The Age of Feeling: Robert P. George on Truth and American Democracy

What happens when feelings become the test of truth?

Robert P. George joins Faithful Politics to talk about what he calls “the age of feeling,” a moment where many people treat personal emotion as the final word on what is true. George argues that this does not lead to tolerance. It often makes disagreement feel like a personal attack, which shuts down honest conversation and creates real problems for democracy. 

The conversation moves through faith, reason, truth, tribalism, intellectual humility, and the challenge of disagreeing with your own side. Will brings in Jonathan Haidt’s work on intuition and political identity, while Josh and George work through harder questions around same-sex marriage, gender, Obergefell, Loving v. Virginia, and the deeper moral assumptions underneath those debates.

At its core, this episode is about whether Americans can still disagree seriously without turning each other into enemies. George’s answer is that truth-seeking requires more than strong opinions. It requires reasons, evidence, humility, and the courage to listen when your tribe says one thing and your conscience says another.

website: robertpgeorge.com

Guest Bio

Robert P. George is the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton University and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He is a legal scholar, political philosopher, and public intellectual whose work focuses on natural law, constitutionalism, religious liberty, conscience, civil discourse, and moral reasoning in public life. He is the author of several books, including Conscience and Its Enemies, Making Men Moral, Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, and Truth Matters, co-authored with Cornel West. 

Support Sarah Stankorb’s work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091

Website: https://www.sarahstankorb.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The Supreme Court of the United States intervened with no basis in the text, logic, structure, or historical understanding of the Constitution, just like Hulk Line, and made up an answer and imposed an answer on the whole nation. Now the nation was going in different directions. Some states were embracing same-sex like Massachusetts, Minnesota, some were rejecting it, West Virginia, California of all places. But it was being resolved democratically, but of course short-circuited the democratic process.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

Well, hey there, folks. Welcome to another episode of Faithful Politics Podcast. I am Josh Bertram. I am your faithful host here on the Faithful Politics Podcast. And as always, I'm joined by our political host, Will. It's very good to see you, Will. Hey, it's good to see you, Josh. How is everything going? It's going well. Thanks for asking. Really excited to introduce today's guest. It's Robert P. George. He's one of America's leading legal scholars, political philosophers, and public intellectuals. Dr. George is the McCormick professor of jurisprudence at Princeton University and the founding director of James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions. He's the author of numerous influential books, including Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, Conscious and Its Enemies, What is Marriage and Truth Matters, co-authored with Cornell West. His work focuses on natural law, constitutionalism, religious liberty, civil discourse, and the moral foundations necessary for a free society. And we're super happy and thankful to have him on Faithful Politics. Dr. George, thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_02 1:41

It's my pleasure. Thank you. It's good to be on with Will.

SPEAKER_01 1:44

Absolutely. And so I gotta ask, in in a recent work that you have, you describe our moment as an age of feeling in your recent work. And I really just want to get right into what did you mean by that we're in an age of feeling? And why does this matter right now for American democracy for the moment that we are in?

SPEAKER_02 2:11

Sure. The historians, many historians, are fond of breaking up the eras or the epochs into the age of this and the age of that. So some historians tell us that the medieval period was the age of faith. Now, what do they mean by that? Well, they mean that for medieval thinkers, say the great medieval thinkers of the Jewish, Christian, and Muslim traditions, figures like Maimonides and Aquinas and Anselm and Al-Farabi and Averoese, for these thinkers, the ultimate touchstone of truth and therefore of justice, of goodness, of right, is conformity with the teachings of the faith, the religion, say the scripture of the religion, the Bible for Christians and Jews, the Quran for Muslims. Now, there's some truth in that, this idea that for the medieval, the Middle Ages is the age of faith, but it's also an oversimplification and potentially quite misleading. It's misleading if you take it to mean that the medieval thinkers in any of these traditions were what are called fideists, in other words, people who believe that the only knowledge or secure knowledge we can have is knowledge obtained from Scripture or from the authority of a religious structure. In fact, the medievals of all those traditions were great believers in the authority and power of reason. If you look at their work, you'll see a kind of harmony of faith and reason. Nevertheless, there is some truth in the idea that the medieval period was the age of faith, because the ultimate touchstone of truth and goodness and beauty and value, justice for the medievals, was conformity with findings of religion. Well, the along comes the Enlightenment era, a few hundred years later. And what do the historians call that era? Well, they call it the age of reason, sometimes the age of science. Now, what do they mean by that? Well, they mean that for the great Enlightenment thinkers, whether in Germany or in France or in Scotland or in England, the touchstone of truth and therefore of goodness, of justice, of right, and so forth is conformity with the findings of rational deliberation and inquiry. Science, for example. Now, there's an element of truth in that too, although it too is an oversimplification. And it can be misleading in the same way that the characterization of the medieval period is the age of faith can be misleading. It's misleading if you take it to mean that all or even most of the great Enlightenment thinkers in any of the countries of the Enlightenment were atheists or secularists or despised religion or didn't want to have anything to do with religion. In fact, many of the great Enlightenment figures were people of deep faith. Begin that list with Sir Isaac Newton. Yes. Nevertheless, although it can be misleading and you have to be careful, there is an element of truth in the idea that the Enlightenment was the age of reason. Well, okay. So I ask myself, if the medieval period is in some sense the age of faith, and the enlightenment is, again, in some sense, the age of reason, then in what age do we live? Now, the answer to that question will be okay, what do people today treat as the touchstone of truth? And therefore, of goodness and of justice and of right. And for a great many people today, to my regret for a great many people today, especially young people, and you know, I I I teach them all the time. For so many people today, the touchstone of truth is not faith, and it's not reason. Rather, it's feeling.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

I feel something is true.

SPEAKER_02 6:04

Yeah, I I feel therefore it's true. I feel that this is the the case. How do I figure out whether something's true? Well, it's not by looking into the scripture, it's not by conducting an experiment. Not through reason or logic, no, none of that. It's just how do I feel about it? And of course, that is to reduce so-called truth to subjectivism. Now, you might be tempted to think, okay, well, that's really not so bad because if people really think everybody has their own truth, you have your truth, I have my truth, there's no such thing as the truth, then people will be tolerant of each other and not try to impose their truth on people who see things differently and so forth. But as we have seen all too clearly, that's not the way it works out. And there's a reason for that. Once we've abandoned faith and reason, and we've come to identify truth with feeling, and you think you have your truth and I have my truth. Well, if you have your truth and I have my truth, and your truth is subjective and my truth is subjective, we have no basis or ground for or even reason to have a conversation. Because you got your truth and I have my truth, it's just how you feel. How you feel is how you feel. Can't be talked out of your feelings, right? So we don't have a conversation. What happens when you don't have a conversation? You begin to think, hey, no, wait a minute. This guy who doesn't agree with me, we gotta do something about him. He's an enemy. He's a bad guy. In fact, when we identify truth with our personal feelings, we will experience anybody who challenges us, who gives us a critique, who offers a different point of view, as as engaging in a personal attack on us. It's a personal assault. You're attacking me. Well, that shuts down a conversation really quickly. And when the conversation is shut down, authoritarianism is just around the corner, and you begin to trample people's free speech rights, force people to be silent when they disagree, force people force people to say things they don't believe in order not to be canceled or you know, accused of some terrible thing. You're a bigot, you're a racist, you're this, you're that. And we've seen it on our campuses. We saw how during that high woke period from roughly 2020 to the end of 2024, conversations were shut down. People who did dissent were very often victimized, vilified, uh defamed, canceled. So I think it's a big problem with the age of feeling. It does not lead to a polite, tolerant liberalism. It leads to an authoritarianism. It can be on the right, it can be on the left, it's not ideological. It can be any ideology, but it's authoritarian. And that is the enemy of truth. Cornell and I, Cornell West and I call our new book together, Truth Matters.

SPEAKER_01 9:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:07

And that's because we believe truth actually matters. It's important to be in touch with reality. But you don't get at the truth by consulting your viscera, consulting your feelings. You get at the truth by thinking really hard and by considering our arguments and evidence and being open to challenge and to criticism because we all know we're fallible.

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:29

We all know we can get it wrong. And we can be wrong not only. I'm preaching now, I'm sorry, but we can be wrong not only. Hey, I'm a preacher, I get it. Well, not only on the relatively minor, trivial, superficial things in life, we can be wrong. We poor, frail, fallible, fallen human fallen, right, preacher? Fallen human beings. Exactly. Issues of human nature, the human good, human dignity, human destiny.

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 9:56

But if we know we can be wrong, if we have that sense of our own fallibility, Cornell and I argue, if we have that sense, then far from wanting to shut down the critic or cancel him, we want to hear what he has to say. Because our one shot at swapping out whatever falsehoods are in our head and and and exchanging them for truth is to be open to a challenge to what we now believe. If we're not open to the challenge, if we shut down anybody who challenges us, we're just going to be constantly affirmed and reaffirmed what we already believed. Now, yeah, we'll be affirmed in what we believe that happens to be true, but we're also going to be affirmed in what we believe that happens to be false. And all of us know that there's some of that right in there. And it can be about the big stuff, not just about the minor trivial superficial stuff. End of sermon, Pastor.

SPEAKER_01 10:46

You love it. I think I'm going to get safe.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

It all depends how much you've been giving. I mean, that's sure. Probably a relationship. You're the pastor. But you know, Rob, I I love everything you just said. And I and I and I agree. I am a big fan of Jonathan Haidt. Oh, yes. My dear friend. Absolutely. Fans of the show will know this. I quote him all the time. And and what you're seeing really kind of seems like it maps onto a lot of his work, right? Rider Elephant, the whole intuition kind of thing. I mean, if I I I wrote a substack about this too, about, you know, if a person sees a Gadston flag and then like a pride sticker, depending on your political affiliation, you're gonna have your intuition is going to trigger something in you that is going to, you know, make you think, imagine, develop a narrative about, you know, the person who has that bumper sticker, right? And and it's like our reasoning is gonna help help us strengthen our arguments so that way like we we just feel better about it, about the way that we feel about, you know, MAGA or Pride or whatever, whatever groups. So, like, how do how do you how do you get around that? I mean, like, we are so evolutionary, like just wired to kind of like run on instinct, run intuition, you know, it's kind of what what keeps us from, you know, getting involved with the bad guys and staying with the good guys, kind of thing. So, like, how do you how do you how do you actually like train yourself to actually not, you know, be led by by the way you feel when when we do something so so so often?

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's a great question. Well, well, first let me say how much admiration I have for John Heidt. He and I are very, very close friends at all. We've learned a lot from each other, and uh I think he's just been such a force for good. I was I was just appalled, scandalized really recently when he was invited to give the commencement address at his university, at New York University, where he teaches. And he was protested and shouted at and booed by by students, confirming everything he had said about what I call the age of feeling, what he calls the coddling of the American uh the American mind. But boy, what a force for for good he is. And thank God that we've got people like John who are out there speaking. And notice John is not ideological. You know, he began on the liberal side, he's now moved more toward the sort of center, or maybe slightly to the right of center. It doesn't matter. He's not driven by an ideology here. He's driven by a desire to get people back to the idea of seeking truth. Honestly, with integrity, not just pushing an agenda, not just pushing a narrative, you know, not just trying to win for the sake of winning for my tribe or my group. Uh now let me get Will to your question. You're right about human nature. We, again, frail, fallen, fallible human beings, we naturally tend to wrap our emotions more or less tightly around our convictions, around our beliefs. Now, just in itself, that's not a bad thing. And in fact, in some ways, it's a good thing because we need some emotional investment in our beliefs in order to actually get anything done. And I'm not just talking here about, you know, big causes. I'm talking about it's the normal stuff of life. I mean, it's one thing to have the bare belief that, well, it would be a good thing to get the kids up in the morning, get their teeth brushed, get them washed up, get them dressed, get them to feed them breakfast, and get them off to school. But if all you've got's a bare belief and no investment in it, and you're tired, you know, as parents are, and you're not gonna get it done. You need some investment, some emotional investment in the beliefs to make good things happen. But but if we wrap our emotions, or when we wrap our emotions too tightly around our convictions, then that is the high road to dogmatism. You end up being a dogmatist, an ideologue, a tribalist, you're just in it to win. You want to shut down the other guy, you lose respect for other people, you lose respect for freedom of speech, for freedom of inquiry. You become an automaton. And you don't want to be that way. That's that's the worst in humanity. That's not the best in humanity. As imperfect as we are, we're capable of some great things, but we have to discipline ourselves and cultivate certain virtues in order to do that. And one of those is a certain amount of distance, let's call it intellectual humility, a certain amount of distance between our convictions and our emotions, so that that we can be open to criticism, to rethinking ourselves, to becoming our own best critic. And related to that, Will is we human beings, and again, it's not bad, but it can have bad consequences. We're we're by nature really tribal. We're built for community. Pastor, you know that as a as a as a Christian teacher, right? We're built for community. That's not a bad thing, that's a good thing. You know, families and local communities and churches and even national communities and the community of mankind, we're we're social creatures. We're inherently social, we're not isolated atoms. And yet, you know, and yet if we if we tie ourselves too closely to those, if we identify our very selves so closely with those communities, we become tribalists. And everything is about winning for our tribe. And we we close ourselves off to truth seeking and therefore to truth. So I'm not saying, you know, uh it's wrong to belong to communities, including communities that are created uh integrated around shared belief, like religions and political parties and things like that. Those are good. But again, if you get too tribal, if you can't find some distance between yourself and your tribe which will enable you to criticize your tribe, you're gonna end up in a bad place. And and and you're gonna and but on the other hand, if if if you do what I'm urging people to do, if you if you allow yourself to distance yourself a little from the tribe, I guarantee you this the time is gonna come for everybody. When the tribe is gonna say zig and your conscience is gonna say zag. And when they say zig and you zag, you're in big trouble. Cornell and I can both tell you a lot from our personal experiences about that. When you're expected to be up there, you know, in Cornell's case, you know, advocating for the progressive cause, and in my case for the conservative cause, but your conscience won't take you there. You think, look, our side on this issue, we're in the wrong place. I feel your pain, brother. It's not forgiving. The tribe is not forgiving. You know, suddenly you're an outcast, you know. You're a you're a heretic. You're you're you're you're a bad guy.

SPEAKER_00 17:35

Yeah, it's yeah, it's it's so true. I mean, I've I've I've said on the show a couple of times that I'm I'm someone in the middle of a of a political deconstruction. So speaking I've always been Democrat, always voted progressive. I mean, I'm born and raised in Southern California, you know. I mean, you can't get as progressive as I can or as I am or was. And but but it's like, you know, after Biden, Biden, I think, kind of did it for me. I wrote a I wrote a really lengthy substack called like Biden Lied or something. Uh as the progressive of the show, didn't get a lot of, you know, like nice thoughts and words or whatever, you know? I know what you mean. But but but but but but I felt it was necessary. And and my question to you is like, do you think is there a some sort of relationship between how ideological you are and how like how open or how easy it is for you to spot your own blind spots?

SPEAKER_02 18:33

No, no, that's that's what's interesting here. So some people will hear what Cornell says and what I say, and we're we're singing for the same hymnal on this, and they'll say, Oh, Robert George and Cornell West want everybody to be centrist. No. Cornell's not centrist, he's progressive. I'm not centrist, I'm conservative. So where you are on the ideological spectrum as a result of your reflections on the great issues of the day is one thing. But whether you are center, progressive, or conservative, you can and you should be open to argument, open to critique, respectful of the rights of other people, including their right to dissent from your opinion. Whether you're conservative or progressive, you should be willing to criticize your tribe or to say, folks, I'm just off on this one. I'm I'm not with I'm just, you know, I'm authorization on this one, I'm not, I'm not with you. I think we've gone down the wrong route. I mean, if you think about it just for a moment, step back from it, Will, and uh and Josh, just step back from it. What are the odds that all the truth about important issues is on one particular side of the political and ideological spectrum? Wouldn't that be an amazing coincidence?

SPEAKER_01 19:47

That'd be way easier. That'd be a bigger miracle than the resurrection. Yeah, I mean, that would be one heck of a miracle, wouldn't it?

SPEAKER_02 19:55

No, it's not gonna happen. So, uh and that's it's what's funny. I mean, you know, things that are considered conservative in one generation can completely shift in the other, you know. And sometimes they're they're they're not big moral issues, but sometimes they are they are big big moral issues. I mean, take take a contemporary issue, right? My fellow conservatives and I. Yeah. Yesterday, we thought tariffs were the worst thing in the world economically. Right. We're for free markets. Oh, yeah. Tariffs are tariffs are economy killers. Well, now, big go, you know, rabbit comes out of the tariffs. If you're a conservative, you've got to be for tariffs.

SPEAKER_00 20:37

You should read this. There's a book, Verlon Lewis and Hiram Lewis wrote a book called Myth of the Left and Right, and they go really, really deep into kind of the uh the left-right spectrum. They they propose, you know, folks that kind of naturally gravitate towards one political party or another, probably gonna butcher it, but it's called the like social theory of ideology, not not basically that people are born to automatically like this side or that side. It's like they like the one thing and then they just naturally adopt all the other positions.

SPEAKER_01 21:08

That's absolutely wherever they're accepted, right? I mean, like the what I think what you said, Robert, was so amazing and and true and insightful, like we care much more about social reality than we do ontological or or like some kind of epistemological reality. Like, hey, we know that this is truth. We care way more about fitting in than we do about the truth. And people just care more about fitting in naturally. And it and to be a truth seeker is very difficult. Like I'm facing this right now, and I know that you have faced this as well. Like I'm posting things online, and people are saying, like, you know, I've gone woke. I'm you know, going to hell essentially. God is condemning me all because I'm like con because I'm criticizing a 22 foot golden statue of our president that all these Christians Christians are somehow amazed at, as opposed to like, wait, what happened to like this guy cheated on his wife and he should be out of the office and impeached because he's a terrible president in the 90s and now, hey, don't worry about it. He was just kidding around. Someone else paid for it. Why are you so mad about it? His own private property. I'm like, oh my gosh, dude. But anyway, I don't need to get into all that.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Oh no, I remember I can't tell you my little things in 1998. So 1998, the Monica Lewinsky thing happens. And you know, I was really upset about that. I mean, you know, I I hadn't been a Clinton supporter, but I thought, you know, this is bad. This is the president of the United States. This is right there in the White House. I know it's not like 10 years ago, you know, this is right there in the White House. And I and I'm saying this is, you know, this is just absolutely unacceptable. And of course, all my liberal colleagues are saying, why are you so worked up and just said this, you know, the what, you know, what's the big deal? And then and I would say, I, you know, I don't want to be governed by an adulterer, right? I I just don't. And I want that to be the example for our for our kids, right? Kids look, I remember when I was growing up, looked up to the president, you know, whether it's Republican or Democrat, you know, it was kind of a kind of a role marker. We know they're not perfect. They're human beings just like the rest of us. But, you know, you expect a certain standard of behavior. Okay, well, you know, you fast forward to 2015. Like all the people who were patting me on the back and saying you're right when I was saying, I don't want to be governed by an adultery. Now all of a sudden, doesn't matter. It doesn't matter at all. Three wives, 180 girlfriends, porn spars, you know. No, that doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. You can't. What matters is his policies, what matters is and I said, wait a minute, aren't you the guys back when in 1998 when you were agreeing with me? And and you get the other thing in reverse, right? The people who say, oh, it doesn't matter. The Democrats delivered. It doesn't matter, you know, Clinton. He's just one, he's just a rogue guy, you know, he's a great president. Uh all of a sudden, oh Trump, well, you know, you can't have you can't have a person with bad morals like that. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:59

We just go from side to side. And that kind of illustrates the point that we're talking about, right? And so truth matters, which I I absolutely agree. And Will and I have talked about this so much, right? So so let's just take this for example. So maybe you can help us work through this problem. I know you're not a counselor, you're a political philosopher, you know, legal scholar, all of those things. But but you know what, here, but this is kind of more of though a truth argument epistemology question, not a counseling one. So Will and I disagree about same-sex marriage. We disagree about kind of like basically I was not, I did not want it to happen. I was very much in opposition in 2015. I have now that we're 11 years later, and I have my brother-in-law who's married to his husband under American law, right? And all that, like I I like I don't know how we put the cat back in the bag, right? I mean, like the toothpaste is out, so I don't like without violating rights, like I I don't know how to do that. And maybe you can speak on that. But like, I but certainly biblically and all that. So we've disagreed on that, right? I'm not trying to get into the arguments on that, though. Happy to hear. I know you've thought deeply and and wrote much about it. But how do we resolve this conflict? Right? So, so where like how do we figure out where we actually disagree about this issue? Because Will might be like, well, I just want people that are LGBTQ to have basic human rights. And I'm like, well, I do too. And then so then where do we go from there? Because we still disagree about what that means. So how do you recommend, like, where do we actually go? Truth matters. You and Cornell wrote a book about it. You you have such separate views on so many things, and yet you agree on this issue of truth matters. So how do we work through maybe an issue like same-sex marriage or any other thing, right? Any other major issue? It doesn't have to be that. But what where would we go from here to try to figure out how we can actually live out that truth matters and not just say it?

SPEAKER_02 26:16

Well, I think when two people disagree, especially in a democracy, I think this is generally true, even if you're not in a democracy, but especially in you know, a government not only of the people, which all government is, and not only for the people, which all good government is, even if it's the government of a benign despot, the government by the people. What our founders called a republic, a democracy, especially in this kind of setting. When two people disagree, it's incumbent upon them to engage each other in a truth-seeking spirit with intellectual humility, not just shouting at each other, not just preaching, but with a willingness to learn from the other guy. And I think the critical thing is for the interlocutors to do business in the proper currency of intellectual discourse. There is a currency of intellectual discourse, just as there's an economic currency. The economic currency is pounds and pence, uh pounds and pence in Britain, it's dollars and cents in the United States. Well, there's a currency of intellectual discourse, and that currency consists of reasons, arguments, and evidence. And I think that's all we can ask of each other. We can't ask of each other that you have to agree with me. We can't say, you know, unless you agree with me, you're a bad person. Unless you agree with me, you can't come to Thanksgiving dinner. Unless you agree with me, you're exiled from my life. But we can insist that we do business not with name-calling, not with manipulation. You've got to argue in my terms that prejudge that that establish who's gonna win in advance. You have to do business with reasons, arguments, and evidence. And if you look at the book that I wrote with my two former students, my my brilliant former students, uh Sharif Gyrgas, who's just been offered a chair at the uh Harvard Law School, which I'm very proud of, and uh Ryan Anderson, who's president of the Ethics Public Policy Center, in our book, What is Marriage, Man and Woman of Defense, we marshal the arguments, give the reasons, cite the evidence for believing that the proper understanding of marriage, not just as a private matter, but for a healthy society, recognizes marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife. And then people on the other side will give their reasons and arguments. So if I were trying to make up my mind on the issue, I would read, for example, my book with my co-authors or other books on this side. But then I would read, for example, works by my colleague Steve Messito here at Princeton, who argues in favor of same-sex marriage, or by Jonathan Roush at the Brookings Institution, or Andrew Sullivan. And then you should look at the engagement of the reasons, of the arguments by the people on the respective sides. So I've given my reasons for why I believe Professor Massito is a very good friend of mine, but nevertheless why I think he's wrong on this issue. And he's given his reasons for thinking why I and my co-authors are wrong on the issue. And then you're just gonna have to decide for yourself where you think the weight of reason resolves the matter. Like what the truth of the matter is, best we can tell, knowing we aren't guaranteed, you know, in this veil of tears to absolutely always get it right, as best we can tell where we are. So that's how I suggest dealing with it. Now, if in fact Josh, you and I are right on the substance of the of the issue, I would add the following. Well, even whether or not we're right. You raised the question, how should we resolve it as a society? Well, I think as a society, if you're a democracy, if you're a republic, it's gotta be resolved by democratic processes. And I think here was a really bad mistake. And that is the court intervened. The Supreme Court of the United States intervened with no basis in the text, logic, structure, or historical understanding of the Constitution, just out of whole clothes and made up an answer and imposed an answer on the whole nation. Now the nation was going in different directions. Some states were embracing same-sex marriage, Massachusetts, Minnesota, some were rejecting it. West Virginia, California, of all places. But it was being resolved democratically when the court short-circuited the democratic process. But there's one great thing about democracies, and that is there are no permanent wins and no permanent losses. There are no permanent winners and no permanent losers. The great thing about a democracy is you can always come back and fight another day. You can always say, look, you know, we've tried this experiment. We're into this 10 years now, we're into this 50 years now, whatever it is, and say, I don't think it's worked out the way you thought it would. I don't think this has been a positive thing. I think it's been a negative thing. And give your reasons, your arguments, or whatever they are, and try to persuade people, and then you you revisit it. Now, of course, the court's decision created facts on the ground, like did you say your brother or your brother-in-law, whoever it is. Yeah. So yeah, that's a real issue to deal with. And here I speak as a lawyer. The way we deal with those kinds of issues in the law is basically by grandfathering. You can't undo established rights, even if the court was mistaken in establishing those rights. So what you would have to do is say, well, look, we're overturning the the case is called um, yeah, the Obergefell case. We're overturning Obergafell, but we cannot disturb relationships and the legal status of relationships that were entered into under the law as it exists at the time. We can't have ex post facto laws. But what we can do is say that four states Montana, California, Florida, you know, whatever it is, that believe, or whose people believe by the democratic process it's been established that you know the state wants marriage to be husband and wife, they can decline to issue marriage licenses to anybody but one man and one woman. So you can't have polyamory or polygamy, you can't have same-sex marriage or anything like that. But for states who want it the other way, Massachusetts or Minnesota, they can they can have it the other way. Now, it would be a patchwork, but that's what our system is. We've got a federal system in the United States. Our founding fathers gave that to us. And on the whole, it's turned out to be a pretty good idea rather than having one centralized power. And family law has always been a state matter. It's not been a federal matter. Now, there's one leftover question that would still, nevertheless, be handled, and that is what obligation do states have to recognize contracts or other uh agreements that have been entered into under the laws of different states. And that would be an issue that would still have to be resolved. And I have some ideas about how I think they could and should be resolved, but that gets us into some more complicated territory. But you can see the basics of how I would suggest we handle the question.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

That makes sense. I'm curious because I don't have a a background in law or anything like that, although if you want to know a thing or two about OSHA, that's what my day job is. Oh, yeah, good.

SPEAKER_02 33:14

Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_00 33:15

But I I I'm curious about, you know, so Obergerfell created kind of this new law for same-sex couples to marry. And I don't know the the all the details of it, but but also like what I know about like Loving v. Virginia is like it allowed for you know interracial marriage. Like my my wife is white. So so generally whenever I approach like the same-sex marriage issue, I'm always I always kind of view it kind of through the context of just my own marriage. Like, you know, hey, back in 19, you know, prior to 1970, maybe I wouldn't be able to get married in Virginia. So so like are those two cases like the same or different in in the sense that the Supreme Court, you know, created new new rights for a certain group of marriage.

SPEAKER_02 33:57

Oh yeah. No, they're they're as different as night and day. Well the loving versus Virginia was not a case about what marriage is. It did not say blacks and whites cannot be married. That's there's no such thing as uh it's just not what marriage is. It punished you if you entered into an interracial marriage, recognizing it was actually a marriage. They just didn't want black people and white people to marry. Now, why wouldn't they want black people and white people to marry? It's because of an ideology of white supremacy. It's just straightforward. The the question in the case was not what is marriage. That's why we've entitled our book, What is marriage? Is is is sexual complementarity an essential part of it. E even the racist states were not arguing that racial not the opposite of complementarity, racial sameness wasn't the essence of marriage. Nobody thought that you couldn't marry your your wife. They just didn't want you to because they thought that was mongrelizing the race or whatever crazy things they said. O'Burgerfeld was about whether sexual complementarity is of the essence of of marriage, whether marriage is a comprehensive sharing of life, that is sharing at the biological, the spiritual, the intellectual, the rational dispositional, the emotional or affective uh levels, whose foundation and matrix is the bodily union, the biological union made uh possible by uh male-female sexual difference, sexual reproductive difference. Historically, going all the way back into antiquity, everybody understood marriage to be that. Even in societies that had no moral objections to homosexuality, some of the ancient Greek societies, city-states, for example, still did not have a concept of same-sex marriage because marriage was not considered to be fundamentally a matter of affective union. It was linked to the biological complementarity of male and female. So loving is a very different issue than Obergefeld. What Obergefell raises is as far as logical implications, is not, well, if we if we're reverse Obergefeld, that puts loving in jeopardy, not at all. It goes the other way. If Obergefell stands, if sex doesn't matter to marriage, then how and why can number matter? So now you have polyamorous polyamorous, so you know they call themselves families. Okay, polyamorous families, that is, groups of three or more people, not polygamy, that that's well known to history, where one man has two wives or three wives in two or three separate marriages. So James is married to Harriet, and he's got a separate marriage to Jill, and he's got a separate marriage to Veronica. In polyamory, you have three or four or five people who form a sexual partnership together of whatever mix of sexes. If sex doesn't matter, then how can number matter? And I think they're going to have logically a very strong case in some jurisdictions, Massachusetts is in the lead here, some local jurisdictions have already begun recognizing from the legal point of view, polyamorous uh relationships. Trevor Burrus, Jr. And and I and I think the ga the case against pol polygamy would collapse, and as people come to this country from countries and cultures where polygamy is permitted and even encouraged, you'll you'll find the pressure to recognize polygamous marriages as legitimate marriages to be eventually overwhelming.

SPEAKER_01 37:28

Trevor Burrus Yeah. I mean it's like I I that I completely agree with it. The logic makes so much sense to me. And I don't like maybe like I certainly can be and probably should be exposed to more like I've read the arguments on the other side, and I and and I want to be exposed to more arguments that I disagree with to continue to form me. But the idea that like what what is that thing that actually defines what marriage is? And if we take out that idea that there is some kind of complementarity inherent within our biology, within the idea that our right, the only system of our body that requires another person to be completed is the reproductive system. Every other system is self-contained within the body, right? And that's part of your argument, if I'm remembering correctly. And I just remember it's like, but that was so powerful to me because that makes sense. It's an actual, like I can look at it, it makes sense. The act itself, like, and of course, people can engage in orgies and things like that, but I'm saying that the actual act itself is going to be between one, like two people. That's what produces a person within the human species. And so it's like that just made sense to me.

SPEAKER_02 38:46

You know, I uh I I'm glad you brought that up because uh I can tell a little story. I uh often with my students when I'm uh raising this issue in my classes, I'll I'll begin by asking, all right, how many of you out there in class, how many of you students have a digestive system? Everybody's hand goes up. How many of you have a neural system? Everybody's hands go up. Now they know what the topic for the week is, so they know He's leading us somewhere here. Then I say, How many of you have a reproductive system? Now they know I'm up to something. And I'll see them very gingerly, very carefully begin, and they'll get their hand about halfway up, and I say, exactly right, you've got half a reproductive system. So from the social point of view, when we look at the social role of marriage, again across cultures and across time, what marriage is, is the relationship that brings together a man and a woman as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children born of their union, conferring, if all goes well, on those children the inestimable benefits of being brought up in the committed love, the partnership of the their biological progenitors, their mom and dad, the the people you go looking for if you were if you're adopted out and you you know that you're you got a biological mom out there, you got a biological dad out there, and giving those children the benefit of being brought up with both maternal and paternal influences and care, which I think is very valuable and important both for boys and for and for girls. Dad models for a boy, you know, what it means to be a man, and dad models in his behavior toward mom for a girl what she should expect and even demand of a man who wants her attention and her love. So I I think that from the social point of view is why law in the state, why society is interested in marriage at all, and why we don't treat marriage the way we treat baptisms or bar mitzvahs is just purely private, you know, kind of sacramental or or religious events. Marriage has a social significance, which is why all cultures have some legal regulation and recognition of marriage has a social dimension that uh implicates everybody. It's not it's not a purely private partner like a bar mitzvah or a private event like a baptism.

SPEAKER_01 41:14

Yeah, I mean that's really compelling to me, and it makes sense. I I want to dig into the idea that relates to this with body self-dualism in this idea.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

You've been reading my stuff.

SPEAKER_01 41:28

I follow you. I like uh I'm telling you, I know I botched that whole bio at the beginning. I'm gonna have to record a new one and put it in there. I'll have to explain. But I I I have a following. But I'm thinking about this idea, like, because this is I I keep getting hit with this idea of okay. So LGBTQ I'm just gonna use that because it because of its the category of people and how much controversy is around that, especially now, right now with the Trump administration, some of the ways that even they're thinking towards the LGBTQ community, the trans community in particular, and thinking right, okay, so we have basic rights, we have gender identity and study. And when I hear you talk, I hear something like there is something more than just a cultural, oh, this is a flimsy idea to masculinity or femininity, but there's something maybe deeper to those things in terms of like that a boy would need a model of a father that say a woman wouldn't be able to give him, and vice versa, for for I guess you would say maybe maximal or optimal or the best possible outcomes overall. And I think those are the kinds of things, right? Because like I do a couple of things. I do know actually of several polyamorous relationships. So it's not like at all, this is not this is becoming more and more common if we continue. I see it and it's happening. So I know this is real, what's going on, and they're they will want to be able to enter into some kind of union, likely, right? That's already being challenged, I'm sure.

SPEAKER_02 43:08

And and to be I mean, there are some jurisdictions that already legally recognize them.

SPEAKER_01 43:12

Okay, so it's already happening. All right. So so how do we deal with this from a truth perspective when it comes to say gender? So how do we take this gender question, this transgender question, and treat them with basic human rights? Because to Will's point that he makes, they are people, right? Of course. We all think they are people. Absolutely, no question about it. And so, how do we work through that tension of giving them in this society, giving them the equal rights that they need with while also protecting our own conscience and it and being able to say, like, hey, we think this is simple or we think this is whatever it might be? I guess you have to follow the medical community's findings to make any kind of medical. Diagnosis, right, or or statement. But I hope the question makes sense. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 44:04

Now in the uh process of unraveling a kind of highly politicized medicine and trying to get the politics out of medicine and get objective It it's happening, but it I mean it's it's having to undo a lot of the consequences of the politicization of medicine over the last few decades. So you know the European jurisdictions are now moving away from so-called gender-affirming care, especially for for minor children. England has abandoned it, the the Scandinavian countries for the most part. Here, even in the United States, the big medical associations are moving away from it. The American Pediatric Association was the most recent to move away from it. A lot of damage was done in the meantime to children, and you know, and that was politics. I mean, that wasn't science. It was the political capture of medical institutions. But you know, what what's done is done, you can't undo it. But we can prevent more bad stuff from happening in the future, at least. I was really glad that you mentioned this concept of body self-dualism, which is probably for most of our viewers and and listeners a pretty obscure, I'm sure. Trevor Burrus, Jr. But it's it's actually at the heart of many of our debates today. It's really at the heart of the debate about abortion, the debate about euthanasia, especially of uh severely uh cognitively disabled people, elderly people suffering from severe dementia and so forth, the transgender issue. This has to do with a question which humanity has always had to wrestle with, and that is the relationship between the material aspect of the human being, our bodies, and the, as best we can tell, immaterial aspect of the human being, or psychic aspect, or spiritual aspect, if you want to put it in religious terms. Are we psyches or minds? Is that fundamentally what you or I or will is? I mean, is the real will not what I'm looking at right now on the screen, that physical thing? Is the real will a psyche that I don't see that's inhabiting what I am seeing the body? So are we non-bodily persons who inhabit and use non-personal bodies, the body just being an extrinsic instrument of the person? Or are we unities of body and mind, or body and psyche, or body and spirit, or body and soul, such that the body, far from being a mere extrinsic instrument of the true self, considered as the psyche, the body is part of the personal reality of the human being. So when you ask, who is Robert George, you don't just say, well, he's this mind that we don't see, inhabiting a body that's not the real him, is an extrinsic instrument that he uses, like a driver driving a car, that we do get to get to see. This debate is very ancient. The philosopher whose views have largely shaped the Western understanding of these matters is Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher who was a student of Plato, who had a somewhat different view on this relationship of person and body, who was in turn a student of Socrates, whose views, of course, we don't know because they come to us mediated through through through Plato. Aristotle embraced the view that we are dynamic unities of body and mind, or body and soul, or body and spirit, that the psyche and the body are intrinsically related to each other. We're not ghosts in machines. The body's not a machine, the mind is not the ghost that inhabits the machine. And an awful law in the domain of ethics and therefore of public policy depends on whether we adopt the dualistic view that the real me is the psyche, and the body is just an extrinsic impersonal instrument of the real me considered as the psyche, or whether we take Aristotle's view, the technical name for it is hilomorphism. The hilomorphic view that our bodies are ourselves, that we are psyches, but we're psyches and bodies in a in a um in a unity, that we're a body-mind or body-soul unity. Now, if you take the view that the real person is the psyche, and if you take the view that the real person basically is the emotional center of the human being, and the body's just an extrinsic instrument, then it's possible to suppose that the real me is a female psyche trapped in a male body. So what do you do then? If the psyche is uncomfortable in the body, you fix the body. So you you know, you manipulate things to make the body resemble as much as possible, the kind of body that typically is inhabited by a female psyche. But if you take the view which I take, Aristotle's view, the hylomorphic view, that we are not minds inhabiting bodies, we're not ghosts and machines, that the body is part of the personal reality of the human being, every bit as much as the as the psyche, then we are our bodies, and our bodies are sexed. We we come as male or or female. That that's true even when you have uh disorders that uh create genital ambiguities and things like that. You're still fundamentally one sex or another. You're organized uh for the production of either the male or the female gamete. There is no third gamete, which is why there's no third sex, and why there's not sex isn't actually a spectrum, which I think some people falsely uh claim, but there's a binary, you're you're male or female. This is the sperm and egg, there are two gametes, not three, there's not some spectrum of gametes or something like that. So now take take the issue of marriage. If the real me is the psyche, the center of feeling and emotion, then what is personal unity? What is unity between two persons fundamentally? Whether it's a friendship, ordinary friendship or a marriage, it's unity at the affective level. Love in the emotional sense, the affective. AFF. Uh not EFF. AFF, affective sense. And now if that's your view, I mean if you if you got that that the real me is that, and so the real un the way two people can be united is affectively, then you're going to say, well, then there's no reason two people of the same sex can't be married, because they can form emotional bonds just like people of opposite sexes. Now, by the same token, you'd have to say that three or four more people could also have a a group marriage because they're capable of forming affected bonds. But if by contrast the real me is not the psyche inhabiting the body, but but the whole me, the psych the psyche-body, the mind-body unity, then the the person exists at multiple levels, at the biological level as a bodily creature, at the emotional level, to be sure, at the rational dispositional level, for those who are believers in the spiritual level. And so what unites people in a marriage, unlike an ordinary friendship, what's different about marriage is that it's a bodily relationship. At its very foundation, it's a bodily relationship where the bodily unity is made possible by sexual reproductive complementarity. And that's true whether one happens to be able to have children or not. That's why traditionally in our marriage law, marriage is consummated not by the conceiving of a child, but by sexual intercourse, so long as the sexual intercourse is of the sort that fulfills the behavioral conditions of procreation, even if the non-behavioral conditions of procreation don't happen to obtain. You're beyond the age of childbearing or you're you're have some illness or disease or a problem that creates infertility or or what or what have you. All at court in a marriage annulment case where an annulment is being sought on grounds of non-consummation needs to know is not whether a child was conceived, but whether the couple performed the act that would bring about a child if the non-behavioral conditions of procreation obtained. So you can see how deeply the question of what we are, whether we're ghosts in machines, minds inhabiting bodies, or the hylomorphic view that we're unity, how that how that determines our views on lots of things. Take euthanasia. Old Uncle Henry, okay? Uncle Henry now has slipped into a severe dementia, Alzheimer's disease, something like that. If the mind-body dualism view is true, the dualistic view is true, then you would say what a lot of people say, which is, well, that body there, it's breathing, it's eating, you know, it's doing all this stuff, but it's not really thinking. You know. That is Uncle Henry's body, but Uncle Henry's no longer in it. Uncle Henry's no longer there. So you can kill Uncle Henry, you can harvest his organs. You might be able to do a lot of good with those organs. You may be able to have five people or seven people with the heart and the liver and the kidneys, and you know, and all that. Because you're not really killing Uncle Henry, because Uncle Henry's Henry's gone. But if the hylomorphic view is is true, then that's still Uncle Henry. Because Uncle Henry's his body as much as he is his his mind. So you get all these hot button issues. You can see how the this fundamental question of philosophical anthropology, what am I? Am I a mind inhabiting a body or am I a unity? Makes all the difference.

SPEAKER_01 53:57

And I mean, I have so many questions about that, but of course, we don't have time to ask all those questions. So I will kind of this is kind of the last the last question. Like, where do you see the most hope right now? And where are you the most concerned? I guess you could start with maybe you're the most concerned, but then where do you see the most hope right now in our nation, in our democracy?

SPEAKER_02 54:27

I see. What I'm most concerned about is the age of feeling, that our young people will just buy into the idea that there's no such thing as truth out there. There's just your truth and my truth, and that just depends on how you feel. Because then we will have no control mechanisms over wayward passions and desires, and they can lead people to very dark places. This is what gives you a Hitler and a Stalin. And it becomes very authoritarian very fast. For the reasons I explained at the beginning of our conversation. So that's what I'm most concerned about. I think the Ur principle, the most foundational principle of all morality, is the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family. I think that's what we have to hang on to. And I worry in the age of feeling, people give that up. There are the good guys and the bad guys, there are people I like who agree with me, the people I don't like because they disagree with me, and we lose that principle. By the way, Pastor, where'd we get that principle? From Genesis 1. The idea that a human being, though fashioned from the mere dust of the earth, mortal stuff that will someday die and decay, is nevertheless made in the very image and likeness of the divine creator and ruler of all that is, the Imago Dei. It's just, it's just it's just critical. But if we fall into the idea that feeling determines what is is true, we're gonna we're gonna lose that. Uh what gives me the most hope? I get to work with young people every day. And while some of them are going down a wrong road here, even through that woke period of 2020 to late 2024, I saw so many courageous students who were really determined to get at the truth, who weren't buying this party line about your truth and my truth, were dedicated truth seekers and courageous truth speakers. I found them inspiring. I saw some of my adult colleagues hiding, censoring themselves, refusing to speak because they were terrorized in fear. And I saw my college sophomores speaking out, knowing they were gonna take a hit. They were gonna be called bad names on social media. They were gonna be ostracized, but nevertheless, they spoke out for what they believed in because they would they believed it was true and it was their duty. That is so inspiring to see that, especially in young people. Now, what young people need, jobs, is adult role models. That's where we're lacking right now. And it'd be great if you know if we had celebrities and politicians and public intellectuals. I don't hold out much hope there. Podcasters? Podcasters. I I think the role models that kids really need when it comes to developing integrity and character have to be supplied by mom and dad and grandma and grandpa and pastor and teacher and coach and librarian and boy scout lead, you know, the the kid people who know the kid by the name.

SPEAKER_01 57:24

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 57:25

And who the kid know by, no, the kids know personally. They've got to model these virtues. And they've got to uphold those principles. And they can't be hypocrites because kids they don't smoke out a hypocrite like that. If you say one thing, you act a different way, they're on you. You gotta actually live it. And I don't see enough of that. I mean, I'll tell you a good example. I was just thinking about this today, because we're all in academia today, completely flustered about what to do about cheating because of artificial intelligence. Our my university, Princeton, has just abolished a 133-year-old honor code, which enabled us to not proctor exams. Students were on the honor code. We've just abolished it last week. And people say it's because of AI. Well, that's part of the story. That's part of the story. It is it is very tempting because of AI for kids to cheat. More tempting than it used to be because it's easier to get away with. But that's not the whole story. Whole story goes back decades. I began seeing it very early in my career. It's parents not teaching their children not to cheat. It's parents not forming the consciences of their kids so that you wouldn't want them to be a cheater. I mean, that I'll tell you something. When I was a kid, unfortunately it never happened, but you know, when I cheated and got caught cheating, the school's punishment would have been the last thing I was worried about.

SPEAKER_01 58:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:57

I'd be facing mom and dad. That's what I'm gonna be worried about. Today, if we punish a kid for cheating, he doesn't worry about mom and dad. Mom and dad are gonna sue us. Mom and dad are gonna come in and and confront us because they want Junior to go to Goldman Sachs. And this is gonna be a bad mark on his on his record. I mean, we need parenting. You know, more overt. I mean, where the parent understands it'd be great to go to Goldman Sachs, but it'd be even better to have integrity. Parents are worried about Goldman Sachs, they're not worrying about integrity.

SPEAKER_01 59:34

I mean, you're you're inspiring me, brother.

unknown 59:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 59:37

I'm thinking about my kids. Do I need to just go punish them right now? I feel like I'm not being hard enough on the notch kids. No, but it's so good. I think it's absolutely true. I mean, it not it's only gonna get easier to be dumb and to not form moral virtue. It's only gonna get easier and easier with technology. It already has. So we're gonna have to force ourselves to do it and make ourselves do it and make our kids do it, and it's very difficult to do that. And I just really appreciate it, though.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

We really need to we really need to encourage moms and dads, grandmas and grandpas, aunties and uncles, and all those civil, you know, cat pastor, coach, teacher to just remember you know, whether our kids form integrity or not is up to you. And it's not your not your preaching at it. You don't have to preach at them that much. You can do a little preaching, that's good. It's modeling it. It's modeling it. Cornell is very good on this. Cornell makes the point that, you know, all cultures have saints and heroes. No, nobody's perfect, obviously, but they all have saints and heroes. Now, why do they have them? Because people learn more by example than they do by precept.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:45

That's why that's totally true, man. And it's what every single one of us needs. And thank you so much for coming on the show.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:54

Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:56

Robert, it's been like really a long time goal, and I appreciate it for me to speak with you. So thanks for doing that, and thanks for sharing your knowledge and your time with us. It's really been awesome. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:10

Well, thank you, Josh. Thank you, Will.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:12

Absolutely. And to our viewers, guys, thanks so much for joining us. We're gonna put links in the description in the show notes. You can check out Robert George's work. Make sure you go look at his site. And is there anything? I should have asked this. Is there anywhere you would like to send people to connect with you or find what you would like where your work is?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:33

You could go to my robertpjorge.com website. My articles and things are listed there. Speaking engagements, things I'm going to be doing are listed there. Uh also, some of your viewers, especially people of faith, would be interested probably in my project called Fidelity Month, which they can find at Fidelitymonth.com. That's a grassroots movement, which is aimed at trying to revive our people's understanding of the importance of fidelity to God, to spouses and families, and to our country and communities, these values that used to be our sources of unity and strength across all the divisions, race, ethnicity, cultural background, religion, but which have eroded. People no longer, all the polling data seem seem to show that people no longer think of patriotism as important as they used to think it was. And same with fidelity to your family, fidelity to God. So please do visit Fidelitymonth.com and you can see what you can do to become part of that movement.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:33

Aaron Powell Yeah. And and we we didn't we didn't ask also, are you playing the banjo anywhere anytime soon?

SPEAKER_02 1:02:39

Aaron Powell Oh, you know, I don't have any performances lined up. I've been playing, I've been playing quite a lot, quite a lot recently, actually, but but not public performances. It has been a while. The trouble is that I'm on the road giving lectures and attending board meetings and this and that so much I can't really be in a band. I used to love being in bands, but I just couldn't show up for the gigs and I'd miss rehearsals. So I'm I'm just for the moment, just playing on my own, but I'd love to get back to performing at some point. Well, since you brought it up, I wanted to assure people that I came by my banjo playing honestly. And as I said, I was born and brought up in the hills of West Virginia. You know, both my grandfathers were were coal miners. That's a place where banjos are issued to little boys at birth.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:23

I love that. That's so good. Well, again, thank you so much for being on here. It's been such a pleasure.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:29

My pleasure. Thank you. See you next time.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:31

Absolutely. Absolutely. Tour viewers, guys, thanks. And uh as always keep your conversations not right or left, but up. See you next time.