meat. And so as a former atheist, I think atheists are just deeply disappointed Christians looking for

guidance. Atheists are just Christians who are angry at the world not being Christian enough and God having given us free will. Okay. That's good. One of the arguments I was having yesterday was as people were complaining about Trump arresting judges and, well, what about the Constitution? I'm having an argument with people, and that's when you realize the whole Scott Adams thing of,

you're watching two different movies. Yes. I'm telling them, I'm telling them the Constitution doesn't mean anything if you don't have a foundation. The foundation has been washed away. It was built on sand. It was not built on stone. So it's been washed away. And, you know, people want to say, well, you know, we need to follow this.

And we need to follow that. if we just follow this and I'm like, no, the whole thing is, you know, I mean, Thomas and I have been having this series where we're discussing continental philosophy and, you know, basically in the first two episodes, what we said is Socrates deserved to die. He subverted the culture of Athens. He basically, he tore away the foundation. And then when you look at what, what, oh, Plato and Aristotle get run out? Why? Because Socrates had changed Athens to the point where they accepted all this, and then when somebody comes along and says, no, it's actually this way. It's actually points towards monotheism. It actually points towards Christ. He gets run out

because Socrates had perverted what had existed, and what existed was basically civilization. And our argument is, is that civilization hasn't existed since the Peloponnesian War. I don't know anywhere near enough to begin to answer you. I speak. I got to get a very stupid. What it comes down to is if everybody's arguing, why is the house falling down? And they're like, well, there's, well, look at that beam right there. Look at that.

No, it's the foundation. The foundation has been destroyed. And if you don't get the foundation back. No, no, the foundation, I think, again, not to sound like a broken record, but perhaps it's the enthusiasm of the convert. The foundation is Christianity. And as Chesterton says, our God knows his way out of the grave. So it's not dead and it's not over.

is no point in being sort of black-pilled, as the kids apparently say. But it is also important to recognize where we are and how bad things are. And what are some of the steps that we need to do to sort of, to answer this? So the foundation is severely weakened, but this is an undying foundation. And this is a foundation on which you can always rebuild. So I just want to, because I don't like blackpilling as a general approach to life, you know. I don't find any use in it. Yeah, that's what I wanted to say.

Well, the black pill, the black pill comes in when you're this rigid ideologue about like politics. Well, in results. Yeah, I'm not the biggest Thomas Sol fan. I think people have over, people use him too much. And I think a lot of the reason in the states that people use him is because conservatives like having a black guy they can refer to. I'm sorry. I think that that's just that's just a true. That's true.

But he said that there's no perfect. It's all tradeoffs. Your life is going to be about tradeoffs. This is a foreign world. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that's where the black pilling comes in is somebody who used to be a libertarian who used to be a libertarian who used to be an.

a narco-capitalist, I look at that and I'm like, oh, well, I was right all the time. Because I was always pointing towards the perfect. And I was saying, oh, well, if it doesn't meet this, then I stand by the perfect. I know what the perfect is. If it doesn't meet this, then, oh, it's all wrong. And that's where black billing comes in. It's like, I knew voting for Trump was going to be better than voting for Kamala, because I honestly think Kamala would have some of us killed.

I mean, that under her regime, some of us would be killed and some of us would be taken out. People underestimate the extremism, and we see it here in Britain with what's happening to us. Yes. Sorry, I interrupted you. No, that's fine. And I think, you know, if we want to have a conversation the next time, it is, I think a good place to start would be the fact that, and I've been talking about this a lot lately, is Trump can do all he wants. but if the left ever gets in power again, the people who supported Trump, they're going to come after us. Yes.

So, I mean, that's how the system is broke. The system is broken because if people are just voting in, if people get to vote every two to four years and you have the threat of someone coming back in who wants you dead, who wants half the population dead, well, I don't, is that a democracy? Is that? Prescription. You're describing prescription. Yes. The return of the late Republic prescriptive reality, which is what gave rise to one of the things that gave rise to Caesar. Caesar was able to say, I'm going to end this. I'm everyone's leader. And so that's the question. You know, Michael Anton is written about this. And I find him pretty compelling on that.

For me, the thing that I think would help, regardless, whether you're Catholic or Protestant or Orthodox, is a recovery of the preamble to the Great Commission. You know, everybody remembers, make disciples of all the names, everybody, but we forget this, the sentence Jesus says right before that, which is all power on heaven and earth has been granted unto me. And so there is, there's not a, yes, power can corrupt, but there's not a, there is not a, some kind of weird spiritual prohibition on the wise exercise of power in a Christian framework. There's just not. And we need to understand that, that what is best for the world, what is best for the sinners and the pagans even is for us to what for the wise to exert power and we can't be bashful about that you know um yeah i see this gentle jesus meek and mild as a totalizing impulse over

everything and then there's no you know i should you can't even then you can't even comment on who who needs to be dog catcher, much less what's wise policy to take care of people and promote peace. So I just want to. It's the we lose down here. Yeah, which is anyway, I'm about to have. All right, gentlemen, I know that Ron has a hard out. So Firas, please promote what your substack, promote what you want. Oh, thank you.

You can find me on modadgeopolitics.com and on convertor die.net and on my Twitter, Modad, G-E-O-P. And thank you so much for speaking with me. It's been a pleasure to speak to you both, Ron and Peter. Of course. Ron, what do you got? You can find my writings at American Reformer and at the American Mind, part of the Claremont Institute. I'm on Twitter, Ron Dodson, at Ron Dodson. And then I have a substack, which is the eyes of a pillies. And but Ron Dodson at substack. And hey, for us, this has been a real pleasure. What a what a brilliant mind God has blessed you with. This was fun for me. You're too kind. Thank you.

amazing to speak to both of you. Yes, very much so, and let's do it again real soon. Hang out and hang out until while we're closing this. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. Appreciate it.