The battle lines are drawn, and the topic of Christian nationalism is today's fighting ground. Our guest, C.Jay Engel (follow him on X), takes us on a riveting journey through the complex terrains of political theory, revealing his personal encounters with Jenna Ellis and James Lindsay, and shedding light on the regime's narrative tactics.
The discussion delves into the decline of the post-World War II liberal consensus and its implications on our current political landscape, unearthing the rise of new ideologies. This episode is an opportunity for us to question the dominant political theology within Christianity and fully grasp the implications of historical ignorance. C.Jay Engel delivers a potent critique of the liberal consensus, exposes the dangers of claiming knowledge without due diligence, and emphasizes the importance of decisive action during moments of crisis.
Finally, C.Jay offers an inventory of must-read authors in the paleoconservative movement, providing tools to navigate the current political climate.
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Start banking with Private Family Banking. You can reach Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey at chuck@privatefamiliybanking.com, call him directly at 830-339-9472, or download his e-book HERE.
10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.
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The battle lines are drawn, and the topic of Christian nationalism is today's fighting ground. Our guest, C.Jay Engel (follow him on X), takes us on a riveting journey through the complex terrains of political theory, revealing his personal encounters with Jenna Ellis and James Lindsay, and shedding light on the regime's narrative tactics.
The discussion delves into the decline of the post-World War II liberal consensus and its implications on our current political landscape, unearthing the rise of new ideologies. This episode is an opportunity for us to question the dominant political theology within Christianity and fully grasp the implications of historical ignorance. C.Jay Engel delivers a potent critique of the liberal consensus, exposes the dangers of claiming knowledge without due diligence, and emphasizes the importance of decisive action during moments of crisis.
Finally, C.Jay offers an inventory of must-read authors in the paleoconservative movement, providing tools to navigate the current political climate.
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Start banking with Private Family Banking. You can reach Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey at chuck@privatefamiliybanking.com, call him directly at 830-339-9472, or download his e-book HERE.
10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.
Get your chicks at IdealPoultry.com.
This episode is brought to you by Backwards Planning, Financial with Joe Garrise. It's also brought to you by Ideal Poultry, by Private Family Banking and finally, this episode is brought to you by Salt and Streams Butchery. Welcome to this episode of the Hardman Podcast. Of course, I am your host, Eric Kahn. Join today by CJ Engel. Cj, thanks for joining me for this episode of the podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, happy to be here.
Speaker 1:So, cj, I'm kind of one of the things that intrigue me most. I have gotten to know your Twitter handle over the years Pretty spicy, but recently, because of Christian nationalism and some other things, you got into it with Jenna Ellis and I found myself asking the question why does Jenna Ellis care what CJ Engel is saying, I guess for people who aren't aware what happened, how did that originate? How did you get into it with Jenna Ellis who, by the way, a lot of people may not know this, I believe one of Trump's lawyers. She was arrested with him and saw high profile et cetera? How did this all come about?
Speaker 2:Well, it came about because of another mutual friend, so to speak, james Lindsay, who constantly retweets me and quote well, not retweets me, but he quotes me and interacts with me because he's blocked. Several Christian nationalists and many Christian nationalists have blocked him and I'm one of the few that he still sees. Apparently, although I've muted him, he was his interacting with me that, I think, caught Jenna's attention. The Christian nationalist theme has been going around and it's a lot of fun. I think it's educational in a lot of ways. People are just using it as sort of a vehicle to rediscover just a more historical, more theologically rich approaches to the questions that still haunt us today in our secularized, liberal, left-wing dominated world. There's a lot of answers there that have been sort of neglected. We've been, I would say, spoiled enough to be able to neglect some of these more difficult foundational questions. That gravy train is sort of coming to an end and I think a lot of people are having to rethink things, and so that experience is creating a lot of camaraderie, and on Twitter especially, there's a lot of people that get together and they have a lot of fun with it. I mean, there's no reason why we shouldn't be having fun and enjoying each other and our opponents respectfully, but one of the outcomes of that if you're in the right crowds, like I am, I have a bunch of Twitter accounts that have more members than me and they've taken the liking, and of course, that means that I get in front of people like James Lindsay and Jenna Ellis, and so that's sort of how it came about.
Speaker 2:Jenna's an interesting case, though, and we'll probably get into this more, because she has drawn the ire of the Biden regime. I mean, she is under fire because she is not in step, she's out of line, she's not completely compliant with a lot of their narratives and objectives and agendas, and she's someone who I would think is well, it should be more willing to question just what's at stake and where things are, and just the possibility of sort of recreating the world from 10 years ago. I mean, she's someone who's been slapped in the face over the last year, and there's no reason why she, of all people going through this, shouldn't be questioning. Maybe there's more going on here than just a simple Democrat-Republican spat. So that was surprising to me, and we'll get into the details. I'm sure of the controversy, but that's sort of how it came about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's interesting because one of the things that I've questioned about this whole thing with there's kind of a couple levels Christian nationalism. There's Christian nationalism Stephen Wolf, moscow, that whole matrix of they published his book, so that drew a lot of attention and ire and all sorts of reactions. Then you move into the G3 camp and you have a lot of guys who recently were having a Steven's, a chemist and Owen Strand and all those people. They're really upset about Steven but I was a little shocked with the Jenna Ellis thing, like you said, and maybe even James Lindsay, because it's like James is an atheist Somehow. I think James is driving the ball on this, but somehow he decided that Christian nationalism was against what I don't know. My question to you is what is it about Christian nationalism that sets somebody like James off?
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's a couple things I do think he does point out often that they're sort of this manufactured like. This is why we get called Nazis all the time, because they're trying to create this like big scare thing and it's a rationalization or a justification, I should say, for some of their more anti-heritage American you could even say anti-white policies that are coming down the pipeline, and I think they want to create these really scary boogeymen as a rationalization for some of the things that there have been building actually since the war on terror was initiated. There's a lot of laws and surveillance and authority that's been given to the administrative state to take some very significant steps in stepping on people's throats a little bit, and so I do think they want to create this boogeyman, and James Lindsay interprets this very grassroots development as this conspiracy that's actually consistent with the State Department's efforts, and so I don't know where that misreading comes from. But I think that's what's going on. He thinks it's going to be used as sort of a false flag, which is possible, and I think as Christians anybody listening to this who's on the right they need to be aware that you can't just, you need to take everything with a grain of salt. You need to watch out for false flags. You need to watch out for fed baiting. You need to watch out for all these kind of things Like the January 6th.
Speaker 2:A lot of us knew before it even happened, that this was a trap. We need to be aware of this because, yes, they are going to target these people, because anybody who considers themselves a Christian nationalist is a threat to the ideological foundations that make up our current regime narratives. So I do think that there is an aspect of that that's decent and we need to pay attention to that. But I think it's hilarious the idea that Stephen Wolfe is like this plant.
Speaker 2:He completely misreads who Doug Wilson is. He's been at this a long time. He is not friendly with the regime, he's not working with them or anything like that. So those things are kind of loony. I also think that a regime that's ideologically desperate is going to find anybody who is most confrontational ideologically and religiously, philosophically, with their own deep-seated commitments, and they're going to make enemies out of them, because they can't stand it when somebody opposes them. The function of phrases like free speech or the open society all those things are meant to put a boundary on discussion, not to open it up, and so we're outside of that boundary, and I think that it's sort of a reaction to that sort of threat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's a really good point. One of the other questions I have so recently reading the RR Reno book Return of the Strong Gods, which I think you probably have read. One of the interesting things about that is I see a lot of people on the right, especially the Christian right, who I don't know. If they don't know, they're unaware. But I see them running the plays of the post-World War II consensus. I see them buying into that narrative of what America is supposed to be. So they're actually the ones using the. You're a Nazi, you know all this language they use all the language of. Really they want to support democratic pluralism, which I don't. So my question for you is, I guess explain for me the post-World War II consensus, and let's start with that.
Speaker 2:The first World War II consensus is sort of the thing that we all grew up on. I mean, what is the meaning of America and what unique aspects of the American experience really defines her uniqueness? I think that's the liberal consensus. I don't think people thought of America and the way that we did like, let's say, in the 80s and 90s, they didn't think about America like that. Even in the 20s, 30s and 40s, I mean even in the 50s. This whole thing was an attempt by the United States regime to oppose the Soviet Union. That's what it was kind of constructed as it was meant to be this eradication of anything that could be seen as a threat from the right, because we had just undergone this large experience of defeating. You know, for whatever we can say about it, you know the United States did lead the world in defeating the fascist movement, the Nazi movement and other forms.
Speaker 1:And that's what you mean about the right. They think that's the right.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah. So what happened is, anytime someone would oppose what America was doing culturally in the world, they would call that the far right. You know. They would say that, you know. But at the same time, there was a new enemy on the scene, because we had basically defeated Western and Central Europe, you know, they were gone. Europe's role in the world had basically, you know, gone away. It was done for, and the two victors of World War II was the United States and the Soviet Union.
Speaker 2:And so, on one hand, we had to oppose the right, because that's what we had spent the last, you know, five years hitting hard on, and then we also had to oppose, now, this new threat, which was on the left. And so this liberal consensus was this attempt to balance it, you know, not to be too extreme on the right and not to be too extreme on the left. The threats in the 60s and 70s were on the left. The right had been defeated, you know, and so this liberal tried to walk this line between them, and in order to do that, they had to create a mythology of the United States that could account for a lot of the changes that had taken place over the prior, you know 10, 20 years, but especially in the 60s, I mean the whole idea of a propositional nation. I mean that's really 70s and 80s talking points. I mean that's really pre-Ragan and then during the Reagan administration, that was the sort of height of, you know, propositional nations. So we couldn't talk about things in terms of, you know, cultural experience, ethnic experience, we couldn't look for homogeneity in our population, we couldn't look for things like that, because we had overcome those scary right-wing threats to liberal democracy and that sort of became the myth.
Speaker 2:So that's what I consider the liberal consensus. It's neither. It was an attempt to shut down the extreme right, so-called, and it shut down the extreme left, so-called, and it was this attempt to straddle the middle, you know, and to sort of be this last bit. But the problem with that, as we'll get into, is it completely lent a blind eye to threats within the house. You know, threats within the castle which are not on the right.
Speaker 2:The threats in the 60s and 70s were on the far left. They weren't a Marxist left, you know, marxism was coming under severe scrutiny, but it's sort of a post-Marxist left that emphasizes a lot of the Western contributions, like psychology even, you know, efficiency in capital efficiency in financial markets. It would emphasize identity issues, it would emphasize race and sex and all those things. So it wasn't this Marxist left, it was a post-Marxist left. It wasn't an economic left, it was more of a cultural left, and that's sort of what took place and nobody really noticed it. Well, some people did, and they got kicked out, of course, the conservative movement and they got kicked out of the liberal establishment as well. And this centralizing effort, this agreement between, you know, the moderate conservatives and the moderate liberals, sort of came together and created this consensus and both sides attempted to shift away from the extremes on either side of them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really helpful analysis. My question to you you know, as you look at all those problems you've mentioned, what happened in the 60s we can probably talk about. You know post. You know the civil rights constitution post-1964 era. That's a big part of this as well. Do you see the that consensus is crumbling right now?
Speaker 2:If so, or, if not, why? So I think it's the fruition of a lot of themes during the 60s, for sure, but the liberal consensus itself has already been taken over. That's what the new left is. That's what the new left has done. Liberalism is always transitory. It's always ripe for whoever actually wants to conquer it. That's its weakness.
Speaker 2:I mean, this is something that the far left thinkers like Antonio Gramsci noted. It's also what far right thinkers like Carl Schmidt noticed. People on both sides of the James Burnham, Christopher Lash, who was, you know, an old leftist they all recognized that any system that was unwilling to define its own positive vision, except for in neutral terms, was ripe for takeover, and that's exactly what happened. So I do think the liberal consensus basically collapsed in 2008. I think that's what happened. And then you know, the response by, you know, the big capital was to sort of double down, capture the cultural aspect of things and remake the world from a left-wing perspective. So, yeah, liberalism is dead and it's just a matter of who's going to win from here. You're either going to be exterminated or you're going to have total victory.
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Speaker 1:The reason that people are so scared of it who oppose it is because they see it's actually a potent thing. I think that and correct me if I'm wrong. I want to get your take on all this in terms of why Christian nationalism took off when it did, but I think, okay, 2008, 2020 is another pivotal year in the shambdemic and everything that happened there. I see the younger generation as like I'm tired of this, like there's a upheaval happening, and so maybe that makes people open to consider some different possibilities. Curious your thoughts on that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think in the midst of crisis and crisis is something that everybody recognizes, except for those who are in positions of like the opinionators, like the opinion writing class, anybody who makes this money basically stuck in an office. Roger Scrutin always used to talk about this. He used to grapple with why are philosophers always on the left? And it's because they're run by highly difficult and complex theories instead of just catering to their own sentiments and instincts. And that's why you see this massive bifurcation between the ideological classes and sort of the rural blue collar working man class, which are sentimentally more conservative.
Speaker 2:It's funny my own grandfather was sort of a blue collar Democrat, a union Democrat, you know, very anti-immigration, would never in his life dream of voting for a Republican. But he's very like union. He's very anti-immigration because he's scared that his job just instinctually that his job was under threat by mass immigration. But it's just funny because, like I told my other friend, I was like he isn't intellectually sophisticated enough to recognize that he needs to be okay with the immigrants. You know, he's just always had that working class Democrat attitude. But those things are actually more conservative than what the Republican Party has taken us over the last 20 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's absolutely true. I guess, at this point, if you would kind of describe I know there's some variation here, but like there are people who are going to hear this and I think, people who have followed on Twitter and they're like, okay, first of all, what is Christian nationalism? How do you define that as a movement? I guess let's start there, just kind of start unpacking for me, like what is it? And you know, is it tied to Stephen Wolfe, etc. Other thinkers in this movement?
Speaker 2:I think the best way to approach it is a broad umbrella. You know, I'm a very I'm not a good propagandist. So when I first encountered the phrase I didn't like it. I didn't realize that because of the phrase we're all talking about it. If it was this like highly like, I like the big words with hyphens and all that stuff. Yeah, so I'm a terrible propagandist and I didn't really like the phrase because I didn't think it was accurate enough. But the phrase itself is part of the reason why it's drawing people's, it's starting the discussions. You know it gets people frustrated, it gets people mobilized, it gets people energetic.
Speaker 1:You have to respond to it, you have to.
Speaker 2:exactly. It draws conflict, and conflict and confrontation, if handled well, are very healthy things. You know they are the things that are drivers of growth and development and edification. You know when you have those things. So the phrase itself I would consider a broad umbrella. There are people operating under the phrase that have just more of a Reaganite instincts. You know they miss the age of, like Jerry Falwell and the religious majority. You know the religious right and the moral majority and all those things. So those are generally our allies. I'm not going to sit here and like beat up on them. You know they're not my enemies, but those are part of it. You also have people that are like very strong and strict theonomists, like the Mosaic Covenant is still binding today and therefore all the judicial laws are still binding and they should be used as leverage to limit, you know, our own government overreach and all that stuff. So those are part of the broad umbrella too.
Speaker 2:I would consider Stephen Wolfe to not be part of that. I would consider him to be more of the classical, magisterial, continental tradition of thought that empress, that borrows the two kingdoms. You know paradigm, the two kingdoms framework that you know has leveraged things like Thomas Aquinas or Calvin himself or Turritan and some of those those are more consistent with even some aspects of, like you know, the Church of England's political experience. So it's a very broad, but I think in general what we want is a recognition that secularism is actually leading us toward a positive vision. On the left, secularism is sort of a tool that's being wielded against us to keep us away from power and to destroy our way of life, and so I don't think I think we all recognize that secularism and liberalism is kind of a scam and it's only done us damage cultural, religious and sociological damage.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think it's interesting because the engagement I guess is what I've seen. There's a lot of dishonest engagement. I think. Obviously, in any discussion, conflict, as you mentioned, you're going to have people who are willing to engage fairly. Again.
Speaker 1:Going back to things like Owen Strand, you know Stephen will say I'm not a kid, I'm not a kiness. In fact, you're pinning like rush-doony kinnism on me and I don't. You know, I'm a, a, a magisterial reformer, more than anything in classical two kingdoms as you're, as you're watching all this unfold and you see the, the. It's either willful ignorance or smearing or whatever there's there's, there's a intent there to to misread. In one way, I see that and I'm thinking okay, that means we're onto something Like. When I see people responding like that, I'm like, okay, what we have is potent. They hate it. We need to think through this and utilize it. Well, I'm curious just your read on sort of how, maybe like G3 world to Jenna Ellis, you know, has responded to that, how do you read it? And then what do you do next, knowing that those things are true?
Speaker 2:I think these people have spent a long time like convincing themselves that, like buying into the myths of, like the American age and the end of history, like there's this phrase, the end of history or the last man. What it refers to is we've tried all the other political systems, we've tried forms of aristocracy, we've tried monarchy, we tried all these other things. None of them have delivered on the goods, none of them have been able to achieve the freedoms that America has, and they totally convinced themselves of, basically, cia talking points from the sixties and seventies about. You know the nature of America, and so I think that they're they, they kind of see themselves that they, they don't play in the battlefield of actually having to lose your job because the products that you, your grandfather, they, used to build are now being made in Asia. They don't actually have to see the loss of their communities. They live in white color world and there's nothing wrong with being a white color worker, but I don't think they see the, they don't think they have the willingness to see things at that level and I think that they are unwilling to look at things from another, another paradigm, you know, and so I think it makes them uncomfortable. I think those people do like ideological comforts. I think they like to convince themselves that everything's going to be okay.
Speaker 2:I have this quote in my Twitter that drives Andrew crazy. It's, you know, optimism is cowardice, and I think there is a aspect of American psyche that's like everything's going to work out. You know we've it's going to work out. In the end we're going to, we're going to figure it out. Like you know, there's just this psyche that things get better automatically, like our children. You know our children are going to live better than us because we live better than our grandparents. We have more things, we have more this or that and we we don't work as hard, we don't have to work as hard. You know pieces rising.
Speaker 2:There's just this thing we don't realize, yeah, we don't realize that there is a tragic essence to human life and it's fragile and civilizations do disappear and cultures do go the way of the buffalo, like those are very possible things and they're very scary and I don't think. I think that makes us really uncomfortable and I think sometimes having that automatic, instinctual, you know, optimism about the way things are going to go is a form of cowardice. They're not willing to look in the mirror and realize that we actually have to make political decisions, we actually have to confront actual enemies. It's going to require us to get our hands dirty, get our hands bloody. I'm not calling for civil war, like she accused me of, but we do have to get involved and it could get nasty and as civilizations and as empires fall, things do get nasty and that's the reality of history. The last man has been a complete scam and I think we're about to face the realities of that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, I completely agree with you. One of the other things I've noticed is a lot of the camps that are pushing back even a G3, but this has kind of been like mainline Christianity. I've critiqued often on my show just pietism, and it's this spirituality that doesn't touch the real world and particularly, I would say, relevant and germane to this conversation. Christianity has not had a robust political theology for a long time, and so it seems like people don't even know where to begin.
Speaker 1:One of the things I found funny is people will criticize Stephen like he's presenting something new and reform people, and then Stephen's like I'm going to let me quote for you John Calvin in Turritan, right, let me quote for you Thomas Aquinas, and then you can tell me how new my ideas are. And I think it's historical ignorance is baked into this. So I'm curious your take on the church like just let for a second let's talk about the state of the church. Do you see that problem with a lack of political theology? And then a follow up to that would be how do we get out of that?
Speaker 2:I do think America has not had a robust political theology because, if it's historical development, we sort of lived, we sort of inherited this cultural heritage. You know that came from our theological path past and we never had to deal with it, we never had to create, we never had to grapple with it, we inherited it. The problem with people inheriting things is that so often they can become to, you know, forget where it came from and forget its foundations. You know, you forget what your grandfather had to do to build something up that you can inherit. We've never had to grapple with this. So I don't fault the average person in the pews for not being aware of like obscure, you know, 18th century theologians in Germany, like you know. You can't fault them for that. But I do fault people who are supposed to be playing the role of the intelligentsia in our circles that have no intellectual curiosity whatsoever. That is a big problem. I think Owen Strahan you know that isn't Strahan right, or Strachen Strahan.
Speaker 1:Yeah, something like that. I say Strahan.
Speaker 2:He has no intellectual curiosity about these political subjects. And look, some people, some people are going to have such a commitment to, like you know, philosophical and theological history that they're not going to have time for political theology. That's okay, but if that's not your thing, don't come in here and, like, be the judge, that's. You just know it all. That actually has no clue, because it's embarrassing, and everyone knows that it's embarrassing. Everyone knows that, as Andrew and I said, it was sort of a here I stand lark, like we're so desperate to like, like, do this thing, and so it's.
Speaker 2:It's really kind of awkward and cringy that he continues to bring these things up, and you can, you can say that he has, like bad intentions and he's trying to undermine us, all this stuff, but at the end of the day, I just think he has no clue what's going on. And so he's like, literally just like from the seat of his pants, just like reading these things on Twitter and just regurgitating them, because he has no, he's not, he's not willing to do the reading, as, as Stephen Wolf says, and and that's not everyone has to do the reading. But don't pretend like you know it all and that you know that you have your thumb on the pulse of what's happening. If you're not going to actually take time to pay attention, yeah, I think that's something.
Speaker 1:it's kind of a trend within social media is we all want to be quick react kind of experts on everything, and so because, quote unquote everyone has a voice through social media, everybody thinks that they're an expert, which is not necessarily true. Even as I started read I read Stephen's book. I'm, I think, through the second read. Now it was hard to digest, like it's a tough book, it's, it's, it's, it's. You know, it's not easy stuff to think through. I think, if you have read stuff like Samuel Rutherford and Lex Rex, that you may be going to be more acquainted. I have a philosophy background, so it wasn't insurmountable. What kind of got to me and I was laughing about this was I would get into discussions with just man on the street people, I think on Twitter, and they would say things like I haven't read the book, but I know it's bad, because I heard what somebody said about it and I was like, okay, let's pump the brakes on that one, we should.
Speaker 1:And this is where I think the failure of evangelical leadership. The leaders are smart enough to read these books and and then to help their people understand them. I don't really see much of an effort on that front. They're certainly willing you know Rick Warren's and people like this are certainly willing to push lady pastors and push the vaccine and stuff like that. But could we get an honest discussion? I think it's just a dumbing down in a, in a selling out of the evangelical establishment CJ. I do want to ask you this because I'm sure people are wondering this. I've sometimes wondered we kind of got to know where Stephen is on the spectrum. Where are you politically, theologically, on Christian nationalism? Like, where do you fall on that spectrum that you described earlier?
Speaker 2:I would emphasize first of all, I pretty much. I can't think of anything. That's why I say pretty much, but I agree with Stephen's book. I mean there's different types.
Speaker 2:I'm very, I'm very much not theonomic, that's not my methodology, because I don't approach, I don't approach political problems as if we have to get our sanction only from scripture. I think we're allowed to get our sanction from history, if I can say the T word tradition. You know, I think we can get our sanction from our own cultural experiences. But I also think that one of the teachings that I've derived from Calvin and people like Hooker like I'll talk about Hooker in a second, but I've derived this really strong sense of the need for particularity. I think in political authority God does sanction leaders to make decisions about unique situations in ways that historically have never been blueprinted for us to deal with. And I think there is the authorization for political power to use that. I mean that's a very, that's a very heavy burden for a political leader to have that, that ability to make decision, unique decisions, on the grounds of prudence or particularity. So I really like that word particularity. I am not a universalist, I don't think that there was a law for all times and therefore that sort of precludes me from being as theonomic as some of my you know friends and co laborers in this fight might want me to be. But I'm very much a particularist and I read Stephen and I know Stephen and I've talked to him about, you know about these things and I'm confident enough to say that he and I are on the same page on that. So I do follow him in that realm.
Speaker 2:I've also gained a lot of insight from people that did terribly during COVID, which is Brad Littlejohn and the Davenant people. I think their interpretation of what's going on in the world culturally, sociologically, even in terms of like the ethnic strife that's happening, I don't think they're all prepared for what's coming down the pipeline. However, historically, I have benefited and I did learn a lot from his studies on Hooker, because I think Hooker exemplifies that need for the political function in society to be particularistic. I do think that there are unique threats and there are unique avenues of defending a cultural heritage and a cultural patrimony that do allow political leaders to be flexible. So I get that from Hooker.
Speaker 2:I don't know if Brad Littlejohn gets that as much as I do from Hooker, because I don't. You know. I think every situation is unique In our situation. It requires unique tools to deal with a unique left. You know what I mean. So I gathered that from Hooker and I have no problem saying that. So on that little divide, if people are aware of the Puritan versus Conformist battles, I do have instincts and sympathies with the Conformist crowd on Hooker and stuff like that. So it's a really interesting mix because today, in today's world, anglicanism is hardly worth defending politically. Most of my buddies on the right are Presbyterians and some base Baptists, but that's sort of like where I come historically. So particularity, I think, is a really important theme for me and my approach.
Speaker 1:And for people who want to read more on Hooker is Brad Hooker. Is that correct? Richard Hooker, richard, okay, richard Hooker.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what I would do is, first of all, I would familiarize yourselves with the classical two kingdoms doctrine, because I think a lot of the rise of theonomy actually came about as a reaction to the modernistic 2K, which basically told Christians that they don't live in this world and they don't belong to this world and therefore their fealty is in heaven only and they should only fill their minds with so-called spiritual things and that this world is passing, they don't belong here to their pilgrims, and that sort of theology I think created the reaction of theonomy. I think it led people to Bonson and Rush, jooney and North and some of those guys, and I'm familiar with those guys because I dealt with them when I was in the libertarian space a little bit. I think there is a role for the classical two kingdoms doctrine, and the very best book on this and I think that Wolf would agree with me is actually Brad Little-John's little classic. You know Davenic guide to classical two kingdoms.
Speaker 2:I think if you read that you see that you know, at least for me, classical two kingdoms solves all the problems that all these modern two Kers can't seem to get their heads around. So I would encourage people to read the classical two K, and then also he has an introductory or brief guide or something like that, to Richard Hooker that those two books by Brad Little-John are fantastic and they help to be. And then there's all those themes are kind of interspersed throughout Stephen's book as well. So that's where I come from, theologically, and theology is such an important aspect to the way I see the world that I always have to come back to it. I actually like I want to get more into the political theory stuff, but I'm always driven back into the theology because it's the basis. You know, I don't think you can look at things in a fair and accurate way without understanding the historical development.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's really helpful. On the, I guess, the difference between classical two kingdoms and theonomy. Where do you see the advantage of classical two kingdoms? I know we talked about particularity but particularly in dealing with, say, current crises I know there's guys in kind of in this Christian national camp are a little different on that, but maybe for the theonomists like explaining classical two kingdoms a little bit and how it would be different.
Speaker 2:Well, classical two kingdoms is different than theonomy, because theonomy conceives, you know, in my well. It does two things. One, I think it treats our approach to problems as if they have to have biblical sanction at every level. There's a method, methodological approach there. They also borrow. They also see the structure of the covenants a little bit differently than I do and Stephen might disagree with me on this one, actually, because he's more Presbyterian. I actually came from the Baptist world, and so I don't see the covenants in the same way as I, as I as the Presbyterians do, and that we can. I don't know if I want to get into details like that, but the other thing too is, I think, what the two kingdoms paradigm offers.
Speaker 2:It's a way for us to seal off our spiritual citizenship as being you know, you could call it invisible, richard Hooker called it the mist our mystical citizenship, and throughout the entire world, everybody who's been elected, you know, by God before the foundations of the world, and is justified by faith in Christ. All of those, though, that's the invisible church and that's the invisible kingdom, and it's unmixed. There's no non saved people in that church, that invisible church, but there's also our relations and our commitments to our family. We have obligations and duties to our natural family, and natural family refers to creation based relationships. Just because you know I have relatives that aren't saved, does it mean that because they're not in the spiritual kingdom, I therefore can abandon them and I can treat them as exactly the same as some random person in Cambodia. I can actually have a natural instinct of fealty and duty and obligation to their well being, because I also live in the created kingdom. I also live in the natural kingdom, and the natural kingdom is, of course, mixed or are saved and there are unsaved, and we have a duty before God to build these kingdoms because we're human beings and that's what Adam had been tasked with is building kingdoms, and that's what human beings are for they're to create dominion and they're to rule the earth, and there's these natural obligations that I don't think that all these created and natural ties have been cut off and severed and burned because of the coming of Christ, because I believe that grace restores and it makes us able to fulfill our natural, created obligations and duties. I don't think it severs them at all, and so that's what the two kingdoms offers.
Speaker 2:It offers this perspective if, no matter what happens on this earth. I have citizenry in heaven, but in the meantime I do have obligations and duties that are part of my humanity, and I forget which book of the Bible calls these people that ignore their family obligations as sort of worse than devils. I think that's the phrases that it uses. Yeah, so I do see myself as belonging to two kingdoms and I have duties in both, and preaching the gospel is great, and preaching the gospel is the mechanism by which people can also join the invisible kingdom, but I don't think there's a call for neglect for our family duties. In fact, paul emphasizes this over and over and over again throughout his letters.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's really helpful. Before we move on from Christian nationalism, I want to ask you about the particular. Well, this is one of the spicy tweets in question. So this is from Jenna Ellis and she said and there it is, sien's and she's, of course, she's sub-twitting you. Sien's want a new revolution and demolition of the Union and the Constitution and they're willing to use force to achieve it. This is an open call for civil war. Every all caps American must all caps reject this Christian nationalist movement. And for point of reference, your original tweet was totalitarianism is what we have now. No Christian nationalist supports this. Many of us actually support the breakup and crushing of the United States regime and we are willing to use political means to do it. Let's start with your tweet. What are you trying to convey here in the original?
Speaker 2:tweet. There's this idea that we're a free people and Christian nationalists are one of the threats to that freedom and that we are approaching freedom by wanting to bring in tyranny. That's the framework through which James Lindsay, michael O'Fallon, owen Strain or whatever. That's the framework through which they're critiquing Christian nationalism. I reject that framework. My framework is the Constitution was great when it was a thing. Now it is not a thing and in fact it is used as a rhetorical bludgeoning device to prevent conservatives from fighting back. That's the function that the Constitution plays.
Speaker 2:The Constitution died 100 years ago. You could say it died in stages. There's particular moments throughout the last several hundred years that it was really given a severe blow. But I think that during the Progressive Era and the Managery Revolution in the 1930s, with the New Deal and FDR, and especially in the 1960s with the Civil Rights regime, the Constitution is no longer in operation. But what it does do is it allows the Democrats to tell the conservatives I'm sorry, you can't fight us here, because that's unconstitutional. It is a very powerful rhetorical device against historical, traditionalist, classical conservatives. For sure. That's the function that it plays. You can see that on display right here, because when I recognize that the enemies are already in the gates and they're trying to trans our kids, and I'm recognizing that we can't just pretend like it's 1950 or 1940 anymore, that we actually have to think more serious and more stark political terms. What do our so-called friends do? They say you can't do that because that's against the Constitution. They're playing right into the very way that the left wants them to play.
Speaker 2:My point is not that we're trying to confront freedom with totalitarianism. My point is that we have a totalitarian government and we need to think of new ways of constraining it and we need to think of new ways of defeating our enemies which are trying to exterminate us. That's my point. Totalitarianism is here. Totalitarianism is not our solution. Our solution is how do we confront our political enemies? Liberty, I think, is downstream from confronting your enemies. I don't think that we can just say things like we need to bring back liberty. That's not actually a mechanism of defeating enemies. It actually doesn't do anything. I could love to just say let's recreate 1870. That was the best time in America. Let's recreate that. That's not a mechanism of power, that doesn't do anything. You have to actually be willing to wield power against particular threats. The particular threats now are vastly different than the particular threats in 1780s, when the Constitution was written.
Speaker 1:That's really interesting and maybe this is where you're a quote on having a little bit of less optimistic, a little bit of realism. I guess what hit me was like okay, here you have. I mean, in my lifetime, in terms of anti-regime Trump is probably the closest thing we've had to any kind of resistance Outside of Papua canna was a little bit before my time politically, but maybe there's another one. I'm being successful at a national level Trump and some of the people close to him. I'm watching these people go after Christian nationalism and I'm thinking the best we have has no clue. They are unprepared for the fight.
Speaker 1:One of the things that it brought me to thinking through, especially as I started reading Charles Haywood, was I don't think the right is prepared to win. I don't think they're prepared to do what it takes to win. I don't even think, as Charles will say, you have to want to crush the left. It has to be the party of idiots and losers in your mind and you have to treat it that way. I want to get your feel on that. Do you think that's true? Do you have the same sense about the conservative ink? But conservative movement and even some of the best movements on the right?
Speaker 2:I think about the Roe v Wade issue. What is that? 50 years of legalized, federally legalized abortion and just how many millions, tens of millions of dollars were absorbed trying to fight that. When it was overturned, the abortion grift ended. These Republicans, this conservative movement I think they're going to have to do a lot of furloughing and a lot of firing if we actually win. They can no longer fundraise from old widow's pensions. They can't do that anymore. If we actually win, I do think they are hesitant to win. I think they've built an entire complex of compromising and of losing. It's like the loser industrial complex and they can't afford to win. They can't afford this new right. They can't afford people like us on the right that are not interested in compromises. We're not interested anymore in shaking hands with people that want to destroy our way of life. We actually want to restore and renew the things that we hold so dear. I don't think that they're prepared to win. I don't think they expect to win and I don't think it benefits their retirement plans to win.
Speaker 1:I don't know if you heard it. The other day I saw a clip floating around. Even Trump was talking about how the anti-abortion movement is like grifty. Did you see this clip? I was like, wow, he's even calling this out. For years people were saying that they were like, especially in the abolitionist movement. I would hear a lot of chatter and people would say you don't get it. A lot of the pro-life movements don't actually want to win because the minute they win they're going to go out of business.
Speaker 2:You can't fundraise on it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is the same thing with environmental stuff. If there's not a scare, if there's not a state of fear, then you're not going to make all that money and fly around the world in jets and tell people how dangerous stuff is. They've got to keep that racket going, which is sad to see. I think and this is where I want to move kind of in the last part of this show. Talk to me about Charles Haywood, franco. A lot of people have no clue. They're hearing this for the first time. Like Trump and RBG, I'm hearing this for the first time With Charles Haywood. Who is this guy? Why is he part of the discussion now, with Christian nationalism and another term we might get into which is no enemies to the right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Charles blogs at the word at the house. I've actually known about Charles for a long time before any of this was a thing and before Charles was a thing. So he's been reading for a long time. But he's someone that recognized very early on, back when I was still a libertarian flirting with anti-liberal, anti-democratic trends in our thinking. I had corresponded with him for a long time because there was a recognition that things weren't working as the myths said. They were going to work.
Speaker 2:I think Charles recognized that through his reading. He carved out for himself a really great opportunity because he sold his business and therefore he's economically secure. He can't be fired. The HR lady is not going to bring him to the office and reprimand him for something that he said on Twitter. That's a good place. It's a very freeing place. I mean, you're basically in that position. I'm basically in that position, but when you're in that position, I think and I was telling this to Andrew Isker the other day that you have an obligation, because there's so many of us are imprisoned by our economic situations, which is there's nothing wrong with that. You have to take care of your family first for sure, but for those of us that can say something. I think we are morally obligated to say something.
Speaker 2:I think Charles has done a very good job with that. He could have kicked back and just consumed his way into his old age if he wanted to, but he is willing to confront these things. He's willing to talk about and popularize a lot of these ideas that he's been reading over the years. So Charles is someone who's absorbed so much obscure right wing thinking from Europe, but also from the United States that's basically transpired over a thousand years. We have such a great archive of historical Western writings that deal with a lot of these difficulties and Charles has absorbed that and he's helping to shift the Overton window in a way that a lot of people can't.
Speaker 2:So I highly recommend his work. I trust his judgment, I trust his interpretation of things and he does a really good job of interpreting both the lay of the land politically but also the lay of land ideologically as well. So he's great and I know I think you mentioned, like Nedder, but like these are the conversations that need to be having talked about and he's doing that stuff. So I recommend people follow him and pay attention to him.
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Speaker 1:But something you said about having guys who are a little bit antifragile, at least to some extent, going out there and taking a beating. I heard this the other day because I'm going after all the whatever woke institutions and cultural idols of the day, whether it's feminism or whatever. One of my favorite things is when the feminists say, oh, you're a grifter. I'm like, yeah, it's like telling John the Baptist he's sitting in prison about to get his head cut off and they're like you know, this is pretty grifty of you, john. I'm like you know grifters should make money off of these things, but I do think there's a moral responsibility that many of us have.
Speaker 1:You're absolutely right to lay bare the problems, because there's a lot of people who, for whatever reason, it's like it would jeopardize your job, whatever. There just needs to be more people that are speaking out about this. One of the things that I really appreciated about Charles Haywood and one of the first things I read this is probably a couple of years ago, I guess was his work on Franco. And now it's funny because Owen and some other people are like you know, these guys are all about totalitarian dictatorship, have really like a you can tell a 30 second cursory reading of who Franco even is, are not really engaging that fully. But but I want to ask you you can respond to that and then I want to ask you just who is Franco? Why does that matter?
Speaker 2:I think part of the problem is is that they have no concept of the, of the political and what it means, you know. So they're like okay. So do we want 1780s constitutional convention or do we want Francisco Franco? Well, charles and all these guys want Franco, but I like George Washington, so I'm better, I'm more consistent with the American situation. Boom, case closed, like that's. That is a complete like annihilation of all of our contributions to political theory for a thousand years. Yeah, the question is for Spain, specifically in the 1930s was it better to have a military coup or was it better to have agents of Moscow? That was their option, uh-huh. And why is Franco so popular then and now? Because Franco was preferred to the agents of Moscow? Okay, he's. Yes, you're right. He's not a Thomas Jefferson accolade? Okay, so we get that. But that's not the debate here. And so these people can't think about things in terms of Particularity, they can't think about things in terms of trade-offs and therefore they have no actual concept of the political. They're ivory tower.
Speaker 2:This is one of the distinctions that I made in an article, you know, months ago the distinction between legal theory and political theory. They're two different things. Legal determines, you know, what is the best type of law. You know how. You know to what extent should law be universally applied, things like that. But we're talking political theory.
Speaker 2:Political theory is how do you wield power in light of ever-changing situations and circumstances? Wielding has to do. You know. Political theory has to do with things like sovereignty and authority and the exercise of power. Those things are distinct from legal theory.
Speaker 2:So we're not going to sit here and, you know, create a constitutional convention and come out with, you know, what is the best way to handle a British society in the 18th century. That's not what politics is. Politics is our. Here's the enemy, here's what they're doing to us, here's our list of priorities. We're going to respond in X way, given this list of priorities and given the things that are most Precious to us and the things that are most demonstrably Exasturbated right now with the rhetorical heat and the media and all these things.
Speaker 2:That's what politics is. So when we call for a Protestant Franco, not only are we saying that that's our ideal world, but we're also not saying that, you know, we want to make a Catholic United States. We're saying here's someone who recognized a state of emergency and he took action decisively. We want to do the same thing because this is a state of emergency. All these other guys, I think they fall for the cowardly Caterance to optimism that I talked about before. They don't want to face reality and therefore they're not willing to talk about things that sounds scary to them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's exactly right. One of the one of the areas where Charles I mean in fact, I saw I was in the Twitter spaces the other day on this very topic of Netter, or no enemies to the right. I think it's pretty misunderstood. He's got an article on it we can link to that. We've actually talked about it on the show before, but I actually found it very, very helpful. So I want you to break that down for me.
Speaker 1:Fundamentally, it seems like we've got this idea that was well understood on the left as part of their successful movement, that hey, if we attack each other, we're not gonna defeat the enemy. So really, it would be applying this to the right and saying, listen, you know, even, even, I would even say like Christian nationalism, g3 I find it incredibly stupid. For the most part, yeah, we should be friends and our enemies should be the left, and we should be working to take them out. Instead, there's a lot of infighting. Some of this may have to do with Protestantism, in the very nature of what it means to be somebody who's always protesting. All that said, I want to get your take on Netter. First of all, what is it? And then, how would you find a useful Concept in today's political arena.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think, no enemies to the right. I think is an instinct that recognizes that we no longer live in a liberal world. You know, I think Paul Gottfried is a personal hero of mine. He's someone who's influenced me a lot. He talks about the fact that, like, you could have these social clubs in, like Victorian England where all the Englishmen would come together and they'd be like on vastly different spectrums of the English political spectrum. Right, so you'd have, like you know, people like Gladstone versus people like Disraeli, like, and that was the big spectrum. But they could come together and have a meeting of the minds because if one of them won, it wasn't, it didn't mean the extermination of the other one. Right, no enemies to the right, I think is an instinct that recognizes that that world is gone and their people are actually interested and set on destroying us and eradicating our way of life, economically, sociologically, culturally, religiously. They have just no interest in keeping anything. You know, they want to turn everything into dust.
Speaker 2:And I think, no enemies to the right. What it means is not that you can't have debates, not that you can't have disagreements, you know. Not that we can't get in arguments or some stupid thing, not that we can't call each other out for stupid decisions that we make or stupid policy positions that we hold. What it means is we're not going to waste political capital canceling those who are Opposed to those very people that want to exterminate us. That's what it means. It means that we're not gonna. We're not gonna, we're not gonna help our enemies cancel those who would otherwise be our allies. That's what it means. No enemies means that we're not going to spend political resources, we're not going to use any, any ground that we, that we gain in politics or in media or in rhetoric, are not going to be used to help the left fight its war against us. I think that's what no enemies to the right means. So it's a helpful concept. It's, it's abstract and I think it just refers to an instinct. I mean those that are saying so you. You say we can't criticize Hitler like it's just such a waste of time. You know it's a recognition that there are friends and there are enemies.
Speaker 2:And I'm not good. No, I'm not gonna spend my time going after people on 4chan. I'm gonna spend my time at that. I live in California. I mean there's people literally Wanting to try to take my kids away because I'm not willing to affirm whatever gender thing has been imputed to them by the public school. My kids aren't in public schools, but if they were like, who knows what they would come up with and they could be taken away from me If I pushed back on that. That's my enemy, you know, not people on Twitter, not people that have that are, you know, putting out edgy memes like that's not my enemy. I'm not gonna spend. I'm not gonna spend political bandwidth on those people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really interesting too, because I think Charles points to as an example in his article of Roger air being kind of like case in point of how conservatives were burned people just to their right. This actually been going on for a long time, though, and you can you can think about things like William F Buckley and what happened John Birch society.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly what happened, even with Papi Cannon being driven out of Northman, north of Richmond, nro so you know North of Richmond online. So this has been going on for a long time. It seems like it's a conservative instinct. My question to you is why is that so ingrained? Because the left, they're very protective. I mean, if they've got an idiot on the left or like, ignore, we're gonna go after the right. Though if we have an enemy on the right, it's like we are so allergic, we are so afraid of ever being associated with it that, before even anybody even says that we need to, we're lining up to offer denouncements of the guy who's three inches to our right or left. So why, what? Why for?
Speaker 2:conservatives. Do we do that because liberalism is our cultural hegemony. I mean, that's that's. It's the thing that defines the priorities, it's the thing that sets the framework and boundaries. I mean liberalism, you know leftism. Liberalism and leftism are not the same, but really that like obsession with, you know, with tolerance, and you know the liberal consensus. It's something that completely captured and absorbed the conservative mind.
Speaker 2:The left has done better at breaking out of that. It's been better at Combating. That's why, like you have like a like a standard liberal, like RFK junior, you know who would have been very far to the left in like the 70s. That's why he has, like the New York Times and the Washington Post, have absolutely no patience for him, because they've they've Recognized that you know they're at war and he is not. He is not part of that, that team, and so there are no, they're not gonna cancel. You know fans of, you know Shay, or you know any of these radical Mao or any of these radical leftists. Who cares if they killed? You know tens of millions of slaughter, tens of millions of people. It doesn't matter to them because that's not their enemy. You know the heritage Americans are their enemy. That's who they're gonna spend their bandwidth on and the result of that is that they are masterful strategists. I mean, the left has conquered the Western world and they've done so masterfully.
Speaker 2:And we're sitting, we're sitting here Debating whether or not, you know, paul Gottfried should be allowed to publish in our art, in our, you know? You know, one of the worst, one of the worst offenders on cancel culture was Dinesh jisooza, like in the 90s when he got Sam Francis fired. From what was it? The Washington Times, I think it was. He got Sam Francis fired. I mean, he was at the cutting edge of cancel culture, and you know. And now he's complaining about the New York Times cancelling his, his documentary. You know, it's like well, maybe you shouldn't have canceled people on your right, you know, maybe you should have recognized that Sam Francis was an ally.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right. A good place, I think, for us to wrap things up. I just want to ask you one more question and I think if, if I could get anybody To start reading books on. You know, in the political spectrum I'm generally gonna say you know, read Pap. You can and I know we're not allowed to say it, but you need to read Sam Francis. You can still find articles. These guys saw problems 20 and 30 years ago, well before their time, on a lot of these issues and I think a lot of them paid the price for it. So paleo conservatism, paul Gottfried, definitely somebody to read. I know you've written and spoken about that as well. I guess making a plug for this if people aren't familiar with what I'm talking about. Why are these guys so important as thinkers, particularly in this cultural moment and political moment?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, they saw what was happening. You know. They recognize that. You know what's happening right now is is the end of a long process and you need to pay attention to the people that recognize that the problem Doesn't lie with the fruit, the problem lies with the foundation. You know, and I think a lot of people are like Ben Shapiro, they're, you know, they critique the fruit of things but they're not willing to go to the foundation. So you need to recognize those people who, who saw what was happening when it was happening.
Speaker 2:So you could read people like Garrett Garrett, like who's like a 1930s, like anti new deal guy. People think he they've got like no relevance to today. But if you see the shim of events that took place over the 20th century to get us here, you can see in him a willingness to look beyond the veil and see that things were Going to happen that have happened and they saw it. They saw why it happened and they saw what could have prevented it.
Speaker 2:Those are, those are difficult things to read because it makes you, I don't want to say blackpilled, but it does make you realize that we are up against a mountain, we are up against masses that have been completely brainwashed. We're against elitists who Are obsessed with their own drugs and their own addictions and you know they're all the things that they're pushing on us. They're actually true believers, which is really scary because they have a sort of a element of zealotry, you know, to their, to their efforts, but you need to recognize that these things go back and they don't just start in the managerial revolution. Of course you need to read, you know the counter enlightenment people. So I would say that the reason to read those people is because you can't accurately Conquer a beast unless you know where it came from.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so helpful. If you had to list top five books for people to get started, what would you recommend?
Speaker 2:here. So I would look up Joseph scotchy. He's written a lot on, like you know, the sort of revolution from the heartland I think you know he's done a lot of work on like pale I think his book on paleo conservatives is hard to find but he's got a couple other books like he's got. He's got a lot of works on just people that over the years that have recognized that you know, heritage America, legacy America, heritage America was being, was under assault and like in the in the 70s and 80s. I mean these are the people that Pat Buchanan read. You know these are the people that sort of you know allowed him to take the red pill. So I look up Joseph scotchy.
Speaker 2:If you're more academically minded, paul Gottfried is great. His book on the conservative movement I think it's called just the conservative movement in America that book really shook me. He's he's got a really difficult academic style. So if you're not, if you're not ready for that, you know you might want to, you know, just start with that Pat Buchanan or something. But if you really want to record it, like decipher the conservative movement, what happened, how it happened, you need to read Paul Gottfried.
Speaker 2:I mean he also has another book multiculturalism and the politics of guilt and he interprets sort of the collapse of liberal progressive America into the new left and how the conservative movement was sort of like a, you know a gatekeeping enterprise from the very beginning. You know his, he's had his thumb on that pulse, you know, for a long time. So Paul Gottfried, sam Francis, he he's actually, if you like, the more you know weighty intellectual stuff. He's got a book on political theory, you know formal, like a formal political science book, called Leviathan and its enemies, which is a good book. But the best, I think, the best you can do, and I've promised and teased Payload conservative reading list for some time now, eventually I'll get it done and I'll have more of a, you know, step one, step two type approach. But yeah, those, those people I think are worth getting started on awesome.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate it. Cj, thanks so much for coming on the show. Definitely appreciate the Conversation and for our listeners. You can follow CJ on Twitter. His handle is Contra Mordor and Hopefully we'll have that in the show notes as well. But again, cj, wonderful conversation. Thanks again so much for coming on the podcast. I enjoyed it. Thanks, eric. Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Hardman podcast and special shout out to our patreon supporters. If you're not yet a patreon supporter, you can join today for as little as five dollars a month, and that definitely helps Keep this work going. We are Glad to partner with you for content that builds a new Christendom and reclaims biblical masculinity. At the same time, you can check the show notes for the link to become a patreon supporter of the Hardman podcast today. Stay frosty, fight the good fight. Act like men.