Life After Conservatism

Am I a Conservative? What does it mean to be left or right anymore? Why does it feel like the major parties are falling apart?

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:05

The Communist Party of Australia was founded in the year 1920, but even before the advent of the Cold War, they were a fringe entity. They never managed to challenge the mainstream Labour Party in any meaningful way, and in their history they never once got an MP elected to Commonwealth Parliament, and were even banned for several years under controversial legislation. Too extreme for success at the ballot box, Communists tried their favourite tactic. They set their sights on infiltrating political institutions from the inside. They started with Labour's main base of support, unions, where they used Communist members to push their ideology. This inevitably moved through to local Labour branches. Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria, his friends called him Bob, was the working-class son of first-generation immigrants from Sicily. If you were to define the typical political insider of 1950s Australia, you would most certainly think of the wasp, white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Santa Maria was the opposite. Tan Italian Roman Catholic. A natural demographic fit for left-wing politics. Independent of each other, the story of how these two groups, Communist sympathizers and Italian immigrants, came to be in the Labour Party seems plain and unassuming, but put together, they were a gassy room looking for a spark. In 1930s Spain, political instability between Roman Catholic Conservatives and Communist Republicans erupted into a civil war. The Communists hated religion, and their wartime atrocities were some of the most feral the 20th century had to offer. Thousands of priests were killed, churches were burned, and nuns were raped. It was for this reason that staunchly Roman Catholic Australian Italians hated communism. They saw the ideology as an existential threat to their existence. Today, YouTube is littered with bearded millennial Roman Catholic debate bros, but Bob Santamaria was the original. As a university graduate in the 1940s, he began to coach his fellow Catholic Party members on how to debate with the Communists in local Victorian branch and union meetings, briefing them on their common arguments and how they might respond. This strategy was very successful. By the time World War II was over, the influence of the Catholic element of the Victorian Labour Party was too big to ignore. So big, in fact, that they began to make enemies of even the party's more moderate left-wing members. To cut a long story short, and trust me it's a very long and entertaining story, Santa Maria's faction was expelled from the Labour Party and brought several influential unions out the door with them. They formed a separate party not so elegantly called the Australian Labour Party Anti-Communist, which was then renamed the more memorable Democratic Labor Party. The DLP had a disastrous impact on Labour's electoral performance. They split the working class vote and recommended their preferences to the Liberals to boot. Many of us know that Robert Menzies is Australia's longest-serving Prime Minister, but few know that he owes that title to the DLP, who inadvertently ensured the coalition would govern Australia for the entirety of the 1950s and 60s. Today, when we think of religion in politics, we think of Tony Abbott or Scott Morrison. We tend to think of the Liberals and Nationals. The reason I'm telling you the story of Santa Maria and the DLP is because religious fervour and the Labour movement sounds so strange to us today, but not as strange as it did five or six years ago. Everyone can feel the political landscape shifting. For example, in the 2019 Commonwealth election, the Australian Christian lobby campaigned heavily for Scott Morrison. Yet in 2022, their fervor for Skoma had waned and they dropped their support. It seems that he was handcuffed. He tried to appease his Christian base without upsetting the moderates, and he tried to appease the moderates without upsetting the Christians. In the end, he pleased neither. Now in 2026, the Liberal Party doesn't know where it wants to go, and neither do Christian voters. Nature abhors a vacuum. Change is clearly coming for our political landscape. Perhaps Bob Santamaria was simply ahead of his time. Welcome back, fellow far-right extremists, and even if you're from the from the left, the far left, uh welcome to you guys too, because today we're going to be talking about life after conservatism. That's right, life after conservatism. We're continuing on in our series about how the world is going to change in the next few years. And if you didn't catch the last two episodes, then those ones are very good to listen to as well. Um in the first episode, which was the Ecclesiastes view of history, we talked about um just a little bit about why the world is changing and why it has to change, and um, and then uh the episode after that was called Life After Calvinism, because we're doing a we're gonna look at uh the three spheres of government um that are outlined in the Bible, which is the um church government or spiritual gov the spiritual realm, uh civil government and family government. Uh so today we're going to be looking at the civil realm. We've we've talked about um what I think is gonna be the next sort of um uh avenues of conflict in um in the in the realm of uh the spiritual, in the church realm, at least in the sort of Western Protestant church realm, because that's where I am. I'm uh Western Protestant, but today we're gonna be talking about the civil realm. And the uh the title of today's episode is Life After Conservatism. And it's a little bit the reason I chose that title, I was thinking maybe we could call it Life After Liberalism and get the L's going, the alliteration, but I'm calling it Life After Conservatism because um in the first episode when we talked about theological conflict, um the title Life After Calvinism, I think, was less about you know, no one's gonna be a Calvinist anymore to, you know, no one's gonna be a Calvinist registered trademark anymore. It's not gonna necessarily be um the great point of uh issue anymore in uh in um sort of our Protestant evangelical uh Western church life because it's gonna be overtaken by other things. Um but today I'm calling it life after conservatism because there's been a lot of talk in recent years of what is a conservative, who are the true conservatives, and there's been a lot of things saying, you know, you're not the true conservatives, we're the true conservatives, and it's all getting a little bit confusing. Um, and so today we're going to be talking about um what were the historical uh events and things that led to the current political consensus and why does it seem feel like the current political census is falling apart. And we did talk a little bit about this in the Ecclesiastes View of History episode, and it is falling apart, it's it seems to be coming apart at the seams, and in fact, we just had the South Australia election on Saturday just passed, and for must be the first time in a while, the major parties um did not take up the number one and number two spots in the popular vote. In fact, it was um uh Labour for a landslide, and then it was One Nation, a minor party. They got the next many popular votes, and then it was the then it was the Liberal Party. So things are really being shaken up. Um why are they uh where are they gonna go? It's clearly gonna be like we don't need to really talk about if it's gonna be shaken up or why it's gonna be shaken up, but because we know we know that it's getting shaken up. It's more about where it's gonna go, where it's gonna go. So in the civil realm, let's think about what really has what for the for the 20th century essentially, what has led to the current political consensus. And I think for that we need a short view back to the past. We need to first of all talk about the sort of founding myth of our political uh uh uh political system uh that we have right now, which is World War II. It all goes back to World War II. Um World War II is World War II is the founding myth. Okay, everything flows downstream from World War II and its consequences. So uh in the in the first part of the 20th century, um there was uh a thing that people decided to do uh called communism, and communism was a big flash in the pan. I'm not gonna go into details about what is communism or what is Bolshevism. Um that we we would be um here for a little bit. But anyway, what we need to know is that communism is very um it's very subversive to the status quo. It's very uh the communists talk about redistribution, they talk about nationalizing everything, seizing the means of production. So in that sense it's very um it's very counter to the status quo, and it's very counter to the status quo as well religiously. Communism is not friendly to to Christianity, um or really religion in general, but in in in Europe the main religion is um is Christianity, very anti uh Christianity. So what happened in the in the first part of the twentieth century was there really arose a reaction to communism in many places. And the without making it too much of a political term, because it is a very political pejorative these days, the thing that rose up in its place was fascism. And that happened in a few places. It happened in um the one of the most important places it happened before the war started was Spain, who had their own war. It basically Spain had a miniature World War II inside of itself. Um the communists uh were f uh fighting against the nationalists, and the nationalists ended up winning, um, which is the opposite of what happened uh in World War II. So the very pro-religious, very pro-order nationalists uh were fighting against the communists, and the communists actually attracted volunteers from all over the world, which is very interesting. George Orwell, who I I assume you would know from his books, uh 1984, Animal Farm, books like that, he actually went volunteered and fought with the communists. I don't think he saw much action, but he went and volunteered for the for the uh communists. Um he didn't die in the conflict or anything, obviously, but the nationalists won, and that was uh that was part of it. Italy also saw a rise of fascism, and so did um Germany under the uh Austrian painter um and politician uh Adolf Hitler. Now, it's not this is that the rise of fascism is sort of a side story, because as if history can be funny like that. It seems that you know the uh the narrative that seems to be building looks so firm, but then it's it sort of flips. And that's what we really saw in World War II. Because World War II uh I don't really care what anybody else says. Um World War II was a war between fascism and communism. Um we uh from us in Australia and the other English speaking countries, um we put a different sort of narrative over narrative spin over it. But let's just remember that really World War II was a war between fascism and communism. Um Hitler and Germany um well Britain and France declared war on Germany for many reasons, but they did, and he uh steamrolled through France, beat him back, England uh Britain had to had to jump ship, they had to evacuate, back to back to their island, their island home. And Hitler, which kind of makes sense, um, tried to um tried to ask for peace many times with Britain because um not because he's a nice guy or anything, but um because he didn't really it's in my opinion that he didn't really care so much about the West. You know, France was not really an ideological uh enemy for Hitler. England and uh rather Britain was not really an ideological enemy for Hitler. What Hitler really wanted to do was um go to war with the Soviet Union because there was a very big ideological enemy in the Soviet Union. And this is a little bit counter to to um what we sort of think of World War II as today. And that's because you know, y you always want to see yourself as the main character. So it just is what it is. But and a lot of people will say things as well, like if Hitler didn't invade the Soviet Union, he would have won the war. Um and to that I would say if Hitler didn't invade the Soviet Union, he wouldn't have been Hitler, he would have been somebody else, he would have been a completely different figure, um, and with completely different motives, and perhaps would have never invaded the West anyway. Um so he did he didn't make peace with Britain in the end, but he did decide to invade the Soviet Union, which was his plan all along, and it was the you know, largest invasion of Russia that we'd ever seen. Napoleon had tried it um a hundred and fifty years earlier. But uh less than that, actually, but hundred or so years earlier, but Hitler he invaded with millions and millions of men, and it was some of the bloodiest and hardest fighting of the entire war. But anyway, so it seems that this is shaping up to be a big conflict between fascism and communism. Um but for reasons that don't really matter, um the English speaking countries, Britain and America, needed to join the war, and they basically um chose to join the side of communism, uh, essentially. Um and because Britain had already been uh had already been at war with Germany and Britain has its own uh self-interests, uh Britain do Britain has a very big interest in not having a hegemonic power take over all of Europe. Um if you think about the way the world was back then, um, you know, Britain had been unmolested for a thousand years because of their island uh status and the only real thing that could threaten that would be a hegemonic total superpower taking over all of Europe. So obviously I see a lot of right-wing people, and I've d have definitely done this in the past, of criticizing Britain for continuing the war, um sort of against their self-interest, but really you've got to give them you've gotta give some um you know uh discounts to people having to make decisions at the time because hindsight is 2020, and it really doesn't make sense that Britain would do anything else other than join the war against Germany because they can't afford to have that sole superpower on the continent would threaten their existence really as it is. And in fact, they were getting ready to be invaded. Uh they were getting ready to repel an invasion. Obviously it didn't come, again again high sight hindsight is 2020. So for whatever reason, and for the reasons that don't really matter, the Anglo Sphere joined the war on the side of communism. Strange bedfellows, maybe. Ideologically aligned, probably not, but that's what they chose to do. And so obviously um with the effort uh war effort in Russia stalling, there was really not much um to be done um with the uh Allies pushing from one side in the west and the Soviets pushing in the east. Um it was a race to Moscow and uh Germany ended up losing that war. The f uh fascists uh were defeated by the communists. Um and so they all had a big conference saying we won won the war, this is so exciting, and you know, we had the Western people sitting at the same table as the communists, um, which looks strange in photographs now, but it's just um it's just a fact of uh history, I suppose. So what you had was a communist victory. Now inevitably um the the Western powers decided that, you know what, um communism is actually not very good. It actually kills lots of people. They make famines for no reasons to control the population. Communism, we've decided, is actually not great. And America are thinking to themselves, um, this idea of having this superpower on the other side of Europe who can threaten us um in their with their military and economy and etcetera that's actually not great. So we I know we won the war together, but this isn't uh this isn't good. We need to we need to put it put a stop to this. We need to contain this. Um we need we need to stop uh communism. Um and uh does that mean that um as in the first part of the twentieth century that America and Britain and Western Europe became fascists? Well no. No, they did not. Uh because they just fought a war against fascism, you see. And this is um this is why we put essentially, um, instead of instead of saying uh let's just r let's just talk about the normal mainstream narrative you would hear about World War Two, um, which is, you know, we needed to defend freedom. Uh, you know, we needed to go fight the Nazis to defend freedom. Um and obviously not that they knew anything about it at the time, but we um saw uh the Germans putting certain people into camps and uh working them to death and things like that. Um so obviously that uh that finding that out after the war definitely uh accelerated this narrative, but with the narrative was we need to fight for freedom. We need to we need to fight uh the oppressive fascist authoritarians in the name of freedom. And so the way the mainstream narrative would go is you know you it's sort of treating uh treating communism as just something that rose up after the fact. Um it uh we we won the war and the communists got really powerful, but that was kind of just a surprise. It was a kind of a like kind of like a oh we didn't know that was gonna happen, and also communism is very bad, but at least we we fought for freedom in the first place. Now, that's a better narrative than saying to your whole population, hey, um the communists got really big because we decided to fight the war on their side, and we don't uh we decided not to fight a war against them, we decided to fight uh with them, uh, and now we're pivoting. That wouldn't be as effective a narrative, I don't think. And so I think that's why the mainstream that I think that's why rather than a more um disconnected bird's eye view of saying that the war was about fascism and communism and the West had to pick a side, rather we put this West Western centric uh view on it of it was actually all along it was about it was about freedom versus authoritarianism and the um communists were sort of a side character. And that's definitely I mean uh you know, I'm not you know a history uh history student or anything, you know what I mean? But certainly I remember I would recall the way you learn history from in high school and the way you learn history in, you know, the mainstream media really, and you know, and and in other media like um Battlefield 5 was a game about World War II. It came out when I was what 17 or 18, played a lot of Battlefield V. The Soviets are a side character in the Western in the Western recounting of the conflict. They're really a side character, and they just happen to be on our side, um, and that's how it's cast, rather than uh how what's more realistic in that it was um an ideological war between fascism and communism. So the war's over, and all of a sudden, it's a big surprise. Well, it shouldn't be a big surprise, but it's a big surprise. Communists uh have achieved absolute hegemony in Eastern Europe, um, and that is because basically we've won the war and now they've got no competitors essentially in Eastern Europe. So the Soviet Union becomes very powerful. Uh it becomes very powerful because not only uh have they won the war, um, they've also uh been able to essentially set up um you know, Germany is in the smackbang in the middle of Europe, essentially. So every country they had to quote unquote liberate or march their army every country they had to march their army through to get to Germany has essentially been liberated, but they've been set up as I said. Essentially a client puppet state of the United uh of the uh Soviet Union. Um and so the and so some of these countries which weren't part of the Soviet Union essentially were part of that what people would call the communist bloc, countries like Czechoslovakia, countries like Romania, um, countries like um uh Lithuania, no those those ones up there. Um so they've become very powerful, and essentially the the after the crisis of the world war of World War II is over, the new sort of season of history has started, and we have to sort of gear up for what's gonna be the next sort of um civil uh conflict. It's gonna be it's gonna be America um playing against the communist bloc, the West versus the communists, because these are the two big powers that are in the world now. And so essentially that um that West versus Communism tr uh uh trope is going to dominate the political sphere for the next eighty years. It's gonna dominate the entire political sphere, essentially to today. Um, and that's where we are right now. Um we talked about it in the in the other episode, um, but even things like the Liberal Party. Uh Robert Menzies founded the Liberal Party because he wanted to differentiate between the Communist sounding Labour Party, he wanted to be he wanted his party to be associated with freedom and democracy. He created a Liberal Party. And in fact, the the the Liberals, the Liberal politicians and liberal bigwigs of the day will openly say, you know, Joe Bjockey Peterson, well he was a national, but same thing. Joe Bjorcki Peterson was famous for saying, you know, if if nothing else works, just call the other guy a communist and it usually works. So that was kind of the attitude the attitude of the day because the you know the Reds, the commies, they're the really scary people because this is also a time when nuclear weapons are really a new thing on the scene. Um and it's uh for us young people who I was born in 2000, so this the uh you know the Berlin Wall had been over for a long for a while, um for people who are born after the fact, but during, um when the curtain was up and the uncertainty was rife, um the whole idea of there being a nuclear standoff that that was probably very um a very visceral thing in the back of everyone's mind. And so the the no wonder uh I'm not saying people are foolish for you know being scared of the communists under the bed or whatnot, but it was a very real possibility, um, and it was a very real um thing that could have happened, and we've seen we saw only with the benefit of hindsight a few times when it could have happened. You think of the Cuban Missile Crisis, you think of what was that one where I don't remember what it what it was, but there was there's one story of the Soviet submarine, they lose communication, they're not sure if the warheads have been have been launched, and they have to choose whether to launch the nukes or not, and they chose not to, and so several times, but probably we could have been very close to some sort of nuclear nuclear war, nuclear fallout, which would have been very bad. So this is the reason that this is colouring it's basically colouring the entire political landscape. This leftover this leftover loose end of communism at the end of World War II has turned into the defining thing of the next seculum. So the West essentially have to come up with their own ideology. Um the West, I in my opinion, didn't join uh World War II as an ideal for for for really for ideological reasons, but they joined it for practical reasons. But now that communism is on the rise and we need to oppose this uh strongly, we the time for being for not being ideological is done. We need to become ideological. And so what um I would define the ideology of the West in the 20th century would be uh liberalism is the best word to use, in my opinion. Now, liberalism is a little bit difficult to define, first of all, because it's still the water we swim in. Um we we still live in a liberal hegemony that probably is going to change very soon, but for the moment, it's still what colours everything, and so it's hard to really look objectively to define it because it is what we are still. Um it's also difficult to define because um liberalism at its core is a reaction to communism. It's not it's n it it it's like fascism, but fascism, I feel, um had certainly more of a ideological sort of uh foundation. It was different in other in some parts of the world than others. German fascism was very connected to um this idea of the German land, of the German people of um the here Hitler talked about we need more living room for the German people, it's very n nation focused. The Spanish um Spanish fascism was a little bit more religious, it was a little bit more Roman Catholicism focused and driven. But liberalism is proper is proper is a proper reaction, um in in in the sense that it's more um it's it it's it really was come up uh I think come up with on the fly. But it even though it's difficult to find, we'll have um we'll have a go. Liberal liberal values um number one we we could talk about capitalism. Now I think a lot of people cast the Cold War as a fight between capitalism and communism, and I really dislike that because it it it casts it as a battle of different ways of managing the economy, which I don't think is right. Um and it's because it's much more broader than that, because communism is not an economic system. Communism is not an economic system, it is a fully umbr it's a fully um comprehensive system of um of government, of culture, of everything, and that is as well because it is irreligious. Yeah, communism does not tolerate religion or Christianity. Um and so just as much and you can't so we can't I I I dislike casting it as capitalism versus communism. I prefer to talk about liberalism versus communism because it just makes more sense. It it is more it's more representative of what it actually was because liberalism is more easily be able to thought think of it as a ideology as a all in as a sort of more total uh encompassing of not just economics but culture, government, um, religion, and things like that. So capitalism is one aspect. Free markets was an important part of it. Um real real, real proper free markets um didn't really um wasn't really developed until you know the sort of Reagan Revolution in the 1980s. But certainly this idea of free trade um was something that was going on from the very beginning after the war. Um and um uh for example Britain um Britain had its own economic sphere sphere of influence, which it called the sterling area. It basically prioritized trade in the pound sterling in the British Empire, and so it was uh importing and exporting a lot of um a lot of goods from the Empire, and it was very profitable as well because um the uh you know that it created nice demand for the pound sterling because the colonies would uh need sterling to buy British imports, and in fact, when Britain bought import uh imported things from from the Empire like Australia, um, you know, if you have British pounds that you um you know if you sell goods for British pounds, you need to do something with those British pounds, and they almost always ended up going straight back into British banks. So Britain did very well with the sterling area, but because of the new um the new hegemony, the new king pin in town America, America was very um intent on forcing everybody to open up their trade, to trade with everyone, to trade with America, and this is something that we'll talk about in more depth in our next episode, which is going to be talking more about economics. But capitalism is certainly part of it. But I think part uh capitalism is um this idea of freedom, and I'm gonna use freedom in air quotes, you know, freedom trademark registered um in the economic sphere. But free freedom, quote unquote, was um is a great word to sum up uh the ideal ideology in a way because uh freedom of speech is a uh important uh tenant of liberalism, uh freedom uh of the press uh is an important tenant of uh liberalism. Um it's important for people to uh by the law be able to s and um de jure be able to say what they want and publish what they want, and uh and freedom of religion became a big part of liberalism. Um it was not for all of a sudden it was the age of religious conflict was over, not just between sort of this Catholic versus Protestant religious conflict of yesteryear, but really um it was important to to to relegate religion to the private life. Freedom of religion really meant that religion was for your private life, and in public life it's just going to be this sort of pluralism. We're gonna be at we're gonna accept um the idea of other religions because in l in liberalism uh religion is really something for the home. It's not for public. Uh in the public we all respect each other's religions and we um just operate on a sort of whatever it might be, common ground, common culture, and we're in the public realm we will operate without religion, and that's a very important part of it. So these are the sort of values, and there's good and bad to these um to these values. Uh obviously, if we're gonna look at the good first, I think is appropriate. Um, it was a prosperous time. It was a very prosperous time for for a lot of people in the West. Um uh, you know, uh America was spending a lot of the spoils of war, they were spending it in Europe, the Marshall Plan, they were uh giving uh helping to reconstruct and uh even in America they call the 1950s and early uh sixties, they called that the golden age of capitalism. It was a very prosperous time. Um and I don't think that um you know I think you can credit uh capitalism with that. It created a lot of prosperity for that time. Um freedom uh was was it was good to have that personal freedom because especially in these communist nations that you didn't have that personal freedom. Um people weren't it wasn't easy to leave these communist places, it wasn't easy to be a Christian in these communist places, and it wasn't very fun to be in these communist places. So for what it's worth, um it was a better it was a better place to be in the West. It was a better place to be, and in fact, people didn't want to jump over the Berlin Wall on the east to the eastern side, they wanted to jump to the western side. So there definitely was um good parts of liberalism. Um and obviously we talk about the good, we should talk about uh the bad as well. Um I think a lot of the bad parts about liberalism here's the thing all of the good parts of liberalism are front-loaded. All of the good parts happen immediately and uh the effects of which are available immediately. The prosperity was immediate, uh the freedom was immediate. Uh I think the bad things about liberalism take some time to take some time to settle in. Um so one of these I would say is on the subject of the freedom of religion and the pluralism. Having freedom of religion in the 1960s and operating on this sort of shared common stuff in in public is gonna be okay because Christianity was very hegemonic in Europe and America before before World War II. So everyone is steeped already in this Christian tradition. Um and in fact, Europe had been Christian for many, many, many years. And I don't mean Christian as in you know everybody was converted, you know, because we ultimately don't know who's converted or who's not. But these these um these European places had been sitting in Christian culture for for a thous for a thousand over a thousand years. And that's very important because you know, even for the people who you know don't, you know, don't really believe in God, they don't really trust in Jesus, they are sitting in this Christian culture for their entire life, and it colours everything that you see. And I think you only have to I think the really the only way to really see this is to look up is to look up or visit cultures that haven't been Christian or have only been Christian for a short time. Um, you know, I think it's really laughable and kind of funny that um people get into Eastern mysticism, they get into his they get into Hinduism, and it's often these hippie types who believe in free this, free that, love, equality. The people who believe in equality get into Eastern mysticism, but if you go to India, it still has this the you know the most brutal the most brutal dehumanizing caste system that you've ever seen. And I know that you know commie types rail against class in the West, and in f and you know, in they rail against England for having you know a house of lords and you know earls and dukes and kings and queens and stuff, and that's not equal or whatnot, but you don't really realize how bad it is until you go to some of these other countries. Like in England, you there were peasants and lords, but everybody everybody bore bore the image of God. Every man, woman, and child deserved but was afforded the dignity of being born in the in the image of God. Um whereas in places like India with this brutal caste system, it's not the case. It's not the case in India. Everyone's oppr it's really terrible. You know, everyone's oppressing the people below them. So basically, it's just a game of oppressing, you know, being oppressed and oppressing those below you. And um in these places, they don't believe that people are born with the image of God. I was taught I talked to a gentleman who'd been to India, he was an American, and he he said that visiting India made him reconvert to Christianity, essentially, because he was saying that just the amount of disregard for human life, the way the body, you know, dead bodies just on the side of the road, and I don't think he said they don't care about people dying like that because it's just not it's just another mouth, they don't have to feed. They don't believe in the image of God. So I think we take for granted the the uh just the great the of the of the scale in which having a Christian culture that has been Christian for a long time shapes our culture and shapes our understanding of the world. Um and that was definitely a reason that um liberalism was able to succeed uh with the freedom of religion in the first in the first parts is because essentially you throw off Christianity in the public sphere, but everyone is still behaving in a Christian way. Everyone is still relying on Christian morals. Um, you know, yeah uh a Western person, let maybe you know, you let wind back the clock fifty years. A Western person, you even if they claim to be an atheist, um, even if they claim to not believe in God, you quiz them and they still hold Christian morals to a certain extent. They bel they they still believe that everyone should have dignity, they still believe that you should love your neighbor. Um these are things that we and then for that reason we took we take these things for granted and we say we can have freedom of religion, which essentially means that we want to have we want to have the benefits of Christian religion but not the actual religion. And so I think we see um a lot of a lot uh now that we have freedom of religion coupled with high immigration, we are I'm not gonna comment on which cultures are doing which things, but we've seen this in Australia a little bit, but especially in places like England, um, we are really seeing the way that other cultures are not the same as us. They are not based on the same values, they are not based on this universal dignity of man, they believe more in an us and them. And there are there are terrible, terrible things going on in England where they do not respect human dignity, they do, they traffic people, they um they uh form these gangs, and we we um I don't you know I don't think we need to even go on. We've realized that we can't we are taking this Christian heritage for granted. And so it created a lot of prosperity because I think Christian values create prosperity because it leads to a high trust, and when we trust each other we can get things done, and that creates prosperity. But at the end of the day, we kind of we have to reap what we sow. We can't have the cake and eat it too, and for that reason I think that freedom of um freedom of religion has been a slow burn, a slow decay, whereas the foundation we we've basically been you know mining the foundation out from under ourselves, um, and only slowly realizing that we don't have uh anything to stand on. We don't have a common morality, we don't have a common culture, and in fact this idea of religion out of the public square and just in the private life has not has is not working anymore. Um we are realizing that what we really had was keeping Christianity in the home, keeping the benefits of Christianity in public, but being able to do whatever we wanted, and that's really coming to an end. Um that's been part of the bad. Um and I think also freedom of speech has been a great thing, but I think that that has slowly transformed into um essentially tyranny of the tyranny through uh the communication media, especially since before the internet came along. There is free speech, you are free to publish whatever you want, but um if that's the standard, then really the only the people who can afford to publish things, only the people who can afford to get things in front of people's eyes are really going to um be able to shape the narrative and in indeed shape the votes um uh through through the media. I know that sounds like s kind of a like a conspiracy boomer take, you know, it's the media, it's the media, but well and truly we take for granted the fact that we have social media these days. We take for granted the fact that we have Twitter or whatnot. Um, you know, back in the day there was only four channels, channel whatever it was, channel nine, channel ten, that's all we had. And we only had it whatever newspapers was published in your city. And if you wanted to say something different, you know, I mean you could write a letter to the editor, but he doesn't have to publish it. You can't publish and you you couldn't publish your opinion and have people see it. Or you couldn't follow people who had different opinions. It was really all controlled by whoever could afford to publish things. And this means that people with money and and and ideas to push are able to push them. Um, you know, I think people have this idea that, you know, it's the free market, it's this, it's that. You you know, you can you can you can just start a start a newspaper, start a podcast, start whatever, and people will listen to you if you have good ideas, but that's really not the case. Some of the most famous uh like take one of the most famous conservative uh publications in America, National Review, which has had such a um wide influence. National Review was set up with by people with money. They decided to set up National Review, they decided to hire William Buckley, and that's what you can do with money, and that's but and that freedom of speech is good, but that's what you can do when you have money and freedom of speech, is you can shape that narrative to your own will, and that's a privilege of the rich and powerful. Um, I think, and also that ties into democracy. I think democracy was another thing that was very good uh in the beginning, because um, you know, again, we've all have a shared culture and shared morals, um, in so much as we're all from this Christian culture, and and in that sense, democracy could work quite well because we have shared interests. Um, but but again, when when the rulers are chosen through democracy, whoever can sway the minds of the people are truly in control and as and again back when there was only four channels and two newspapers or whatever it might be that makes it really easy to be to let the tyranny of the rich the tyranny of the rich and powerful sway the people into doing whatever they want and I think that was that uh has ended up having a a poor impact I think it's been one of the bad things uh part of uh democracy because I think democracy I should have put that as a liberal value because well and truly democracy is probably one of the center stones one of the center doctrines of liberalism uh you can't have liberalism without democracy um the idea that um uh the that power comes from the people it does it doesn't come from top down it comes from the people and I think this has been uh created very poor outcomes and now that the idea has been played out we realise that the people people's opinions are swayed by every by every which way and people and but once we couple this with freedom of religion and immigration we real um and again you only have to point back to the UK who are an unfortunate negative um object less than a lot of these things in the very ethnic areas of the UK politics is not the um you know the democracy free speech democracy that we had in the beginning where we all voted and all had each other's interests in mind to a certain extent in these very ethnically diverse areas there are essential it's essentially race politics in these in these in these inner cities no maybe not London but so in these some of these other inner cities there is you've got the Muslim candidate you've got the Sikh candidate you've got the African candidate and you know you've got the major party it's turn it's turning into this the basically ethnic political battles where you just vote for the one that is your ethnicity that's not what was intended for democracy that's not what was intended at all so actually democracy I put in I I put democracy in the bad column especially because it it fits uh as well with this theme of the freedom of religion and the secularizing of the West under liberalism and this is an important part of liberalism um is this idea that power comes from the people this is a big enlightenment value um this is a big liberal value I think the idea I think this is foreign to a lot of people today but I I do believe that power comes from the top down it doesn't come from the bottom down because ultimately all power is from God and it and and um I think that the that governments of the past have done a better way of rec have done a better job at recognizing that than has democracy because we do live in a democracy really but we still live under a monarchy and I think that that's a I am actually a a a staunch monarchist and and I think it's part of it is because I am a Christian because if we follow the chain of power up the chain I know in actual you know de facto in in fact in Australia the power comes from the people because the people vote. But de jour by the book where does the power come from um you you can read the Constitution you can read that the ministers um and the executive part of our government um they serve at the pleasure of the governor general um and a lot of people don't know that that that um the governor general do has the is given the power to appoint and dismiss ministers including the prime minister and the the king um appoints I know that I the king appoints the governor general I know that it is our convention that the prime minister sp essentially gives you know the the king picks the governor general on the advice of the prime minister so in practice the prime minister appoints the governor general but by the book the king appoints the governor general and what's the king's title in Australia I don't have it exactly in front of me but the long title for the king in Australia is um his majesty King Charles by the grace of God King of Australia etc etc by the grace of God King of Australia it's f finally a recognition that you know we sometimes we don't get a choice that the king really is is in that sense chosen by God not because you know he has some sort of divine right to do whatever he wants but the king is whoever's born into it. It's really the only true um uh it's the only true uh egalitarian thing left is that it's the the king is not whoever's smartest or richest or most motivated it's whoever's born into it so it's very egalitarian in a way if you like but that's why I like the monarchy because it recognizes that power's from God even if it's only by the book that the power that the king is the king by the grace of God and he appoints the governor general who appoints our ministers who govern us um it's a direct chain back up to God. But in in other countries that are republics that's not recognized we have this belief that power comes from the people uh power comes from every man every man gets to vote uh for himself for his own interests I think that's been very destructive I think that realizing that uh I mean to say I think that abolishing this idea that God that the power comes from God I think we've um we've made ourselves kings of ourselves uh we've made ourselves rulers of ourselves and I think that's caused a lot of bad things and even practically I think democracy is breaking down um as uh as well as with the um ethnic votes uh that you see in the UK we just see that um the the politicians don't do what the people want because it turns out it's very easy to control a politician um as we've seen with the Jeffrey Epstein scandal um and uh you know in years gone by we've seen politicians do strange things we've seen politicians do thing that things that don't make sense that look stupid and we'd think to ourselves look at that politician he's so stupid if only I were in that role I would do the smart thing but it turns out that he he's not making that decision because he's stupid he's making that decision because he is on he's in the Epstein list and if he doesn't do what they want he is gonna get you know the pictures of him on Epstein Island are gonna come out and I think it would be very very foolish to believe that there's only one Jeffrey Epstein I think there's probably many many Ep Epsteins not that they're all called Jeffrey Epstein but I think this technique is certainly we'd be naive to believe that it was one isolated case probably there's lots of them probably there's lots of them so next time we see a politician doing something strange you just got to wonder who's got the pictures who's got the videos um you know who is and this is not even some conspiracy theory thing is who's donating to him if you if you see a politician doing something strange you've got to think in his shoes. Let's say a policy comes up and your biggest donor doesn't like it you've got to vote against it. So what are you gonna say to the press? Are you going to say I'm voting against this because my donor doesn't like it or are you going to make or rather you're gonna make up a reason to not vote for it and for that reason it would seem stupid. So we've actually seen that politicians aren't accountable to the people we have big problems with political parties being essentially owned by different interests that aren't the people so we we've seen um you know we call it the uni party because both of the parties you know they seem to have other interests you know traditionally we've seen that you know that the Liberal Party are more the party of bankers and the Labour Party are more the party of unions but we've seen increasingly more and more that it doesn't matter the big the major parties seem to be captured by everything and they just do the exact same thing. They're totally totally captured and I don't think that's a feat I think that's a feature not a bug of democracy. I don't think that you know you we just we just devolve into you know real democracy hasn't been tried and and that's ridiculous. I think democracy is a core tenant of liberalism and I think it's been a disaster so that's the good and those are also some of the bad so in the last episode I talked sort of about I call it the incongruency is you know um uh what the because sometimes it's like when you have it's like when it starts raining. If you're walking if you're walking on the side of the road and it starts raining um you put your umbrella up you know because you don't want to get wet um but let's say it slowly slowly slowly stops raining and all of a sudden because the decline has been so slow all of a sudden it's not raining at one bit anymore but you've still got your umbrella up I would call that a sort of incongruency is something was something served a purpose or was there for a reason at the beginning i.e the umbrella to stop the rain but over time it's become less useful less relevant and less necessary and now it's only there because it was useful before and we just haven't been we haven't checked to see whether we nearly need it anymore and in that case the that's the umbrella the umbrella is now that it's stopped raining the only reason the umbrella is up is because it was up before it's not for any uh it's not for any real reason and I think that's that's what I call an incongruency I think is a good term to use so what are the incongruencies um that we have today well one of the big ones I want to talk about is left versus right and these are just labels at the end of the day um and labels can only mean so much but labels are labels represent things and whether they're good or bad at representing it they they bring images and bring ideas to people's minds uh whether they are necessarily representative uh you know well uh the whether they represent things well or not saying I'm a le I'm left or I'm right um brings certain images into people's heads even if it might be different to different people so why are left and right weird terms now well what does left and right really mean um at the at its very core and at the very core um it comes from um the king at at court uh now if the king was sitting on his throne um you've you've you've probably heard of someone being called a right hand man or you know um you know that we know that um uh Jesus is you know seated at the right hand of the father the right sitting on the right hand side of the king was a was a sign of favor was a sign of um was a sign that the king was that you were on his side that the king liked you and so left and right if we really at the very core of it is about relationship to the establishment because if you were sitting on the left hand side that meant that you were not as in favor with the king um and and that is the image that evokes the idea of uh right wing being more um to do with the establishment and left wing to do less to do less with the establishment and be more about overturning the establishment um so essentially left and right are not are very are actually very dependent on context left and right really depend who's sitting on the throne to actually uh to actually have any idea uh what being left would mean or being right would mean now if we come to the start of our sort of civil um cycle of history after world war two um I know we talked a lot about liberalism but really um in the beginning um the religious um the religious vibe was still heavily Christian still way way heavily more christian than we are today um it when it was still um the uh people were still still holding to Christian mor morality and you can imagine even you know um my think of your grandma today your grandma was probably born in the forties or fifties probably if you're my age but if you're in the but if you're in the fifties um if you're a child in the fifties like my grandma um how old your grandma how old was my grandma's grandma in the nineteen fifties I actually don't my grandma's parents were born in the twenties so that means that I don't know the date of birth of my grandma's grandma but probably they were born some point at the turn of the century probably before so in the 1950s grandma was born in the 1800s which is a long time ago so really the living memory is goes quite far back and to a time that's very different and to a time that's actually still very Christian. So we hadn't been liberal for very long and we're still in this very Christian hegem hegemony religion wise. So when politics really started heating up in the um in the so it was sort of it was quite chill um quite unquote I don't know that's a gross oversimplification but in the in the 40s and 50s it was quite chill you know for example um you know we're used to like Donald Trump you know going on the debate stage and calling everyone an idiot and calling everyone ugly um but you know one of the presidents in the 1950s was Dwight Eisenhower they called him Ike was his um was his uh nickname and his presidential slogan was I like Ike wow that's pretty uh that's pretty I want to say lame but that's pretty reserved that's pretty chill if the if the crazy slogans were pulling out a I like Ike uh instead of Donald Trump you know calling um the Donald Trump like and that because how many good Donald Trump debate clips were there from 2015 and 2016 is so funny. Like what a time to be alive guys like just appreciate it. But realistically it was pretty chill but when when the culture warring and political warring sort of started to heat up in the 60s and 70s who was left and who is right well who is in the throne religiously Christianity is still in the throne uh religiously uh the then for it following that logic the status quo is still very Christian and adjacent so if you're on the right it probably means you're Christian and you're upholding this sort of pre-World War II status quo. So in the 60s and 70s if you're on the left then that means that you're probably opposed to Christianity. You're probably opposed to the Christian uh sort of adjacent status quo because that because as we said left and right is really dependent on context. So let's fast forward now to our current day um what is the religious hegemony it's sort of nothing. I don't know we I don't really know what the religious hegemony is but it's certainly not Christian. What's the political hegemony? Is it some sort of you know pre-World War II you know conservatism? Not at all. The institutions have actually been pr essentially uh you know fully captured by this by the leftists of the sixties and seventies. There isn't there is scarcely a you know conservative political public institution to be seen. And even you know I uh in my last job I was in in um in engineering when I would I would go into a lot of um public buildings to do surveys and let me tell you like the people you know you you get pretty good over the years I guess at profiling whether someone's sort of a left winger or a right winger and let me tell you these public places these public buildings these public offices are still very are still very left coded places even to this day so really now the religious hegemony is not Christian the political hegemony is certainly not conservative so what am I you know am I am am I a right winger am I a left winger well because it depends on context it really depends who's on the throne so I would even posit to you that I'm a left winger let me explain I'm a left winger what am I I am a staunch monarchist I am um very religious um some people would um call me extremist uh I'm a religious extremist I'm a staunch monarchist um what does that make me well is is is uh monarchy um on the throne right now well yeah literally they're on the throne but um the is the idea of creating new my and powerful monarchies in vogue right now no right now on the throne is democracy is religion is the Christian religion and expanding the public influence of the Christian religion on the throne right now not at all not at all the actual current thing is is quite anti-Christian it's about pretty much pushing every other religion that's not Christianity so you're beginning to see where yeah I'm I'm kind of um I'm kind of uh you know being obtuse um to to prove a point and saying that I'm a left winger but because you know people attach certain meanings to these labels in their head but what I'm saying is that people call me a right winger people call me a far right winger and I get why they do that but really if you take a look at it does that really make any sense what part of me is pro-establishment what what of my ideology has really to do with the establishment not very much not very much um and so that's just an example of how these political sort of systems are starting to break down and I think another way that they're starting to break down as we talked also about this in the Ecclesiastes episode is that political coalitions are breaking down political coalitions are breaking down and that was because everything was sort of colored by capitalism communism um in the 20th century pretty much well at least in English speaking countries and and and more generally there's basically everyone had the same setup. You had the Red Party who was the in terms of economics you had the Red Party who was the workers' rights party the more socialist party and you had the blue party who was the more capitalist party and the more business interests aligned party um except for America who are weird and they do it backwards but in all the other English speaking countries the Red Party is the labor labor union party um in terms of morals because it was sort because um Christian morals were hegemonic um the Red Party was a more of a natural bedfellow for progressive values more than conservative values because in a way workers' rights slash socialist policies are were inherently left wing because the establishment was more capitalism. You know business people and the rich and powerful are more naturally right wing because their of their ability to be close to the establishment and be the establishment. So because workers' rights and unions is is naturally left wing is naturally a antagonistic towards an establishment uh progressive social values kind of map neatly into the left wing party um the and so the you've and then you've got the blue party who in terms of economically are more close to the establishment because it's the party of business interests who are naturally establishment because they are more powerful and more money. So conservative social values Christian values sort of neatly map on to the Blue Party and I think this is basically the case everywhere. In Australia we had the Labour Party and the Liberal Party um uh in um Canada you have the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party in America in um in Britain you have the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. In America the only ones who do it different their red party is the business interests party and their blue party is the uh workers' rights party the Democrat Party and the Republican Party respectively so this was sort of the setup because it kind of made sense uh in terms of who was sitting on the throne and where the throne was at the time. But right now you're sort of seeing this you're sort of seeing this flip. Um you're sort of seeing this flip. Because who really is sitting on the throne uh now? Um because the left-wing political machine has been so successful at capturing any and all important institutions. So now that the the left-wing social red party people have essentially become the establishment through the capturing of public institutions. Because again, thinking casting my mind back to these, you know, public service buildings where I was doing these surveys, you know, you look at all the posters, you look at all the propaganda, it's very um, it's very left-coded propaganda. So these left-coded people who didn't have control of the institutions when the sort of political heat ramped up, by now they have gotten control of those institutions. So left-wing social values, as we would conceive them, have sort of become hegemonic. Um, you know, you're not really allowed to say, you know, you're not even allowed to say basic Christian controversial doctrines like abortion is bad, homosexuality is bad. That's not stuff you can really say in the public square because these progressive social values won and now they're the hegemony. So Christian values, you know, Christ traditional Christian social values, they were once naturally falling onto the right-hand side of politics because of their proximity to the establishment. Now, Christian values are against the status quo, they're against the establishment. In a way, traditional Christian social values of the the think of these political battles like anti-abortion, anti-gay marriage, these values are actually, by pure autistic type definition, these are left-wing values, these more naturally map onto the left wing. And I think you're seeing a very interesting thing is because you're seeing political realignment, and because the values, the hegemony of the values has flipped, you're gonna see, I think, the economic, you know, as we said before, there's sort of the economic and social uh values have to find alliances to be politically viable, as in the Red Party takes labor interests and progressive social interests in in uh to be politically viable. I think you're gonna see those economic and social issues split from each other and form different alliances. And I think that looking over to America in the last 10 years is the exact right way to look at this and see how this is happening. Donald Trump said things like the factories are shutting down, the uh we need to bring jobs back to America, we need to put on tariffs, and in fact, we had the big tariff fiasco. He's not meant to be on the t-s he's not meant to be in the tariff party, he's meant to be in the free trade party. What's going on? He's meant to be on that's meant to be a left-wing policy, but he's a right wing guy. This doesn't really make sense. So I think, and I think that this is only going to be par for the course. You're seeing the because now that the, you know, sort of professional class, the professional, institutional, intellectual class have been captured by left-wing social values, I really do think that there is this really terrible and kind of ugly uh way that the establishment elite and intellectuals turn their nose up at the common working man is because the common working man doesn't believe the same things that they do, you know, uh, which is sort of a tangent. But I do believe that you're gonna see those conservative traditional Christian values find that they are more naturally being bedfellows with the workers' rights party, with the union party, with the common man party, because you're really seeing that the common man is far more conservative socially than is the elites. The university educated political public service elites do not have traditional Christian social values. So I think that is the way that we are seeing it in the future is being realigned, and I think that this label of left versus right is going to become a lot um less relevant, and so that's why I'm calling it life after conservatism, because am I a conservative? I don't know. I don't, you know, because if the conservative party is for, you know, middle class people who own their own home and uh have a nice job, um, you know, that that doesn't really include me anymore. You know, it might have included me if I was born a generation earlier. I'm not saying that, you know, I'm saying I I probably, you know, I I've grown to really despise the Blue Party because I think they're a joke and I think they've betrayed all of their most loyal voters. But I'm I'm sure that if I was born a generation earlier, I would have been a loyal blue party voter. I would have been a loyal um, you know, business interest voter because of the of the way they uh advocate for values, or at least the way we perceive that they advocate for our values. But now that doesn't really represent me anymore. You know, socially I'm a left-winger, essentially, because Christianity is on the out. So in that definition, socially I'm a left-winger. Am I economically to do with the status quo? Am I one of the I read a book by I read the book by Saul Lalinsky, Rules for Radicals. He was this um political activist in that in that time of the 60s and 70s, left-wing activist. But he would he talked about the haves and the have nots. That's also a good way to think about the left and right, it's the haves and the haves nots, the right being the haves and the left being the have-nots. Economically, am I a have or a have not? Well, I'm not a have, like, you know, I don't, I, uh, you know, I don't have um, you know, I don't have a lot of money, I don't have a lot of income, you know. What am I like it might seem like a right wing thing to have a stay-at-home wife and have children when you're young. It might seem a right-wing thing, but economically is that right wing? Not at all. It's actually very difficult economically, and for that reason, I would say that economically I'm certainly a left-winger. You know, I'm not a have. I'm I'm naturally, I would naturally I would easily fall in line with these sort of left-wing political values like workers' rights and unions, etc. Even though I'm I still would probably be called a radical far-right person. And that's just an example of that's an that's just an example of the realignment that's happening. And that's how I think it's gonna happen. I think the the the ec the social values are gonna get up and they're gonna switch parties while the economic values stay the same. So that's what that's how I think this incongruency is gonna go some way to resolve itself. And potentially that um, you know, potentially the parties don't necessarily need to be the same parties. You know, I'm not gonna say, you know, perhaps it will be the case, you know, like in America, I think because the two-party system is very entrenched and the way just the way their voting system works, they vote for their head of state, which I think is very destructive and very divisive. But they vote for their head of state and in their specific system, the Electoral College system, it's very, very um, very detrimental to have more than two parties. So it's kind of you shoot, you shoot yourself in the foot with the vote splitting in that sense. So I think in America, there's a big chance that the party, you know, the party corporations, the party names are gonna stay the same, but the value's gonna flip. But I think um in a lot of other places, you're gonna see new parties form, and I think that's gonna be part of the way that happens. Especially in Britain, the major parties are not gonna win the next election. We don't know who it is that's gonna win, but the Tories are not gonna win. Um the Labour have just been stumbling through their government their period in government, they're not doing well. I would really quiz anyone to tell me who the opposition leader is. No, but I don't know what she I think she's a woman. I don't know what her name is, and I'd challenge anyone to tell me who is the opposition leader. Then the major party's not winning the next election. It's going to be uh probably a new party, whether that's the Nigel Farage party or the or the new um the new mega-based party that looks really good in br restore Britain, whether it who who knows who it's gonna be. I think you're gonna see new parties rising up. Um and I think that could be also the case in Australia. We've seen one nation doing very, very well. We've just seen one nation uh get more primary votes than the coalition for the first time in the South Australian election. Whether that's a flash in the pan and they're gonna break for break uh you know break it open for a new contender, I don't know. So it could be the case that new parties come in and um and take that um and and complete that realignment. And the last thing um we can talk about is that the world order is gonna change. And that's not some that sounds scary, like some sort of new the new world order, but it's just the case that the American slash Soviet world order hegemony is not gonna exist anymore. Obviously, it stopped existing because the Soviet Union stopped existing and therefore it was just the American world system. But America it's clear that America can't go on being the world police the world's policeman. As we speak right now, Iran has closed uh closed the Gulf to oil shipments going out. Petrol prices are spiking. Uh countries, including Australia, are releasing uh strategic oil reserves. Um it's and it's clear that it's clear that America can't go on being the world policeman. And that naturally is just gonna mean that the world order is gonna change. Whether there is another power that's gonna come up and rival America, I don't know. Whether it's gonna be more of a case where everyone stops being feral and says, look, America, Europe, Russia, everyone needs to come to the table and we need to treat each other with dignity as equals and we need to work something out. Whether it happens like that, I don't know. But clearly the world system is going to change because America, um, they they they can't to they that you know the dollar's not strong enough anymore to be the world policeman, the military is not strong enough anymore to be the world policeman, and that's sort of the reason that I think it's gonna change. And and ultimately, it's hard to tell how it's gonna change because we don't know how it's gonna shake out. And just as I said in the beginning of the episode, during you know, at the start of World War II, you probably thought that fascism and communism is gonna be the thing that's gonna dominate the next stretch of history, but lo and behold, it didn't. Yeah, you know, the West swept in and it became more about liberalism and communism. So the history turns in ways we don't expect. So at the end of the day, that's a really long-winded way of saying that is it it's gonna change. How is it gonna change? Well, we don't know, but it is gonna change. Um, and that's really that's really the uh that's really the long and the short of it. But I hope um I hope that um some of these ideas have been uh interesting and uh help you to understand the background and uh understand why things are prime to change and um even maybe some predictions and ways to prepare as well, but um keep an eye out. We've we um very excited for the next uh episode, which is gonna be one more life after episode. And this one um we've done uh church government, we've done civil government, and the last one is family government. And so in the next episode, I'm gonna be talking about economics. And the reason I'm gonna be talking about economics when I talk about family government is because I believe that economics is actually a very fleshy subject. Economics is about the roof over our heads, the food on our table. And in fact, we've heard a lot of talk about birth rates recently, no one's having any children, and why is that? Um, I think that that's uh there's a large part of that which is cultural, but I think there's a big, big part of it, which is economic, because if there's not enough there's not a big enough roof over your head or enough food on the table, you ain't having kids, and people are gonna choose not to have kids. So I think it's a very fleshy science, is economics. It's about food on the table. So for that reason, economics being the science of the dinner table, that's just only natural that when we talk about family government, we're gonna be talking about economics. So tune in uh for the next episode. Uh, I hope you enjoyed uh this one, and I want to thank you for listening and um yeah, stay safe, guys. Good night.