Givers, Doers, & Thinkers—A Podcast on Philanthropy and Civil Society
Givers, Doers, and Thinkers introduces listeners to the fascinating people and important ideas at the heart of American civil society. We speak with philanthropists, foundation leaders, reformers, social entrepreneurs, nonprofit executives, religious believers, historians, sociologists, philosophers, journalists, and anyone else who will help us understand contemporary civil society’s achievements and failures. We also sprinkle in practical advice for nonprofit leaders and fundraisers. This is the podcast for anyone interested in that vital space where philanthropy and civil society intersect.
Givers, Doers, & Thinkers—A Podcast on Philanthropy and Civil Society
John Pinheiro & the Dark Side of American Philanthropy
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This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy is joined by historian John Pinheiro to discuss the negative role philanthropy has sometimes played in American history. They discuss the “second great awakening,” anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic prejudice, the popularity of eugenics, how experts have turned apocalyptic, and the harm caused by even a well-intentioned technocratic mindset.
Center for Civil Society's YouTube Channel
Introduction to Philanthropy's Dark Side
Speaker 1This week on Givers , doers and Thinkers , we talk to historian John Pinero about the roots of American philanthropy . Most interestingly , we talk about its dark sides , including its historic associations with anti-Catholic prejudice , war and eugenics , and what all that reveals about one particular way of understanding and practicing philanthropy . Let's go Welcome to Givers , doers and Thinkers a podcast on philanthropy and civil society . I am Jeremy Beer and it's great to have you with us . Today is March 28 , 2025 , and I am excited to have as our guest my friend John Pinero , a historian and the author or editor of several books , including one that I really enjoyed , called Missionaries of Republicanism A Religious History of the Mexican-American War .
Speaker 1Now , that might sound like a narrowly focused book , but it's actually really illuminating on the topic we're going to talk about here today , which is some of the ugliness and prejudice that has accompanied mainstream American philanthropy and charitable institutions or , I might say , voluntary associations over the years . But first let me finish introducing John . He is Director of Research at the Acton Institute in Grand Rapids , michigan , from whose fancy studio he speaks with us today . As you can see , prior to joining Acton , john was professor of history at Aquinas College in Grand Rapids , where he chaired the history and philosophy departments , and , previous to Aquinas , john was assistant editor of the Papers of George Washington at the University of Virginia . In fact , his current book project is titled tentatively Beyond Burke George Washington and the Origins of American Conservatism , which I very much look forward to reading . John , how are you ?
Speaker 2I'm good . Thank you for having me , Jeremy . It's a pleasure to be on your podcast .
Speaker 1Yeah , thank you for joining . As I told you when I invited you on , we're sort of loosely focusing this season on the forthcoming American semi-quincentennial and I wanted to have a historian like you on to talk about that and sort of the less positive role that at times a sort of American philanthropy has played over the last couple of hundred years . So let's start by talking about progressivism with a capital P , and I'm going to have you kind of take us through a little bit of how progressivism has shaped philanthropic institutions over the years and what that has looked like . And I thought we would start with where your book really starts , the Missionaries of Republicanism book , or at least where it focuses . It's kind of that Tocquevillian era , the 1830s or so . Right , talk about what was motivating a lot of the associations that were forming at that time . What were they trying to do ? What did Tocqueville see ? What did he not see ? How was that all playing
Anti-Catholic Prejudice in Early Associations
Speaker 1out back then ?
Speaker 2Thanks , jeremy , for the question . So Tocqueville toured the United States in the 1820s , 1830s , and this was the time where the United States was becoming what , by the 1830s , was actually the most democratic country in the world . So it's important to know what that means in the 1830s , of course . But this was the case , and what he wanted to know was why the United States hadn't fallen apart yet . Why was it not going through recurrent revolutions and violence and upheaval and demagoguery like the United States have ? What could , what could he learn from the Americans ? And the most major thing he noted , among other things for why the Constitution was still working , was Americans fondness for associative life . And so he looked around in this , in this time and he said look , in England we'd see a great lord at the head of an effort , in France we would see the government at the head of an effort . But in America the Americans just form associations . They do it to build hospitals , schools , they do it to spread Bibles , they do it for any number of things , small things , big things , major things . They never really just look to the government . Now we know , of course the story with the progressives with a capital P is they're going to look to the government . But we're in an evolutionary part here , right .
Speaker 2And so in the 1820s and 30s the tradition was if you wanted to change somebody's mind , you actually talk to them . Somebody's mind , you actually talk to them . You talk to them , you change your mind , you make arguments , you try to educate their children . The point is , with these voluntary associations , this associative life that of course makes money , people are contributing their time but they're also contributing money . This is really where philanthropy starts . In the United States we see a few efforts in the 1700s , but it's really in the 1820s . I would relate it firstly , and there's a great book by Ronald Walters called American Reformers that does this a scholarly , academic work . I think it's a great book and what he says is you can't talk about the reform efforts and the associations and the philanthropy from this period without understanding the evangelical Protestant revivals of the time period , so nearly every one of these , the Great Awakening kind of happened right now .
Speaker 2This is the second Great Awakening they called it so the Great Awakening hadn't been called the Great Awak awakening until the 1820s , and then the uh protestants in america thought , wow , we're living through a time that seems like the 1730s and the 1740s . That was the first great awakening . Then this is the second , and this is when the evangelical protestant churches really took off in america the presbyterians and the baptists and the methodists . And what walter said is you can't understand their all these reform efforts if you don't understand the evangelicalism underlying them , the fact that they were . This was part of their faith . They were looking towards a new millennium . They thought the end of the world was near , and so they really wanted to clean up americans , the americans house , in order to pave the way for jesus to come back . Got I ?
Speaker 2always compare it to like so grandma's coming over and you live in a pretty clean house , but you know grandma's really going to look around quite a bit .
Speaker 2Right . So you just make it extra clean when , when grandma's coming . So when she comes she says , wow , this place looks great . And you know most , most people . There's just kind of a natural inclination when you have guests . Yeah .
Speaker 2But william lloyd garrison , the famous abolitionist , said look , we wouldn't be when we pray the lord's prayer thy kingdom come , thy will be done . There's a sense garrison thought and others , that there's reformers thought you could kind of push god's hand a little bit , give them a nudge like look at how good we're doing , come , come back now , look at all this stuff we're working on . And you see this in politics , but you see it in the churches as well . And so this is the world Tocqueville came into and there's just democratic fervent ferment . And Tocqueville said that the whole country just seems on the move everywhere . It's just a very vibrant time in american history . And so for the evangelicals that means they were , they wanted to , what they were funding schools , sunday schools . The sunday school movement started at this time , the sabbatarian movement to stop work on sundays . This is actually why the post office doesn't deliver mail .
Speaker 1I think they do now so there was a pre-sabbatarian time , though , when people were working on sundays you're saying seven days a week , even the post office , and then they , you know they rolled it back during this time period and this is a kind of sabbath observance .
Speaker 2You'd see , if you ever read , uh , the laurie engels wilder books , where the two girls have to sit in a chair and dad swats them if they move an inch on sunday and you better not laugh , you better not smile , and at least in the book and the missionaries of Republicanism .
Speaker 2this is why the Americans are so shocked that Mexicans are playing music and having a good time on Sunday when they're in Mexico , which is a very different culture from what they're used to in the United States , but anyway . So this would include the schools . The schools is , in some ways , where the dark side , I would say , comes in of philanthropy . The schools is , in some ways , where the dark side I would say comes in of philanthropy .
Speaker 2Talk about that . Public schools in America essentially were Protestant schools because that was the culture . And so what that meant is there was Bible reading in the schools , there was prayer in the schools , and I think there's a lot of American Christians now who would think , well , that would be kind of nice , considering the state of our culture . You know , wouldn't that be great to have a moral culture ? But what Catholics encountered Catholic immigrants specifically as immigration picked up in the 1830s what they encountered were efforts that they could not read their Bibles in the school . They had to read , say , the King James Bible in school . They couldn't pray their version of the Lord's Prayer school , they had to read , say , the king james bible . In school they couldn't pray their version of the lord's prayer , they had to pray the protestant translation of the lord's prayer .
Speaker 2And so there was this growing sense in the 1830s where there had been this kind of latent anti-catholicism in american history , left over from the english heritage , and it had been dampened down during the American Revolution when Americans fought on the same side against England . And it rises up in the 1830s and joins with this anti-immigrant sentiment and you get new , very American arguments for why we shouldn't have immigration and why we especially shouldn't have Catholic immigration , and why you should fund societies that want to spread the Protestant gospel or the pure gospel , as they called it into the West , into the South , but especially into the West . Everyone knew the future of the country was in the West . So if you wanted to raise money , you would say look , we're going to save the West and we're going to save it for Protestantism , and the reason we want to do that is only Protestants are capable of maintaining Republican government .
Speaker 2representative government and Catholics can't do that and they would give their arguments . So if you give us money , we'll make sure there's Protestant teachers and Protestant schools , et cetera in the West .
Speaker 1Yeah , there's a lot of fear of , I assume . So this is during the Mexican-American War or just after the Mexican-American War .
Speaker 2So this is in the lead up . So the 1820s it really starts to pick up in the 1820s . The war against Mexico started in 1846 and it didn't start over religion , but it certainly was . I argue in the book that this was the lens through which most Americans were able to make sense of it .
Speaker 1Yeah , because you were going to war against a country that wasn't capable of truly capable of being a democracy and also was sort of enthralled to a false sort of religion .
Speaker 2I mean it's so . It's the Catholic country next door . And the Texas Revolution in the 1830s was the first sort of wake up call about this . By the 1840s , look , mexico had had 14 presidents since the 1820s , none of whom had been elected . And if you're trying to make arguments that Catholics just can't do , republican government , and this is your next door Catholic neighbor .
Speaker 2And then the Catholic chaplains who were very controversial in the United States , that James K Polk sent to with the army into Mexico . They're even writing back saying , wow , we , we really got to reform the church here . It's , it's a mess . So even the even the Catholics kind of had this
Religion and the Mexican-American War
Speaker 2downward , downward look towards the Mexicans as well .
Speaker 1Yeah , so there's really a leveraging though of sort of anti-Catholic prejudice to um build up these um early , uh associative societies for spreading the gospel in the West .
Speaker 2Yeah , leveraging is is the exact right word . So we we'd like to usually think that the number one moral issue prior to the civil war in America was slavery Cause . Wouldn't that be nice . It's the most obvious , most obvious , it's . It's such an obvious affront to human dignity . Right , but in fact the tariff was number one .
Speaker 2We do hear about tariffs nowadays banking , internal improvements , the federal government funding them . But what those three things had in common was somehow the us government from the top down getting into your pocketbook , affecting the choices and what you do with your money , what you don't do with your money , so that kind of control from afar . But in fourth place and quickly rising by the 1850s it was number one until around the late 1850s , when it was supplanted by slavery was immigration . Yeah , three out of the four , three out of four , probably 75 percent of the immigrants were catholic . All the irish immigrants were catholic and about half of the german immigrants were catholic , and these were the two large groups coming in the 1820s and 30s . And so they come with their religion and they found schools , convents . They build churches . In the 1840s bishop hughes started building a saint patrick's cathedral in new York City , for example .
Speaker 1Right .
Speaker 2And so you start to look around your city and you think I thought we were an Anglo-Saxon Protestant country .
Speaker 1This is really different ?
Speaker 2Can these people really do ? They know what it means to be an American ? Are they capable of assimilation ? They don't worship in our language . They don't even speak our own language . I mean , the Irish don't arrive in most cases speaking English . They arrived speaking Irish , right , and so I mean they speak some English , but a lot of them are speaking Irish , and so there's the linguistic barrier .
Speaker 2What are those Catholics really doing in the confessional ? And so we start to get conspiracy theories , and they're promoted by two people primarily . Samuel fb morse was one of them and lyman beecher was another . And for our concern here we want to look at lyman beecher . Yeah , because he's the one who was supporting a lot of these western efforts and he would go on tours on the east coast . After he split with some folks over whether slavery was more important than anti-immigration and he went the anti-immigration route , he went back to Boston to raise money for his Western efforts and he talked about the threat of Catholicism to the American Republic . He helped propagate the theories that Morris did as well , that the pope was actually thinking about moving to the Mississippi republic . He helped propagate the theories that morris did as well , that the pope was actually thinking about moving to the mississippi river valley now .
Speaker 1This would have been a surprise to the pope . You haven't heard that .
Speaker 2That's wild really so , but conspiracism in some ways is . It's an old american tradition right , we like conspiracies and if you release all the documents about a conspiracy it's just say , well , there's probably more documents so the conspiracy just never , never dies .
Speaker 2But the conspiracy was with the upheavals in europe and the liberal revolutions , especially by the 1840s in europe . The pope's gonna get kicked out of rome , he's gonna come here . So what these immigrants are is an advanced army and , to use morris's words , they're led by their jesuit generals who are well schooled in all the arts of darkness . Indeed , sounds like something jk rowling would , would write , I guess . And so people , whether they believe the outlandish part of that or not , what they did think , particularly in boston , they look . They looked up at the hill , at this Ursuline convent that I talk about in the book , this very infamous incident , and thought that convent and school is not a sign that the First Amendment's great and our Constitution's great . That's a sign that we're letting in the wrong people , and those are all , of course , unmarried , successful women educating some of the cream of the crop of Boston .
Speaker 2So one night in the mid-1830s a mob burned it down to the ground , and then , by 1844 , there's anti-Catholic riots in Philadelphia . Yeah , the incident outside of Boston resulted from Lyman Beecher speaking tour in Boston , and it's one of these things where you say , well , did he tell them to go ? Do it ? No , he didn't , but he called the Catholics an existential threat and said this is why you have to give me money . And they thought well , I can't give him money , but I can , I can go burn down that building .
Speaker 2I can go beat up some nuns .
Speaker 2I can do that yeah , and fascinating at what percentage of americans um how popular was sort of anti-catholicism or at least anti-immigrant catholicism at the time we're talking about that's a great question , because when we talk about , I'd say , anti-immigrant or anti-Catholic sentiment , we always want to recall that Catholics could own property , they could own guns , they could do all sorts of things . Particularly African-American slaves couldn't , but also African-Americans and other places and free blacks in the South which numbered in the hundreds of thousands by the 1860s . So we want to have some perspective here with that and also with the Latter Day Saints by the 1830s and 40s . There was never a Catholic extermination order , but Missouri had a Mormon extermination order . So we kind of want to keep some perspective there .
Speaker 2I would say there was a general feel in terms of American identity that American identity was white , anglo-saxon , protestant this is what I talk about in the book and they formulate this as manifest destiny and they formulated an argument for territorial expansion and the only way to spread good Republican always with a lowercase r here I mean Republican government on the continent is to spread the American Republic . Theolics just aren't capable of that type of government . They're beholden to a foreign prince or they just their uh religion makes them backwards , backwards economically , backwards politically , etc . I would say in general that's a general feeling , but these violent acts were almost always condemned by elites and educated people and really the equivalent of what we now call middle class people . So in that sense , they're not everyone's not supporting this violence . If you wanted to measure popularity , we could look at New York state and Pennsylvania , which ended up with the Native American Party it was called . This was not a party of American Indians , but of nativists .
Speaker 1They had six congressmen .
Speaker 2They had the mayoralty of New York . They controlled the legislature in at least two states , so it was popular enough , and this is prior to the 1850s . What a lot of people know about the Know-Nothing ?
Speaker 1Party .
Speaker 2This is a predecessor of the more famous know-nothings that Abraham Lincoln tried to purge from the Republican Party in the late 1850s . So I wouldn't say it's a large percentage by any means supporting that kind of violence . But when the war comes , a lot of these voluntary societies say you know , we're usually pacifist and most of the evangelicals were abolitionists as well . So we should oppose this war because we , number one , think it's going to spread slavery and , number two , we're opposed to violence in general . But , gosh , we can spread the true faith to the shores . You start to see chosen people rhetoric and pushing the canaanites into the sea , and so a lot of these missionary organizations right around 1845 or 46 this is how they raised money . Then they toured eastern cities and talked about fund me so I can bring bibles into mexico as soon as our armies are done , I'll go in there with the bible , I'll go in there with the track . So this would be the American Home Missionary Society , the American Bible Society and the American Tract Society . And then there was at least one that was , I would call it almost like the non-military wing , or maybe almost the military wing of the Native American Party , that was the American Protestant Society . So they would be kind of involved in some of the violence . American part , that was the American Protestant Society . So they would be kind of involved in some of the violence at this time .
Speaker 2But those other missionary societies , I guess my point is , when you want to raise money and in an age of rising demagoguery , you can engage in demagoguery to do it . It's the sense of crisis , it's the apocalypticism , it's the finding somebody who's the problem . You give me money , I get the problem out of the way . Yeah , it's a , it's a short-term kind of thinking , of course . Yeah , certainly not a kind of thinking where you're gonna . That thinks of the primacy of culture and changing the culture over the long haul , or talking to people or morally persuading people , and it's very much saying well , art , let's just go in the wake of our armies . And you give me money and I'll make sure in the West there's Protestant schools and no Catholic schools .
Speaker 1It's interesting that this early date , 200 years ago , this sort of American , this particular form of the American genius arises right . Right , there's a certain kind of it's new , that's something new in the world right , because it's new . That's something new in the world right . These are associations , voluntary associations , at least at this kind of scale , participating in that kind of crusading work . I think it's something new . It's not associating to feed the poor in the village . This is something very different than that .
Speaker 2I mean to be fair , they did that too , but they also , yeah , we're doing this right . And I think the key , the key for me when I think of the , the tokevillian angle here in the civil society angle , is the us government , from the president on down , they're trying to push against this . They're very afraid that if the mexicans saw this as a religious war , yeah , and it'll really be a long drawn-out war .
Speaker 2So it's not a case of where ,
Progressive Era and Eugenics Movement
Speaker 2like nowadays , certain think tanks or associations might work behind the scenes or not so behind the scenes , with US government officials etc . And the money crossing in all different directions . This was very much a case of grassroots and in that sense that's I mean , that's certainly very american too . This is what impressed hope . This is what a democracy looks like . The ideas come from the bottom and so does the action , even yeah let's leap ahead .
Speaker 1Um , oh , I don't know . Another several generations talk about eugenics . Eugenics and progressivism and philanthropy . How do you understand ? We've we talked about this on this podcast a couple of times in the past with different guests , but how do you understand what the energy , where the energy came from behind the eugenics movement ? What sort of what sort of ideology was driving that and how , how philanthropy gets mixed up with it ?
Speaker 2I don't think we can . It's hard to understand for most Americans how popular eugenics really was , how respected it really was . We like to engage in what I condemn all the time , which is presentism , where we just , we just assume we would have been on the right side of everything in the past and we somehow would have had more knowledge than they had . We do this all the time and it's a terrible thing , but most of us really have a hard time understanding the eugenics movement and the support for it , because its culmination it seemed in many ways its horrible culmination was really the efforts in Nazi Germany , for instance , was really the efforts in nazi germany , for instance . So when you , when you go from encouraging versus discouraging some people to , uh , to procreate to sterilizing them , and then what's eventually ?
Speaker 2the next step will just like kill them now , right , and that's that's even faster , and that's that's kind of what the what the nazi regime does eventually , by the 1830s , 1930s this , I'm sorry , 19 , I'm still in the 19th century yes , yeah , the 1930s . So in the case of , in the case of americans , this was an age of what I'd call scientism and not science , and there's this kind of worship of all things scientific , and this was a scientific theory that goes very well with the scientific racialism of the time period , which said , in the United States , that , again , this started to evolve in the 1840s , but that the Anglo-Saxon race was somehow superior , whether it was biological or not . There were congenital things that made them choose the religion of free people , which was Protestant Christianity , the politics of free people , which was Republican government , and they were more productive . They had the biggest empire in the world , the British Empire , and then the second biggest , soon to be , they thought , the United States . This is where the future was moving , and so this is the age of social Darwinism , out of which we get this phrase , survival of the fittest , which doesn't come from Darwin Right , that comes from talking about social groups competing , and so , for most educated people , they thought well , this is what the scientists are saying .
Speaker 2So if you follow the science , as they were saying a few years ago , in this time period , you follow it into eugenics and you think , why do we want poor , suffering people and tuberculosis and all these things ? Let's just , let's just try to figure out how to make the race stronger . And that's what eugenics was all about . So they , they couldn't go and dig around in the genome and they couldn't make they didn't have CRISPR technology and they couldn't make techno babies and perfect babies and clones , but what they could do is figure out who they thought was inferior and didn't deserve to breed . So they would talk about the feeble minded and then we talk about others . And so where philanthropy gets wrapped up in the eugenics movement primarily was was giving funding to this kind of research in the United States and abroad . As you know , jeremy , better than I of research in the United States and abroad .
Speaker 2As you know Jeremy better than I do . The United States is the most philanthropic country in the world At Acton Institute . When we talk to other think tanks around the world , and in every case it's hard to get people from their own countries to give to them . It's just not in their culture . But it's really an American culture . So if you say I'm going to help these people all the way around the world , do this and they're doing some great stuff in Germany right now , why don't you give me some money for that ? And they're doing it . So the Carnegie things founded by the Carnegie Institution , the Rockefeller Foundation , eventually the Ford Foundation , a lot of these , that margaret sanger's uh birth control league , which eventually evolved into planned parenthood they're all involved in funding eugenics and they're . What are they funding ? Well , in terms of policy , they're funding court cases in favor of sterilization laws which are being uh challenged in various states , so forced sterilization laws , for instance , and eventually those are overturned and people nowadays they're horrified that this could happen . This was a respectable thing at the time .
Speaker 1That's right . Indiana led the way in forced sterilizations , if I recall correctly , and there's a famous Kerry Buck case , buck versus Bell . What's the ideology here ? How do we get from philanthropy , charity , helping in this more modest scale of helping people , to this , this big thinking like let's save the race , like what , what ? What's that shift ?
Speaker 2I think that's where we move into the capital P progressive . So you know , right around 1900 in the United States , by that time we have a college , educated , white collar populace , the middle class has been created and they're they're a professional class and a modern professional class and an urban professional class . So what ? What they learned in college , what they've learned in universities , is the way you do things is you engage in a study , you engage in a study of a problem , and once you engage in the study , you know exactly what to do , and then all it takes is action , and the action takes money . But once you put the two together , you can solve problems that nobody had ever solved before . You could solve poverty . Jesus might have told you hey , the poor are always going to be with you . But he was mistaken and we know better , and here's why .
Speaker 2So we , we call this now the technocratic mindset this idea that that there are people who can be omnicompetent and they're going to work for the government because only the government has the top down resources to do this , so that philanthropists were no longer talking about voluntary societies from the bottom up trying to do good even if they have good intentions , and bad results even if they have bad intentions . They were still bottom up by this time . It's the inclination , is a top down . This is the time period , this progressive era , theodore roosevelt , etc . This is the beginning of when you answer that question well , what needs to be done about this ? I don't know . Let's see what the government can do . This , this is when that starts and it picks up all the way through the 20th century . So I think it's a . It's an anthropological problem in the sense that they believe people are capable of the amount of knowledge necessary and the expertise necessary to solve problems , and it all that was lacking in the past was , was , will , maybe knowledge , but also also will scale .
Speaker 1Yeah , right , right , but really , ultimately , we're going to have the guts to do this the way it should be done . Yeah .
Speaker 2And I come , I come to you and I say , yeah , you , you want to eradicate hookworm in the South , give me money . And so that's fun and that's a great thing they're working on hookworm and tuberculosis .
Speaker 2They're working on a number of things at this time . There's a whole movement to fund schools for African-Americans , for instance , to try to equalize educational outcomes , et cetera at this time . So there's a lot of amazing good things going on in essence , etc at this time . So there's a lot of amazing good things going on in essence , but it's a . It's that kind of model where the the top down people , the people at the top , just don't really have the knowledge . Yeah , but not only do they not have the knowledge , what they're doing and the way they're doing , it's actually damaging the very thing they're trying to help right right , and it also erodes the sort of habit of of associating voluntarily to take care of problems on our own .
Speaker 1It kind of erodes democratic habits .
Speaker 2Yeah , you hollow out the middle right , and then there's this , you and the state , and so , in the name of protecting these individuals , there's nothing left that can really protect them . Now you just have to rely on the state .
Speaker 1So eugenics is an example of sort of the technocratic mindset without regard for the human person . There's no sort of , there's no inbuilt sort of parameter there that will hold on here , sort of parameter there that will hold on here . There are certain rights at play , there's a certain dignity being assaulted through the eugenics program . You make the point that there's another example of that that you would point to . Now that kind of is a similar technocratic mindset and a similar example of good intentions that actually harm people . What would that be ?
Speaker 2So that would be
Environmental Extremism and Technocracy
Speaker 2. There's much in the modern environmental movement that would match up to what you said very well . So I'm not talking about conservation , right , I'm not talking about efforts to stop in some foreign countries . This doesn't really happen in the United States , but particularly in places like Nigeria , in foreign countries . This doesn't really happen in the United States , but particularly in places like Nigeria , where there's a lack of the rule of law and clear title to lands , or that foreign companies come in and destroy forests and destroy farmland and leave behind toxic runoff , etc . We're not talking about that . We're talking about a movement I mentioned apocalypticism earlier that preaches an environmental apocalypse and the only way to overcome the apocalypse and get to the environmental millennium is to give them money .
Speaker 2And so these are folks who have this faulty view that there's . There's two ways I would describe it . There's two faulty views of the human person at play here . One is we're omnipotent , omnicompetent gods . We can overcome nature itself . They , what I make of nature is what I make of nature . Like I , I can do it . Nature doesn't matter .
Speaker 2But then there's the the person . Not the person is god , but this would be . The person is scourge and demon and we're like an infection on the earth . I actually have it . So the , the founder of Earth , first said quote man is no important than any other species . Sir David Attenborough , who's very popular for narrating nature shows , has called human beings a plague upon the earth . Paul Ehrlich , we need a new civilization . This is an environmental crisis . What's it going to solve ? I'll just quote him here the inequitable distribution of wealth and resources racism , sexism , religious prejudice and xenophobia . That's pretty amazing for a group that wants to save the whales and the trees , and I mean that's a lot to try to accomplish . But that's what I mean by the apocalyptices the world is going to end tomorrow if we don't do something . Give me money .
Speaker 2I recall when I was a wide-eyed college student and I think Greenpeace was always . They were always coming in and out of the campus and they had booths and I thought , okay , I like sea otters . I was living in California . I like otters , I was living in california . I like otters , I like whales . I don't like oil on my feet when I'm at the beach . I mean maybe there's , maybe there's , we have some common ground here . And I said what can I do ? They said just send us a check , yeah . And I said , well , I'm a college student . What are you sitting here ? I'm working at chick-fil-a , what do you ? I'll give you here's a dollar . I mean , what do you do you want ? But I can do something . I mean I understood that I could donate my leg . Maybe there's something you want me to do . Isn't there a sign I can hold up ? Can I go protest ? Something Like just send us a check ? Yeah , I remember getting on the phone with Greenpeace . It was in the end give us a check .
Speaker 1Not sure that's what you realized . That's what I'm pretty smart . It took me a little bit right . Well , what I like about your point is there's this combination of two things that are exactly the opposite , and this wouldn't just be the only example . One a too high view of the human , that we can , that we can solve this . The hayek has a great critique of this right that we can gain enough knowledge to solve something so big , that's so beyond what anybody can really do . But we can do that . From a few of us sitting here , we can write you the constitution for your part of the world , across the world . We can solve all these issues you talked about . There's a too high of a view , and then there's this too low of view . Right , we're a plague , we're a scourge talked about . There's this too high of a view , and then there's this too low of a view . Right , we're a plague , we're a scourge human beings are . The earth will be better off when we're , all you know , extinct . It's just a crazy combination of views .
Speaker 2Well , that's why , you know , when the Greek wisdom was moderation in all things and temperance as a virtue . And here you see , this is certainly not the golden mean right , it's the two , it's two extremes . Now that the latter extreme though , where humans are a scourge , you notice , there's always somebody who , uh , to borrow uh Vladimir Lenin's terms , there's always somebody who's got to be the vanguard right , the workers can't really . They can't really run things .
Speaker 2I mean , they're good to have a revolution , revolution , but they're not going to run the revolution and so that , that idea that there's , there's somebody who is uh , um , as eric vogelin called it , who possesses that gnostic secret knowledge .
Speaker 2They have the secret plan , they have the know-how . This is the connection to the progressive era , but even earlier , the idea of rule by experts . Now , when I go , if my gallbladder starts to swell up or you know the appendix or something , or I have a sore tooth , I'm not going to take my sore tooth and go to I don't know the bowling alley , see if there's anyone around who can help , right ? I mean , there's experts for some things , but these are experts in all things , and the reason Vogelin called them modern Gnostics is because they have the knowledge . You don't and you just have to listen to them . And even when their results cause damage , either to the environment , to the human person , to the dignity of the human person , they'll ignore that , because if they don't ignore it , then they have to're not . They're not a small subset of the first half , you're the omnicom , omnicompetent god .
Speaker 1Yeah right , right , what I like , I think the other , the um interesting connection you're making here is that , uh , um , the rule of experts , um is always driven by uhocalypticism . Right , the reason we , how we drive you to accept the rule of experts , is to put forth an apocalyptic scenario that justifies it . Is that fair to say ?
Speaker 2Yeah , I think that's the downside of democracy , and again , tocqueville , of course , identified this as well . What's the easiest way to get somebody's vote ? Have them read a treatise on government and take five philosophy classes or to say those people are damaging exactly what helps you flourish and thrive . If you elect us , we'll take care of those people . And so you extend the crisis , and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum in the United States do this all the time . They've done it with race , they've done it with abortion , and you never really quite solve any of the problems you say you can solve , because the other people are causing problems . So it's just Aristotle identified this right , it's just demagoguery . And , of course , it works because we're not we're not omni-competent gods capable of perfection . Uh , we're .
Speaker 1We're creatures who have flaws right , yeah , and limitations , um , and speaking of that , uh , before I let you go , I wanted to make sure we had a chance to talk about another , uh , philanthropic initiative of questionable legitimacy , or it would be some of the work you've brought to the attention of the US Catholic bishops , I think , recently on foundations and their collaborations with certain international institutions regarding population growth and things like that . Can you talk about that work a little bit ?
Speaker 2Sure . So the Catholic Church , of course , is a worldwide organization and the bishops in it come from a multitude of experiences and nations around the world , like the current Pope , the Bishop of Rome , pope Francis . They come from Argentina , with the Peronist background in Argentina and the economic troubles of Argentina and how government has worked or not worked
Modern Challenges and International Institutions
Speaker 2in Argentina . They come from the United States . They come from Europe . One of the things Pope Francis talked about in his very popular encyclical La Dato' C was saying how there's ecological movements and they defend the integrity of the environment , which is a good thing , and they realize people are connected to the ecological landscape they live in , but then they won't apply those principles to human life and so we can't save the world by killing people , for instance . I mean , that seems simple , but you know , do you need to kill or experiment ? Do you need to experiment on humanity , like eugenics , to save it ? Do you need to kill a certain number of people in order to save the world ? Do you kill humanity to save the earth from from destruction ? However , pope Francis has also promoted working very , very closely to the United Nations and many of these international bodies and agencies , and what I have told bishops is . I just said maybe we need to cooperate with these agencies and with the UN . We meaning I'm speaking as Catholics here , talking to them . You know maybe Catholic bishops should cooperate and maybe they shouldn't , but you have to know who you're working with . The , the the UN as a political project requires compromise . The UN as a political project requires compromise , and so what we see in the UN Declaration of Human Rights . There's guidelines produced by the World Health Organization on human reproduction that promote abortion and sterilization and birth control . In the name of the country of the Netherlands , partnered with the UN Population Fund on . They usually call it sexual health or reproductive health . Sometimes the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation does this as well . Sexual and reproductive health . The World Economic Forum talked about the dangers of overpopulation . This is not the integral ecology that Francis and previously Pope Benedict talked about . So I mean my point is be careful who you're working with , because maybe 50 years from now people will look back like we like to look back on a high horse about eugenics and say I can't believe they thought you just had to kill people and sterilize people in developing countries . Like this is how you're going to save the world , and this is the World Health Organization .
Speaker 2Jacques Martin , the French philosopher , pointed this out , who helped write the UN human rights guidelines , kind of translating Catholic understanding to the human person in the secular language , and he had said that you know , the problem is , we can all agree at the UN that people have rights , as long as we don't dig too deeply into what the rights actually are .
Speaker 2And it turns out you can drive now I'm putting words in his mouth , but it because it's a compromise document , that declaration of human rights . You could , you could really drive a truck through the , through the holes in it , and that's , that's a problem . Right , you could , you could really drive a truck through the , through the holes in it , and that's , that's a problem . So that's just a , it's just a word of warning to say if you look at the , it's the un development goal . I had written it down in notes but I've mistaken , I I moved it somewhere . But the , the un development goals that have to do with having nice cities and comfortable cities , and you , you dig down deep and that's where . That's where all the things that I think run I would argue run contrary to human dignity are to be found .
Speaker 2And , and there's private philanthropic organizations connected but , also also governments , including the U S government . I , I , I would add so yeah , no it the US government . I would add .
Speaker 1Yeah , no , it's good . I'm glad you brought that to our attention and talked about that a little bit , john , and thank you for you . Know we celebrate the tradition of America's private philanthropy a lot , and rightly so , especially as we approach the semi-quincentennial . But I always like to remind people what the dark side of that has been , and there's more to it than what we just talked about in the last 45 or 50 minutes . But when it gets entangled with or seen through a technocratic lens maybe disconnected from its Christian or Jewish Jewish-Christian roots , maybe disconnected from its Christian or Jewish Jewish Christian roots can be a big . There can be major , major problems with it .
Speaker 2So yeah , thank you , jeremy . I mean , we're capable of great good , we're capable of great evil . We have to be aware of that all the time . It's UN sustainable development goal Number 11 . Okay , it rattles around eventually . Got it . Appreciate you , it rattles around eventually .
Speaker 1Got it , appreciate you . Thank you so much , john Pinero . People can follow you on X at what's your handle , dr John Pinero , dr John Pinero . On X , that's P I N H E I R O . And also at actinorg you can check out John's work and the work of the many other excellent scholars who are connected with the Acton Institute . So thank you , john , very much for being with us .
Speaker 2Absolutely . Thank you , it's my pleasure .
Speaker 1Hey , thanks for joining us for today's podcast . If you enjoyed it , we invite you to subscribe and or rate and or review us on YouTube , apple , spotify or wherever you listen to our podcasts . Thanks a lot .