Theology in the Raw - A Christian Libertarian's Perspective on U.S. Foreign Policy: Angela McArdle

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Angela McArdle currently serves as Chair of the national Libertarian Party, serves as Co-Organizer for the Rage Against The War Machine, and is a two time candidate for California’s 34th Congressional District. Angela was a key organizer for the Los Angeles 2021 initiative to overturn the Los Angeles vaccine mandate. Angela believes strongly in the sanctity of personal choice and allowing people to govern their own lives. Angela’s professional background includes 14 years of litigation practice as a paralegal, and organizational leadership in nonprofit organizations. She received her Bachelor’s Degree from Biola University and her paralegal certificate from UCLA. In this podcast conversation, we talk about Rage Against the War Machine, Libertarian politics, U.S. foreign affair policies, the deep state, the war in Gaza, and the Russian war on Ukraine. Donate today to join OneHope and local church leaders in our mission to bring God Word’s to 25,000 children who have never known a hope that surpasses all understanding. onehope.net/TITR Support Theology in the Raw through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/theologyintheraw

Hello friends. Welcome back to another episode of theology drama. My guest today is Angela McCardell, who currently serves as chair of the national libertarian party. Uh, she serves as a co-organizer also for the rage against the war machine and as a two-time candidate for California's 34th congressional district. Uh, this episode is going to be, yeah, I think some of you are going to love it. Some of you are going to hate it. But most of you will probably be like, huh, that's interesting. I haven't thought about that. So, Angela is a, again, a libertarian. And for those of you who are a libertarian or libertarian leaning, you will probably really resonate with a lot of what she says. We do talk a lot about the military industrial complex and America's foreign policy. We do get into America's involvement with the war in Gaza

and also the war between Russia and Ukraine. I'll just leave it at that. We do say some things that might not resonate with some of the more dominant narratives. I really appreciated Angela's perspective. Some of the things she talks about, I'm not an expert on, so I'm listening and learning. And as always, before I kind of totally embrace something, I like to do a lot of fact checking myself. Some of the things that she got into, I've actually done a bit of research. And a lot of the stuff she was saying is like lines up exactly

with the stuff that I'm also learning. So anyway, that's Theology in Raw, folks. So please welcome to the show for the first time the one and only Angela McCartland. like lines up exactly with the stuff that I'm also learning. So anyway, that's the AlgenRaw folks. So please welcome to the show for the first time, the one and only Angela McCartney. Angela does not know me from Adam, but I reached out to her a few months ago, wanted to have her on the podcast. It was scheduled last fall and I think you got sick or something came up or no internet issues.

I think I had a power outage due to a storm, weird weather where I live now, but I'm not used to. That's right. That's right. So thank you for agreeing to come on. It's easy for me to get people I know or be people that are familiar with me, but somebody that I just reached out to out of nowhere, it's a little harder. So I really got interested in your work when I came across this, it's an event, the Rage Against the War Machine

that you helped co-found. And then I started looking into you a bit more and like, ah, I like this, I like the way Angela thinks. So what can be, just tell us who you are, how you got into politics and then how you became, I guess became libertarian. If I could assume that that is your political identity. Sure. So I am the chair of the libertarian national committee. So I essentially the chairman of the board for lack of a better term for the third largest political party in the country. I also co-founded and helped to run an organization that holds rallies called Rage Against the War Machine. We had a big left-right coalition anti-war rally last year, February of 2023. We had planned one for this year and we pushed it back to September so that we can have the best attendance turnout, the best, most logistical success.

So that's what I do. I've run for Congress twice as a Libertarian. I'm in Austin, Texas now. I used to live in California. I've lived all of my adult life in California, but I grew up in Texas. So I think it's more interesting through a Christian lens. I guess I have a little bit more of an opportunity to lean into that. I grew up in a traditional, mostly traditional, conservative Christian home in

the South. My dad was a Southern Baptist minister. He went to seminary in New Orleans. I don't recall the name of the school. I'm sure a lot of your listeners wouldn't know it. He ended up pastoring a Christian and Missionary Alliance church in Texas, which was a little bit of a departure from Southern Baptist convention, but not a crazy departure. One of the key differences is that we were really focused on international missions. Then he also went on to work for a Far East broadcasting company. He's been with them on and off. What they do is, since the 1940s, they have broadcast on shortwave radio,

Christian messages specifically to communist countries. So very early on, my experience with government was they persecute Christians, they lock people up, they torture them, they make it illegal to be a Christian. I, you know, as a child, met people who crawled out of pole pots killing fields, have been shot, you know, hit in the back of the head with an axe, managed to run across the border to safety. I've met people who were in the gulags, I've met people who are, you know, imprisoned in China for being members of the

wrong Christian church, the ones not sanctioned by the state. I've always been extremely distrustful of government that's just been drilled into my head. And that's my experience ever since I was like eight years old. When we moved from Texas to California, we entered into a culture that was whatever, I guess, from my perspective now, like a cesspit den of iniquity. But it was more culturally relaxed. As a teenager, I thought, well, I'm a Republican.

Well, I'm a teenager, I'm not registered to vote. But we were all very politically aware growing up. I'm a conservative, except I don't know if people should go to jail for smoking weed. It kind of seems over the top. It doesn't really seem to make sense. I have friends that smoke weed, maybe I don't smoke weed,

but I don't know that they should go to prison, right? Makes no sense. Same with gay marriage. I'm like, I don't know if we should be like obsessed with gay marriage. You know, I know what the Bible says about gay marriage. I don't know if we should be obsessed with gay marriage. I know what the Bible says about gay marriage. I know it also doesn't say, like, go out and make gay marriage illegal. I was kind of confused about the conservative perspective on that. I'm like, wouldn't we want them to, I don't know, get married and be more whatever it is, traditional?

and be more whatever it is, you know, traditional. So anyway, I had some conversations about this with some like older mentor style friends in LA and they were like, you sound more like a libertarian. And I thought, well, I've vaguely heard of that. So therefore that's what I will be. Which sounds right, like exactly how teenagers form their political identity.

I've read about that on the internet. I will identify. This is before TikTok. Yes. Yes. Long, long ago before TikTok, in the barely developed age of cellular fields. And so that was kind of how I began identifying as a libertarian and just had a very rudimentary understanding of it.

Several years later, I read a book by G. Edward Griffin called The Creature from Jekyll Island that talks about the origin story of the Federal Reserve and central banking. Completely freaked me out, imploded my worldview, everything I know is a lie. I started to really understand the power and mechanism of the state through the financial lens, through the creation of fiat currency. I was very freaked out, very opposed to government. I had a massive paradigm shift and felt instead of just being a token libertarian who just wants small government and legal weed, I'm one of these people who's like, the federal government should be abolished. It's illegitimate. The state is nothing but violence and coercion. It's just this violent

illusion. And then a few years after that, Ron Paul ran for president. And I've heard about him in a little bit and I was like, well, that guy sounds insane. And then I heard about him a little bit more and I was like, oh my gosh, he's talking about everything that I read about. And I realized, I'm not the only one freaked out about the Federal Reserve. There's a ton more people who are freaked out about it too. And that's how I really learned about the broader Liberty movement, libertarianism, politically, not just theoretically in books, you know, and about 20, 2014, I started getting a little bit involved in the party. And by 2016, I was like very active attending meetings. I ran for office the following year. So that's, that's my libertarian origin

story in a nutshell. Can you, I know nothing, I know next to nothing about your, the federal reserve and the problems with that. Again, I listened to enough political commentators where people have touched on it a little bit, but can you, for somebody that has no clue what your concerns are with the Federal Reserve, can you explain it in like a 101 level for us? Sure. I mean, I think this is a great thing to spend time reading about, although I don't recommend

you go to Google, go to a different search engine. Mises.org is a really great place to read about it if you want to read short articles that are summaries because you don't have hours and hours to spend. But generally, the Federal Reserve was created in 1913. And there's plenty of conspiracy theories too about the United States government going bankrupt in 1912. It doesn't matter, but you can go down that rabbit hole if you want, but it really doesn't matter. The Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

Our currency became very, very centralized, no longer what our constitutional founders intended it to be. In 1971, we went off of the gold standard. The Libertarian Party was founded partly in response to that. Inflation has soared ever since 1971. Our currency is fiat. It's no longer connected to the gold standard. The Federal Reserve prints money whenever they want.

Sometimes they think it's good. Sometimes they acknowledge it's not good. They do it to control what they view as like a boom and bust cycle. It's very, you know, Keynesian economics, which is something that I don't subscribe to. Our dollars just don't have any value anymore. That's why your grandparents might say things like, when I went to the movies, it cost a nickel and we got to sew down a popcorn and now it's like $20 barely gets you in the door. It's crazy. It is really difficult to plan for your future, to plan for your children's future to understand what's going to happen to your money when there's no actual value

assigned to it and it's completely arbitrary and it goes up, up, up, you know, at the whim of some unelected shadow government people who are in the federal reserve. What would the other option be like going like going back to the gold standard? And that was so it like if we were on the gold standard inflation, like I just always assume inflation is just part of life. Like just what as history goes on, inflation happens. You're saying that's not okay.

Yeah. The inflation didn't exist like this before we went off with the gold standard and without the Federal Reserve arbitrarily doing all of this stuff and deciding what's going to happen, then you don't even have that problem either. So the gold standard is one common obvious solution, but the other is to decentralize the United States monetary system and allow for competing forms of currency. That's where Bitcoin comes in. Some people will say cryptocurrency.

I'm not as sold on cryptocurrency in general because some of it's kind of scammy and it's also so wildly speculative. It can go up and down, but at least Bitcoin is finite. There's not going to be a billion bitcoins printed. Like there's a number where it stops. Um, you know, there's silver, there's, there's other countries currencies. There's bricks, which is, you know, controversial in the United States, but competing currencies are gold standard. Either of them would be like really helpful for helping people be able to plan their futures, understand how much money is actually in their pocket.

Okay. That's interesting. I, yeah, I have very little economic knowledge, so I'm, this is, this is helpful. Mises.org is like the best place to go. The Mises Institute, where you can just scam a couple of articles here and there. Before I, we can, I'm a proponent of the Austrian economy. And I think that's a great thing to do. I think that's a great thing to do.

And I think that's a great thing to do. And I think that's a great thing to do. And I think that's a great thing to do. And I think that's a great thing to do. And I think that's a great thing to do. And I think that's a great thing to do. And I think that's a great thing to do. And I think that you need the Federal Reserve to stabilize things and interfere. I mean, that's like, so I'm a proponent of Austrian economics.

I value entrepreneurship. I believe that prices are set based on how people perceive them to be set, right? This is in demand, and so I'm willing to pay this much for it. Keynesianism, Marxism, they believe in the labor theory of value. Oh, I sweated and toiled six hours to create these artisanal pencils. I'm going to set the price at $100. No one cares, but they care. They care very much. And then they're like, the lobby of the government, please get involved and help me set the price

of these artisanal pencils at $100 because I deserve it. And so the people who are like kind of moderate and in the middle, they'll say, well, you know, maybe not a hundred dollars, but we'll give you a subsidy so that you don't starve you, you poor pencil artist. So that's sort of the, does that make sense? Like they're like, well, we need government to protect. Okay. Cause the government is really good at protecting people. We need government to protect. Okay. Cause the government is really good at protecting people. Where I came across your work primarily is,

I don't even know how I, I think it was through, I listened to a lot of the podcasts coming out of antiwar.com. So like Scott Horton, Dave DeKamp, I think your name maybe came, I forget anyway, you co-founded rage against the war machine. And your, your theme for this next one is defeat the deep state. So I got a lot of questions about this and what the deep state, what is the deep state? I hear that phrase a lot. And I mean, you do

explain on the website, people can go to kind of check it out, but what's your concern about the deep state? And is this my second, my follow-up question to get you thinking is, is this, is this, is this not just a conspiracy theory, you know, that there's just thing called the deep state. So yeah, sure. I mean, there are, everyone's familiar with Washington, D.C., right? We elect people, they go there, they do their thing. However, there are a lot of people who work in Washington, D.C., who spend decades and decades there. They are in unelected positions, they're in appointment positions, they're in staff positions,

they don't change over. When you get elected, it is so difficult to move the needle and to get things done that you want to get done because you find out that there are a ton of people that you have to work with, get the permission of, get the cooperation of, and they're in unappointed or I'm sorry, unelected positions. And that is the deep state. And plenty of people have different views.

They think, oh, it's a conspiratorial cabal, it's shadow actors behind the scenes. Maybe it's a little bit of both. But the reality is it's not a conspiracy that there are a ton of people who work in Washington DC who are not easy to get rid of. And from my perspective, this is the deep state. There's so many people who work in the military industrial complex who have revolving door, appointed positions. They work for Lockheed Martin or Boeing, and then they get appointed somewhere and they work in an office and they're

the ones who decide contracts. They're the ones who are working with lobbyists to make sure that politicians are doing X, Y, and Z to keep their pockets lined. There's a lot that goes on there that we don't vote on. And it's, it's, it's got deep roots. Would you say it's just, would you use the word corrupt corruption or not necessarily? I mean, is it corrupt if it's been designed that way? I mean, sure.

You know, you could, you could certainly use the word corruption. I feel like words like corruption and exploitation, just their words that we use because they, we have like a general like sensor or feel for it, but they don't adequately describe how incredibly deep it goes or how complex the process is. Is it so, for example, I mean, it just off the top of my head, I'm thinking of like, you know, George Soros on the left with all his money, maybe the Koch brothers, I think on the right, like with, with that, with, with people, tons of money and influence and power over the decisions of the government, would that, would that be part of the deep

state or yeah, they can. And it's not like all the actors in the deep state move in lockstep. So, you know, I don't think there's a, you know, a secret board meeting where, you know, George Soros and the Koch brothers and, you know, a handful of other people are like, this is what we're doing this year, you know, here's our plan, let's vote on it. But they have a lot of interests that align, you know, like profiting off of war. You know, there's a lot of Davos stuff too, a lot of world economic forum stuff that gets all wrapped up in it. And they have agendas that align. And so on those things, you know, you probably

see progress in their direction, which is not progress as far as I'm concerned. So profiting off of war, this is, this is, I want to linger here for a bit. So I forget the year it was, but Eisenhower, I pulled up the page again. Um, 1959, is that it? Uh, where he gave a famous speech warning about the corrupting influence of the military industrial complex. Can you explain to us? So that's the, you know, I don't know where you want to start. Like what was he talking about there or just what is, what does he mean when he talks about the military industrial complex? And can you explain to us how America or certain people are profiting off of war? Cause that's a, if this is true, if he's right, if I think your position, if you're right, that, that

is a, that kind of changes everything. Really. I feel like this is just such an obvious, like it's right out there at plain sight. And maybe people are just too emotionally fatigued or feel powerless to deal with that. Or it's not a problem that's close enough to home. You know, like when you drive down the street and see a homeless person and have your heartstrings tugged on. But there are these companies and they have lots of shareholders and it's in their best interest to make as much money as possible for their shareholders. One of the ways to make as much money as possible is to go to war and sell lots and lots of weapons.

is to go to war and sell lots and lots of weapons. Because why else would you sell lots and lots of weapons? It's to go to war and blow people up and create large campaigns where we're going to quote unquote spread democracy across the world. We've got to do it to make ourselves safer at home, to protect those people out there who were accidentally or intentionally blowing up and to test out new technologies and do XYZ. There's a whole litany of bad excuses,

but it's just a basic profit incentive that's been hijacked by a really flawed government. It's so unfortunate too, because I think the United States Constitution is like, it's probably the best founding document that's ever been created in the existence of mankind. But it's not perfect because it still allowed this to happen. It didn't envision it happening, right? I mean, it was not envisioning it at all. But the system of checks and balances wasn't strong enough to keep people restrained. We have all of these extra constitutional agencies, to keep people restrained. We have all of these extra constitutional agencies, authorities, people in positions of power, libertarians, and some conservatives and occasionally people

on the left like the squad will scream, that's not constitutional. Everybody kind of throws up their hands and they go, well, you know what? It doesn't matter because so-and-so made this bad decision down the road 20, 30, 100 years back that said, well, we actually will give Congress the power to do X, Y, and Z. So they're like, technically it's kind of constitutional. It's not, but no one cares. Sometimes it's a might equals right scenario, unfortunately. So Eisenhower's prediction, would you say he was correct that this path?

Oh, 100%. Yeah. Yeah. He was totally right. Beware of the military industrial complex. I mean, it's this unholy union between the private and public sector. How was, how I've heard that the American economy is so structured that it, it's almost like it, it tells me this, this, I think it was, might've been a libertarian that told me this, that, that we need a war. Like the American economy needs a war. If it doesn't have one, it will go find one or create one.

No, no, that's a, that's a, that I think somebody, I wasn't really that, gosh. I mean, that's our, you know, Speaker 3rd-rate-an I mean, it's like, you could make an argument for it. Look, if you don't give them heroin, they're going to go through horrible withdrawals. It's really bad. You know, if you don't do it safely, it could kill them. Okay. It's heroin though. It's really bad for them. It's ruining their lives. You know, this person does alienated from their family, they're on the street, they can't function, they don't have a job, there are other other aspects of their health they've suffered, you know they've got wounds because they're not cleaning themselves properly,

they're being abused by other people who are exploiting them because of their heroin addiction. that's what our welfare warfare system is like. Oh, we need a war because we've regulated ourselves to death so that no one can make money any other way. We need GDP because we perceive ourselves to be in aggressive competition internationally with any and every other first world country that doesn't align with us ideologically.

Like it's so, like the mental gymnastics to get to the point of saying we need war first world country that doesn't align with us ideologically. The mental gymnastics to get to the point of saying we need more are just crazy. I can't imagine how you're like, look, if we don't bomb at least 15 Middle Eastern weddings and accidentally blow up a bunch of kids on the other side of the world, we're not going to be safe and we won't have enough money. That's so insane. So the, the, the argument that you hear that the popular narrative is, you know, there's terrorism out there. There's a lot of people that hate America or hate democracy. There's a lot of thugs out there and America has the ability and power to fight these bad people. And you know, I mean, we have two conflicts going on more than two, but I mean, to that

make the news a lot, Russia and Ukraine and, and Israel and Gaza and both of them are, are pitched as, you know, we are supporting good people fighting against evil. What do you think to that? I mean, how did I do in summarizing the popular narrative? And how would you, you know, the war on terror, like, you know, this is the axis of evil. We need to go fight against this. Otherwise this is in a sense preemptive self-defense

or sometimes just self-defense. So how would you, would you challenge that? I mean, the CIA started, or sometimes just self-defense. So how would you challenge that? The CIA was working lockstep with Osama bin Laden in the 70s to push back against the Soviets. And then they pulled the rug out from under him and did an about face. And he and his group of radicals were very angry about it. And then the United States continued to... were very angry about it. And then the United States continued to... Oh, man. He wrote a whole letter about it and I highly encourage everybody to read it. It went viral on TikTok for a while, but it's in... It might be in this book here, Scott Wharton's Enough Already. I think part of it is in the very beginning of this book, which I highly recommend that everybody read. Our military

which I highly recommend that everybody read. Our military interventionist policies in the Middle East, specifically by funding Israel, have a lot of other people angry because Israel uses our money and does really bad things with it, like what they've done in Gaza recently. And so we create people who hate us through bombing campaigns, through subversive regime change like we did in Iran, starting in the 1950s and the 70s. We make enemies and we do stupid things.

We're meddling in places we shouldn't be and then we get shocked. Oh, they attacked us. They don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because we're murdering innocent people overseas and meddling where we shouldn't be. Right around the time of September 11, 2001, if you were to go over to Afghanistan and try to explain what was going on to a goat herder in rural Afghanistan. They don't even have an understanding of what New York City is. They don't understand what a metropolis is. A lot of them haven't even seen TV. It's insane that we think that we

have to protect ourselves from these people who don't know or even care who we are. So would you say, and this is going to get sensitive, but this is the all general, would you say that the nine 11 was blowback? Not that, not that, not that terrorism is ever something we should say, well, that was, you know, obviously terrorism is terrorism and death of innocent people. But yeah.

Right. I mean, you never want to be the person who looks at a woman who was a victim of domestic violence or someone who was a victim of a terrorist attack and say they had it coming. Right, right. You don't want to take that attitude. But if you don't learn from your past mistakes and understand what happened, you're just doomed to repeat history. And this is why history is so important to for some reason

You know neo-cons and people in positions of power in the military industrial complex. They don't want to learn from history They just want to do what they're doing harder. They want to double down when you Make someone an orphan when you Fire bomb someone's town and their children left over, those children grew up to be radicals because what they knew growing up is they had a mom and dad that loved them, they had a community, and a foreign power came in and obliterated them

and killed everyone they loved and ripped their world away from them. And they swear, you know, they swear to God, they swear to Allah that they're going to seek revenge and just like put yourself in their place. They don't care anything about geopolitics or democracy or, you know, different systems of governance or what Saddam Hussein was alleged to have done. They're just like, you killed my mom. That's like, that's a hardcore thing to go through as a child. Would you say that a lot of this has to do with the development of American foreign policy during the Cold War?

I think there was there several middle Eastern. I mean, I'm rereading Stephen Kinzer's book overth, overthrow. And it's, it's pretty horrific. I mean, it's pretty horrific. And we did it to fight communism. I'm thinking, is that the only way to quote, unquote, fight communism? Like we can't beat it just ideologically, and we can't beat it through diplomacy and like, you know, free market competition. Because I feel like we kind of can, and it would at least behoove us to try. And also like so much of that stuff going on. It's no one's business. You know, like the Soviet union collapsed without us

putting troops on the ground like that, you know, why, why couldn't we have tried that in other places in the world? Was it, was there any legit, what'd you say? Legitimate fear? Cause we look back in hindsight, 2020, but like, you know, but in the fifties and sixties, you already had war, war two, you had Hitler, you had, you know, evil empires trying to conquer the world. And then now you have in the cold war, this perception that the Soviet union is maybe, and again, I might be speaking beyond what I know here, but there's this fear of like, oh, this is happening again. So we do need to take action to work with Osama bin Laden and overthrow this regime

and take out this government and install a Shah in Iran that's horrible towards its people that pro-Western or whatever. The same thing in Ukraine. I mean, I think we're involved in two coups in 2004, 2014. Nobody talks about that. Are you new in the made on revolution? Yeah. Certainly there's, there's reason to be concerned, but that doesn't mean you

should just jump to military action. I mean, it's sort of like you incur all of this political debt and eventually it catches up with you, like anybody who's a software engineer is familiar with the concept of technical debt. We can do some Band-Aid code and slap some stuff together today, but eventually it'll catch up with us and we'll have to spend all this time unraveling it. We incurred a lot of political debt through all of our machine change maneuverings and meddling, and entangling alliances as Ron Paul would call them.

I often am kind of bewildered at the fact that America has 750 military bases in 80 countries. What's the counter-arg- that just seems like, I live in Boise, Idaho, if Afghanistan had a military base five miles down from my house, like I would be like, what the heck? Like that one, that's not even a category that we can even fathom. So why does America get to have 750 military bases in 80? It's a double standard. It's a total double standard. We would never put up with it. Could you imagine if Vladimir Putin was like, you know what? I'm putting a military base in Mexico City, people would lose their minds. Rightfully so, they would be concerned. And that's what the United States has done to Russia

through NATO. That was all supposed to stop too in the early 90s in Brooklyn, the Amtadal, which is so unfortunate. So it's not just conservatives that do it. It's certainly Democrats too. This is so the military industrial complex is very much a bipartisan problem. Oh, 100%. Absolutely. John Tester right now who's running for Senate in Montana.

It's not too far from you. He's a Democrat. Montana's so weird. They have, you know, like they're very red, but they have had this Democratic Senator. And he's a hardcore Warhawk. We have this whole thing too, in the Libertarian Party going right now,

Operation Warhawk Removal, where we're working on trying to ruin some of their races, the close ones. If you're a Warhawk, we want to just like trash a race and make it hard for you to get re-elected. Since 1987, One Hope has been reaching young lives for Jesus in some of the hardest areas in the world. So through print media, film, storytelling, and digital resources, One Hope partners with local Christians and local churches to take the gospel to children in countries that are either closed or hostile to Christianity.

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in closed countries, hear about Jesus, then go to onehope.net forward slash TITR to financially partner with them today. Why are they war, hot? I mean, is it, is it really they, are they just in bed with the deep state? Do they not know any better? Is it political power that if they're not pro war, they're not going to get elected or all the above. I think it's all of those things. Yeah. They just don't have good judgment and good discernment. I don't understand, you know, what kind of mindset you have where you're like, you know, what let's I'm willing to blow up a thousand kids overseas. Screw it. I need to get reelected.

I don't get it, but it's clearly a very common popular view in Washington, DC. Really? Yeah. They think that collateral damage is no big deal. You got to crack a few eggs to break an omelet. That's what it takes to get reelected and preserve American empire. They do not share the views of our founding fathers. They think of America as an empire. It's not a country. Here's what I don't understand. So you have Biden, who is, I would say, very much a war

hawk. He will vocally say, Israel's going too far, blah, blah, blah, blah. But a ceasefire is of 32nd phone call away. Yeah. Hey baby. What's up, man? How you doing? Good. Yeah. Shabbat Shalom. We're not going to send you a single dime if another civilian dies. There you go. Bum click, right? I mean, is that too simplistic? I mean, it's, but he won't use that because here's what I hear. My question is this there last, the last poll I read, I think it was 51% of Democrats are opposed, are now opposing America's support of Israel and what they're doing in Gaza. It's not slowing down. Biden has all the power to end it in five seconds. Um, a little overstatement. Um, but he's choosing not to now. He, it seems like it doesn't make sense because I think he could, this could factor in significantly to him losing

the election because he's losing some of his own base and he can afford to lose any of his own base because of his, right? So was he, is he just not reading the polls or is he surrounded by people that aren't saying, Hey, we need to like actually do something here. Cause you're gonna, you're not going to make it to the next election. If you Speaker 4, 5, 6, Well, they parachuted some aid boxes over to Gaza recently for the first time and maybe forever, at least with respect to this conflict. AIPAC and the Israeli lobby is extremely powerful and everybody is very intimidated by them and everyone's very afraid to come across as anti-Semitic or anti-Jewish or anti-Israel,

anti-Zionist and it's a real problem in the evangelical community as well. Yeah. And most powerful politicians are extremely tied to that lobbying group and they're very afraid. I think George Bush Senior actually pushed back against them and that's one of the reasons that he didn't get re-elected in the early 90s. They went after him. It's very interesting. Biden wants to kind of have it both ways and try to sound like a little bit sympathetic, but then his actions don't follow through. And so he's just going to be in a political quagmire where he loses everybody.

Now it's, I don't think the Republicans, I mean, the Republicans, from what I hear, they will say, I mean, you know, you read stuff on social media news, you know, video clips and stuff. And I'm always nervous about five second clips because most of the time it turns out like it was taken out of context, whatever. But there, I've just, there's some, just been some insane genocidal rhetoric from, from Republicans. There was one guy that was taught. It was all good. It was a video clip where he was a, I think a Congressman or something where he said, you know what? I want to kill somebody who was saying, what about the, you know, they're always Palestinian dead children. Like, what, what are you like, what do you

think about this? And he's like, you know what? Kill them all. And it was in the context of Palestinian children. I'm like that, that, that is straight out of mind comp. I think I mean, that's so terrifying. I mean, in the age of Twitter and social media, the fortunate, you know, and unfortunate thing is you see it, you know, former Congressman Justin Amash, who is a Christian, his family's Orthodox, his parents were Palestinian refugees. He posted a photo of them pulling his baby cousin George out of the rubble of the bombed Orthodox Church. It's like you have to look at pictures of someone you know's dead infant.

It's the most awful, gut-wrenching. I'm not related to him, you know, I like know him. And I'm just like, how the heck are people looking at this and saying do it more? It's literally like, it's not a hoax. It's dead babies who are separated from me by like, two degrees at the most. two degrees at the most. I don't understand how people can see that and double down on it. There's people hiding at churches and the government is saying, you know, keep doing it, do it harder. Where are the Christians? And you know, it's a whole can of worms on how politically engaged Christians should be and I don't think the churches should take official stances, but individual Christians could be like, can we please not murder Christians? That's, I think, a very low bar for political engagement.

I've talked a lot on my podcast about the Israel-Gaza situation. There's a lot of... To understand the conflict over there going back over a hundred plus years is, is, is complex. But talk to us about, I'm, I'm doing a little bit more trying to understand the Russia Ukraine situation. I know that this is so sensitive. If you don't say the exact right thing or whatever, people just get really upset.

Now I typically listen to a lot of independent news outlets that are neither they're not, they don't repeat the kind of partisan propaganda of left and right. And so I'm, yeah, I've been learning stuff. And I'm like, how come I'm not talking about that? How can we don't talk about that? How can we don't talk about the us backed or instigated coup of 2014 and NATO expansion in the last couple of decades is a real thing. That doesn't give Putin the right to do what he did, but as always, there's a context here that the popular narratives aren't even really talking about. Help us understand, how do we get to where we are with Russia and Ukraine?

What's the backdrop here? Well, Russia has been sounding the alarm on this for many years, saying that they were very concerned. They have a lot of assets in Crimea. Our government should understand that considering we have military bases all over the world. It was a similar situation for them with Crimea. They have access to ports, to important natural resources, to other things that are sensitive to their government. People in particular regions of Ukraine, certainly not the whole country, identify with Russia. They're ethnically Russian. They want to be Russian. There have been a lot of fights over that.

It's really difficult to say who started the political violence, but Zelensky's government was definitely bombing people in that region. They were? Yeah, they were. And I think that people in that region were probably firing back and doing things that they shouldn't have been doing. But I also don't think it's right for the government to come in and just indiscriminately start bombing people because then you start hitting innocent people and resentment grows and grows. And most of those people are like, we don't want to be part of Ukraine.

We want to side with the Russian government. And I mean, I don't know that I'd agree with that decision. But I do support people's right to self determination. Like, you decide who you're governed, who you want to be governing you for better or worse, live with your decision, you know, and understandably, the Ukrainian government strongly disagreed and other other people who live in Ukraine disagree. And so after multiple warnings, you know, Vladimir Putin declared operation.

He didn't declare war, right? He declared special operation, as we'll call it, and sent troops over there. And the whole thing just could have been really avoided with some diplomacy and respecting free elections and not getting involved. But also, we have to recognize that there has been conflict in that part of the world for like 200 years. Those people don't all agree on how they want to live their lives. It's kind of a complicated mess.

I think the best thing is to keep the United States government out of it. That includes NATO, because we mostly are the ones that fund NATO. We're doing things directly, like sending Victoria Newland over there to mess with stuff. Then indirectly, by propping up NATO bases all around Russia. Russia asked to join NATO many years ago. The answer was no. NATO was in response to the Soviet Union. Soviet Union goes away. Russia's like, can we join? We don't believe in the Soviet Union anymore either. And NATO's like, eh, tells them to pound sand

and then continues to pop up bases. And Russia's like, well, what gives? We got rid of the awful part of our government. I know everything's not how you want it to be, but that's the case around the world. We don't all agree. We've made gains to westernize. Why can't we be friends?

And so now we have war and conscription, which is atrocious. And so I don't want to sound sympathetic to Vladimir Putin. I mean, the man walks up with his political opponents. It's not a great place by any means to go and live in Russia. But there are so many Ukrainian men who've been drafted who don't want to go to war, who don't agree with it. And that's just like, it's just wrong. The draft is terrible. I heard and I don't, you know, I hear stuff and it's like, unless I do a deep dive to verify, I'll kind of hold it like, um, I would need to go do some serious study to verify this.

But I heard, and maybe you know more about this, that I think a couple months after Russia's invasion, um, there were some negotiation, peace talks, whatever that could have been settled, but the United States encouraged Ukraine not to correct. And then, Hey, we will, you need to keep fighting this. Like do not make peace with Russia. We're going to back this. It wasn't enough. So, so that's, is that not, that's not a conspiracy theory or that's not like that actually. That's not a conspiracy theory. Yeah. I don't have it pulled up right now, but there's a ton of articles about how the United States was over there. And we said, you know, it's not they'll use different language, right? It's not a good time. So I'm good time to

have peace talks. They're not quite meeting all of the criteria. We don't recommend it's it's polite language, but it's negative language. It's, let's please continue this war. What's in it for America? Like what, what's the self interest that America has to have Ukraine keep fighting Russia? Cause they want Ukraine to be part of NATO, right? A Western ally. So then that part does get a little bit conspiratorial, you know, what's with the, what's with the Biden family and Ukraine and being involved in all their natural resources. A lot of people think

that we have a big money laundering scheme going on in Ukraine. They have a very corrupt government. There are a lot of backdoor deals. There are a lot of things that happen dishonestly. There are people in the United States government who are involved. I don't know how many. It's hard to say, but there's definitely something going on with the Biden family and Ukraine. And that's just, it's so unfortunate that we would be so involved that we would literally let another country go to war to cover up our embarrassing gaps. Well, we do know for a fact that Hunter Biden was involved financially with Ukraine. Yeah. There is a question, right, about in the discourse, how much Joe Biden was involved in that.

Right. Right. That's not, that's not, that's very well known that Hunter was. I hope it's well known, you know, and the part that's difficult to judge is, you know, how much weight does that have? And other people also have involvement. And you know, that Donald Trump had made some calls over there, like, quote unquote, threatening them, if you don't do this, I'll pull that. And now that looks like maybe not such a big deal.

Or maybe he didn't handle it the right way, but he had the right idea that he was aware that something, you know, unsavory was going on over there. So it's clearly, it's been a problem for a while. And our government is, you know, meddling. The NATO expansion thing. I mean, again, from, from what I've read and studied on that, when the Soviet union fell, I think the United States was it Clinton, maybe even made promises like NATO will not go beyond, like it will not, it will not go any further than it is in kind of Western Europe. And then slowly, but surely several countries, I think John is it John Mershauer, John Mersh, is that his name? He's done a lot of, he's a, he's a specialist in this area and he documents, you know, several

countries including Poland and others all slowly started joining NATO. And I mean that would, that would be like, I mean, it's, it's not too different, right? Then like the whole Bay of pigs thing or stuff during the cold war when, yeah, yeah, yeah. It'd be like, yeah, all of a sudden like, you know, Canada becoming pro-Russian and, and, and, and, and Cuba and the Caribbean and the Mexico. And it, and, and, and, and, and, and, and and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, like it happened. And then it's like, that never happened. Then that was called a conspiracy. Someone made that up, that never happened. And then it came out. It did happen. But we didn't

honor it. And that's a good thing. That's how that story has, has evolved. People just treat the Minsk agreements like look, it was just a little verbal conversation. It wasn't that serious. And it's good that we didn't stick to it because what we really need is over here. XYZ, not a good way to conduct foreign policy. Yeah. Yeah. What's your hope with a rage against the war machine? What's your end goal here? So I think there's a lot of things, right? I think a left-right anti-war coalition is very important. So after the Iraq war, after September 11th, the anti-war movement was

totally run by Democrats. And once Barack Obama got elected, it imploded because the Democratic Party was just mad that Bush and Dick Cheney were in charge of things overseas. It was a really good opportunity for them to complain, but they were obviously not sincere about it because nobody gave Barack Obama any pushback when he was drone bombing Whites. It needs to be bipartisan. Having a bipartisan or nonpartisan anti-war movement is good for the country. And it's good for it, even independent of the war issue. It's good for people who disagree in other areas to come together and find areas of agreement and work closely together, because it humanizes us. It helps us to see that there are things that we do agree on, and it helps us to sort of, you know, like psychologically and emotionally touch grass,

you know, and get outside of our political bubbles. I also think that in an election year, it's a very powerful statement, and we need to be signaling to people who are running for office that there are people on both sides of the aisle, people who are independent voters who are like, I'm not voting for you if you're saying that you're going to continue war, this, that, the other. Politicians are going to do what they're going to do. You can't always hold them accountable once they get into office, but you can help to push the needle of what is and isn't acceptable.

And the place to start that is when they're campaigning. How many people did you have turn out? Because you had your first gathering last year, right? And then your second one this September? There's about 3,000 people. Which I think is really good considering it was February, cold, and it was a very controversial topic. People were like, no, we don't want

to protest the war in Ukraine. We'll be seen as Russian sympathizers. We'll be seen as this and that. And we got a lot of people out and some big names too. Yeah. So would you say, I mean, I think you kind of answered it, but that the US constantly funding Ukraine is not a good thing for. Oh, yeah.

It's a terrible thing. We shouldn't be funding any foreign countries with We have trillions of dollars in debt. We have homeless people on the streets. I do not believe in government programs, but like for crying out loud, we have school lunch debt. Why are we spending money overseas so that Ukrainian soldiers can just continue to get blown up on the front lines? It's so gross.

We should keep our tax dollars at home. So you would see it as actually hurting Ukraine. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's hurting. But what's the other option? So what? Okay, so we stop funding. Other options come to the table and negotiate. And you would say that Putin and Russia are open to negotiation? Yeah. Yeah. And that's our role. If really good role to play, you know, because of our position of power internationally, not

just with military money, but with trade and with technology and innovation. Like we're, we're a great person to, to help people sort their problems out. What would you say? Cause I know this is very volatile. And so probably a lot of people listening, my audience is pretty mixed. So I you say? Cause I know this is very volatile. And so probably a lot of people listening, my audience is pretty mixed. So you're going to have, I think a decent percentage of sympathizers compared to, I guess, your average Christian podcast. But, but for those who are maybe even outraged thinking like, that's just the most inhumane

thing I could think of not helping these people being invaded to defend themselves against this ruthless dictator who wants to take them over. What would be the best counterargument to your view and how would you respond to that? Sure. I mean, I guess the best counterargument is that people think Vladimir Putin is a tyrant and we have to stop him because he's held in thought global domination. That's not what he says. He's very vocal about what his intent is. He's done a lot of interviews. He gives a lot of talks. The

man loves to give talks and announce what he's doing. And even if you don't believe all of it, I think that you can get enough out of it to realize that what he wants to do is protect what he perceives as his country's national interest and to push back against the encroachment of the United States. And it is just there for you to read what the United States and NATO have done to poison this relationship. I really think that it would behoove us to not play world police and to not think that it's our right to help another country conscript innocent men into war.

I mean, this should be, like if there's any Christian political cause, I think that anti-war should be like the one. We don't consent to government forcing people to go fight in wars that they don't believe in and kill people. It's literally like, do we think that it's good to make someone else go out at the end of a gun

and shoot someone else? That's gotta be the most unchristian thing is to force someone to go commit murder. You would think you would think, yeah, unfortunately. Yeah. That's not the case. Um, murder bad. That's my basic. That's my thesis. Murder bad. Cause I've heard, yeah, I I've listened to, you know, the interview with Putin and other things and he hasn't, yeah, from what I know, he hasn't said he's

got this major empire expanding kind of motivation. But then the pushback is, well, you're going to believe some ruthless, insane dictator like, well, no, but usually, I mean, like, so Israel has very verbally expressed what they are trying to achieve. Hamas is very verbally expressed, but they're trying to believe. Hamas is very verbally expressed. We're trying to believe we like we typically do take people like, okay, here's what they're saying. And are they demonstrating that they are trying to do that? Like you have action and words that if they're matching up here, we really have not. So I've heard people say there's no evidence. We have no evidence that he is intent Putin's

intent on this big massive imperial expansion and Poland's gonna be next and then Belarus and you know, whatever. So let's go to the table and negotiate and say we're going to help you establish a demilitarization zone, which is probably the best we can get right now. The people on this side of whatever line are going to have the option of three months to, you know, side with you or pick up their stuff and go deeper into Ukraine. Right?

And if you do anything towards Poland, this country, that, and the other, then there's going to be war. Then there's going to be whatever. We've got XYZ sanctions, but what we're going to do is XYZ instead. There's just so many options on the table. Lots of options. And also, it's not like we're negotiating from a position of weakness and like this like hand ringing, please Vladimir Putin, please don't bully us. Like we're like a nuclear power. We're like the strongest

country in the government. We should be able to negotiate peace with this jerk who has like way less money and influence than we do. And I'm not like saying this off of social media propaganda. I know that's not the case. But I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just saying that's the case. I'm just saying that's the case. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just saying that's the case. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm just saying that's the case. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm not saying that's the case. I'm not saying fight in the war. Some of them don't even have uniforms. Yeah. And I'm not like saying this off of social media propaganda. I know people over there.

I have a staff member who has family in Ukraine. Some of them are going to the front lines in blue jeans. Like they don't even have uniforms. It's just they're tapped out. They're tapped out. They just don't have any more to give. And we just, we shouldn't send them over to lose their lives. Would you, so I've heard people say, I think David DeKamp said this or some of my anti anti war podcast people that I listened to, which I'll highly recommend by the way, um, yeah, anti war.com.

Uh, yeah, they, they, there's a wealth of information on really, like, they're not gonna repeat the propaganda talking points of popular narratives produced by the left or the right. They're doing like a lot of thorough research on kind of the disastrous effects of America's anti-foreign policy stuff. And I'm somebody who, as a, as a scholar, I'm just trained to be, whenever I read something, I immediately question like, I don't know,

let me look into that. And whenever I do look into stuff that they say, I'm like, ah, it actually does check out like this is, this is really, really good. Um, so yeah, invite people to check that out. Oh, so I've heard, I think from those guys that it is inevitable. Like we are prolonging a war that is going to end in Russia's favor. So it's just going to lead to like by prolonging it, we are basically, we as an America, I don't like America is contributing to more and more deaths of both Ukrainian and Russian people. Totally. Is that people have pushed back and said, I've heard people push back and say, you can't say it's in part. Like we don't know. I'm like, so I don't know. I don't, I don't know. It's above my pay grade to say this isn't an inevitable victory for Russia

or not, but yeah, you look at their resources and then you Americans are not, we don't study history enough. You look at countries that have depleted resources like Ukraine has when they've been in conflicts, and you see what happens. When they literally run out and then they start losing allies, but first of all, it's not good to have your allies fight all of your wars for you.

And then you end up indebted to them in a way that you're not able to repay down the future or that future generations are unwilling to. So that's a whole other problem. But when you look at wars where other people had to step in and do all of the heavy lifting, eventually people run out. They're like, you know what, I'm done fighting your war for you. This is the same thing that happens in interpersonal conflict on a smaller scale, right? You have to be able to fight your own battles.

You get help, but you have to do the heavy lifting on your own. They're not capable of it. So the compassionate thing to do is to quickly negotiate peace and try to find a resolution that both sides can live with. Oh, that's good. Angela. I, yeah, I'm taking you. It was just about up to an hour here. Thank you so much for coming on Theology of Neuro. Where can people find you, your work if they're interested in learning more about a lot of things we've been talking about or if I don't know if people want to reach out to you, you probably don't want any emails.

Please show some interest, support our rally at RageAgainstWar.com. We are planning our next event for September 21st, I believe. It's going to be in Washington, D.C. If you're interested in knowing about the Libertarian Party, you can visit lp.org. We are an unapologetically anti-war political party. We stand for peace and diplomacy and non-interventionist foreign policy. And you can find me at andralamicarnal.com. I'm on all the socials, Twitter, Instagram, all good stuff and on Locals. Awesome.

Thanks so much for coming to be on Theology N' Raw. Thank you. This show is part of the Converge Podcast Network.