[FULL] Dispensationalism and Reconstruction w/ George Bagby

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All right, George Bagbee, weo me to the Jay Burdon Show.
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How are you doing.
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I'm doing well. It's good to see you again.
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Yeah, believe me. I'm happy to have you back on.
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So this is a more topical episode than you and
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I normally do, and it concerns the doctrine of dispensationalism
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and Christian Zionism. This is obviously relevant to current events
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with the Israel Hamas War and then kind of why
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there is so much support for the US. But I
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consider it sort of a continuation of an episode you
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and I did about evangelicalism kind of problems with that
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in the US, and then also an extension of the
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episode I did with Filo that will be the previous
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numbered episode, which is about kind of the history of
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Zionism and kind of the relation between Zionists and Israel,
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the Jewish diaspora, and then Christians in America. So do
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you want to kind of just launch straight into this
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with a very broad kind of description of what dispensationalism is.
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Sure, So there's no avoiding the controversy on this, and
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I'm perhaps especially aware of it. I come from a
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dispensationalist background. I was raised Low Church Baptist, and many
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people that I'm closely allied to and tied to are
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dispensationalist and they define themselves that way. So I'm not
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going to avoid the controversy here, I'm going to grasp
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the controversy. Dispensationalism is a nineteenth century Anglo theological innovation.
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It's mostly confined to the English speaking world, and it's
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also mostly popular in the United States because the United
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States is far more religious than Great Britain Protestants these days.
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Dispensationalism involves a number of teachings, but two very important
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markers of dispensationalist theology are an ecclesiology that recognizes that
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God has a different relationship to Jews than he does
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to Christians, and that God has a different covenant with
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Jews than he does with Christians. So it's a split ecclesiology,
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and dispensationalists believe that God has a special covenantal protective
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arrangement with the Jewish people, and dispensationalists see that manifested
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in the modern state of Israel in particular. So this
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is why we see so much political support that's tied
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with emphatic religious belief when it comes to the state
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of Israel. Another great marker of dispensationalist belief is the
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doctrine of the Rapture or what critics might call the
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secret Coming of Christ. And the doctrine of the Rapture
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is the belief that Christ is not just going to
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come again with glory to judge the living and the dead,
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but Christ will come a third time or maybe a
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fourth or fifth time as well, all in the context
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of in Times teachings, and we aren't here to talk
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about that. I'm not prepared to talk about that, but
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I am content to say that that is an innovative
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belief as well. It has not been something that Christians
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around the world have been at all acquainted with, haven't
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even heard of until nineteenth century innovators started preaching it.
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One of the things, sorry, I just want to bring
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up before we go into this, is that it is
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very rare for someone to announce themselves as a dispensational
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I was I was talking with a group of guys
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actually the Telegram group of the Art of Darkness podcast
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right about this topic before we went live. Yes, and
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one of the things that a couple of them mentioned
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is like, Oh, I didn't know this had a name.
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And so this is a system of beliefs that has
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sort of infiltrated a lot of kind of conservative spaces
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in America. And so it's important to understand even if
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you have kind of no direct relationship with a church
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like this, because you know, even in my own church,
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which does not teach this, a lot of the older
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people just kind of through cultural osmosis have picked up
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these ideas. That's just a note before you launch into it.
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No, that's that's a really important one as well, because,
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as I will outline, dispensationalism is not the traditional dogmatic
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teaching of any Christian church I'm aware of. And that
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seems to me, that seems to me so so radical
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a claim that I went and tried to try to
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verify it. I tried to figure out if that is
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actually the case or not, because it is so very popular. It,
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like the doctrine of the rapture, for instance, is probably
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the most popular dispensationalist doctrine, and that has filtered out
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far and wide. You find Christians all over the place
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that are familiar with the idea. Even if they don't
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they aren't sure if they believe in it or not.
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It's become Christian pop culture in some in some respect.
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Well, And it's interesting you bring up popular culture aspect
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because I remember this is a very specific one, but
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I remember going to a homeschool co op when I
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was a kid, and obviously a lot of the people
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there were these kind of like low church Protestant you know, situations,
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and all of the kids there. The like trading card
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game we played was a game called Redemption, which is
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literally like a knockoff like Magic the Gathering or Pokemon
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card game, but it's all themed around like dispensationalless eschatology,
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you know, like it has like little like cards that
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you trade back and forth, and it's like, oh this
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is that's that's a market a beast card, you know,
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it's very powerful, or this one is like the seven
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Countries or like the Third Like it's absurd, but it's
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it's true. You can look it up if you want.
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And so even to someone who was never taught that
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from the pulpit, I kind of just thought, well, that's
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what Christians believe. That I remember very distinctly when I
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asked my mom about it, She's like, uh no, we
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don't think that it's like, oh, okay, I just kind
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of assumed that we did well.
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I have a great friend who is is something of
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a mentor to me, who is also an old school Baptist,
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and he knows his Baptist theology very well. And this
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is something that I talked to to him about because
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it's very interesting to me, especially to meet a Baptist
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who is not a dispensationalist. And that's just another example
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that are There is no Protestant denomination that I know
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of that is dogmatically dispensationalist. So dispensationalism exists among Protestants. However,
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it is taught by several Protestant seminaries, in particular Baptist seminaries.
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Today.
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Now, if you don't know a prostant church organization, it
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is impossible to nail a Baptist down on theology because
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there is an awful lot of variety among Baptists. There
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is no central organization that controls doctrine among the Baptists,
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so there are several different seminaries. I don't know just
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how many Baptist seminaries there are, but every Baptist seminary
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could have divergent theological beliefs. So there are a couple
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of Baptist seminaries that I know of that are emphatically dispensationalists,
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and they're and they're pretty famous. You know, they're very
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well funded there. They've got a lot of illustrious people
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connected to them, specifically the Dallas Theological Seminary and the
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Liberty Seminary Liberty Baptist Seminary in Virginia. So so, even
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though even though historically Baptists have not been dispensationalists, of
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most Baptists today would recognize dispensationalism and embrace it, much
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to the chagrin of my traditionalist Baptist friend who's really
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enthusiastic about the old school Baptist theology. Basically, the thing
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that holds Baptists together is the idea that everyone should
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look to their local institutions and not to a central
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Baptist institution. Ironically, that's the thing that holds them together.
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All right. So let's work from the top of kind
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of the origin of this idea. So where is this,
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this innovation of dispensationalism, Where does it come from?
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It comes from nineteenth century innovating, innovative preachers, and there
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are a number of these people that we would recognize
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as figures in non Christian movements, or we would we
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would differentiate these these religious movements from traditional Christianity in
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a serious way. So one of one of the teachers
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of Zionism, or some Christian relation to Jewish Zionism, was
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Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. Another was the founder
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of the Jehovah's Witnesses. I think his name was Charles
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tays Russell, and another was the I think his name
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was William Campbell of the No No, No, No, I'm
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getting this guy mixed up the Millerites who became the
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Seventh Day Adventists. The Seventh Day Adventists also had a
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teaching about the return of Jews to the province of
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Palestine and some sort of national renewal for the state
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of Israel among the Jewish people of Palestine. So all
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of those, we would differentiate them in some way from
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his Oracle Christian belief. They all stem out of the
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second grade Awakening or soon afterwards, as in the case
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of the Jehovah's Witnesses. But inside of of more mainstream Protestants,
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you have characters like a theologian named Darby, who popularized
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the doctrine of dispensationalism, and very famously an American Bible
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commentator named Schofield who managed to get his Bible commentary
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published by Oxford University Press. Darby and Schofield are the
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major popularizers of dispensationalism in English speaking lands today.
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So it's interesting going into this because they're kind of
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two and we're not, like you said, we're not going
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to go into the specific like eschatology. But there's kind
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of two parts of spensatialism that are sort of relevant. Right.
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There's what you mentioned, which is the dispensations, which is
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the idea that you know, there are sort of seven
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ages which kind of correspond with seven deals God made
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with different groups. So for instance, the idea is that, okay,
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well pre sort of in the early parts of Genesis,
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that's one dispensation. You know, at Noah, that's the way covenant.
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That's another one in the Arab judges, and I can't
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remember them off the top of my head. They're fairly Byzantine.
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But part of this, and this will get a little
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bit confusing, relates to kind of numerology and rationalism. So
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the weird thing about Darby in particular is that, on
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one hand, he was kind of firmly fundamentalist, in a
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biblical literalist. Right. He believed that, you know, what the
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Bible says, the Bible says. So on one hand you
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could say, well, that's a very irrational quote unquote belief,
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But on the other hand, he's firmly steeped in this
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tradition of rationalism, and he believed that as many problems
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to do, essentially everything in the Bible you can figure
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out using nothing more than the text itself, like you
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can understand it all. And so what this leads to
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is this idea that you know, there's kind of like
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a mathematical schema in the Bible we can figure out
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to find out exactly what these prophecies meet. And so
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he kind of jumps back and forth between the Book
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of Daniel, right, which is old testing the prophecy, the
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Book of Revelation, which is in the last book in
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the Bible, New Testament, and kind of combines those into
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this complicated mathematical scheme where they refer one to the
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other to support his argument. And there I don't want
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to get too into it because the numerology is somewhat tedious.
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You're kind of going through on one level. When it
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was written at the time that numerology was fairly common.
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Like if you've ever people at home, I've ever read
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OVID when he references, you know, trust not in Babylonian numbers.
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It was quite common at the time, right, There were
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these kind of systems of numbers which had symbols. So,
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for instance, seven the idea of completeness six less than that,
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hence the number of the beast. It's so on and
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so forth. So he does attempts to ground this in
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the text. I think from the outside looking in, it's
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a bit of a stretch. A lot of his justification
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for this, but the specific doctrine of the rapture is
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almost unjustified. He allegedly got the idea from an ecstatic utterance,
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which means that he was having this sort of extremely
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charismatic worship service, and this woman went into a fit
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and started speaking in tongues and prophesying and mentioned, you know,
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the idea of this rapture, which I believe is a
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phrase used in a different context some point in the epistles.
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I can't remember exactly where, but he kind of from
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that idea kind of built his whole system. Incidentally, one
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of the other things that is less common now but
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is very common with the early dispensationalists is he viewed
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that the Bible was not equally relevant to different groups
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of people. So we've mentioned that, you know, dispensationalist view
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God is still having a special relationship to the Jews,
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and part of that is he believed that, well, there
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are section of the Bibles that are I think it's
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rightly ordained is the is the kind of doctrinal phrase
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for Jews and for Gentiles. And so essentially the idea was, well,
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we don't have to pay attention to anything that doesn't
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explicitly pertain to the Gentiles, you know, we only have
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to effectively deal with the epistles. And so that's kind
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of fallen out of fashion, but if you read the
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kind of founding fathers of this school of thought, that
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was very much kind of baked in at the ground level.
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So sorry for that digression.
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Back to you, Jordan, No, that that's very helpful. And
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I've got some material in front of me from from
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dispensationalist writers about their feelings there. They're teaching about Zionism
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in particular, just to illustrate how important this stuff is
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to them and how central it is to their understanding
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of what Christianity is all about. One dispensationalist fellow named
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Mike Evans wrote that nations will be judged by whether
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they helped Jerusalem or tried to destroy her, and rewarded
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and punished accordingly. So this is a really extraordinary thing
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that our feelings about the modern state of Israel determine
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our relationship with God as Christians. This is a very novel,
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innovative idea, as is the idea of the rapture itself.
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Your mention about numerology and trying to figure out what
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these biblical prophecies mean. I mean, if you were to
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pick up the Book of Daniel, you would find that
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it is rather inscrutable to the lay reader. It certainly
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mystifies me more often than not, and I don't I
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don't think that I have a special duty to figure
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out what it means either. But here's here's a major
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difference in approach between dispensationalism and a more traditional approach
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to Christianity. I'm not I'm not trying to be partisan
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in my interpretation of this doctrine. I am Eastern Orthodox,
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but I'm not trying to give a partisan position here.
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I'm trying I'm trying to uh to be more ecumenical
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in my interpretation here. But here's a difference of approach.
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There is the Christian who will encounter the dispensationalist arguments
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like Darby and his obsession with numerology, and you can
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get very very deep into that subject. You can be
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like Sir Isaac Newton and right shelves of material analyzing
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biblical numerology. There is an awful lot there to analyze,
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and there's some really compelling patterns there that invite interpretation. Okay,
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so that's one approach. And we know that Darby came
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up with some really weird ideas doing that and had
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some strange inspirations for doing that, some irrational inspirations perhaps,
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And we know that people like Sir Isaac Newton were
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obviously very heterodox. By the time he finished his analysis
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of scripture. Isaac Newton was denying the trinity and denying
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the incarnation. You know, he's going very far afield from
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traditional religious beliefs of Christians. But here's another approach. The
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other approach is that there has been a lot of
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holy analysis, a lot of trustworthy analysis that's already been done.
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And unless you yourself are going to devote yourself to
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biblical scholarship under the guidance of trusted authorities and become
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a scholastic or something, if you're just a lay person,
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you need to be more reliant on the traditional interpretation
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of these things unless you would like to become a
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Christian innovator or a heretic or an apostate. Obviously, if
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you're open to being those things, you want to become
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a religious entrepreneur, then go to town, you know, analyze
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a way, go have fun, dabble in it. On the side,
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it is obviously isn't all that important to you to
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share community with people through time, right, But if you
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want to be a Christian, that means you want to
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believe what Christians believe. Therefore, the traditional interpretation is always
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going to have more weight with you than not. And
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this is this is not just the orthodox approach to
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these things. I'm giving you an orthodox perspective here that
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the tradition is sacred, the tradition itself is sacred. That's
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an orthodox perspective here, but that's also just a practical approach,
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and they're all manner of Protestants that would agree with
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me on that point. You know, if you want to
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know what Christians believe, look at what Christians have had
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to say about the subject. And I'm here to tell
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you that your attitude towards the state of Israel is
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not the most important thing according to traditional Christian beliefs
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and doctrines. Baptists historically will not emphasize that point. Presbyterians
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will not emphasize that point. Methodists will not emphasize that
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point that your attitude to the state of Israel determines
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your salvation, all right. Dispensationalists will. They will emphasize that point,
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and that is why we recognize dispensationalism is innovative.
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So one of the things, and I voiced before my
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lack of interest in public theological debates, So that is
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not what I'm trying to get into. But I think
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that some people may question, like, okay, like we've laid
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out our problems with juralism, but why do they care
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so much about Israel? So one, obviously you'll hear constant
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references to kind of parts of the Old Testament when
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God referring to shall we say the pre Christian nation
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of Israel, and that's an important distinction there. We'll say
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something like, you know, those who bless Israel would be
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blessed those who curse Israel, Okay, and the.
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Confer obviously you know that that's from the Book of Genesis.
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Right, And then there's a conflation between the kind of
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tribes of Israel in the Old Testament and the modern
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nation of Israel. That's a little bit odd, right, I
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don't want to get too much into the specific kind
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of like genetic histories of those two groups of people.
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That's a discussion for another day. Such one another one
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is the in the disputationalist version of the end Times.
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You know, we talked about the rapture, the idea that
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the Church will the Church will be kind of removed
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from the earth and Christ will reign on earth for
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a thousand years.
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Uh.
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And part of that is that they're the third Temple.
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So the original Temple destroyed, Solomon's Temple destroyed by the Romans,
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a third temple will need to be destroyed for the
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end times to happen. In the rapture to occur. And
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so part of this is that dispensationalists view that like
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leading that to occur as part of their necessary duty.
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So if you go back to my talk with AA,
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we talked about the idea of the kind of like
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Christian idea of history as a slow kind of winding down,
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you know, entropy taking over. And so a lot of
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these dispensationalists, who are I would consider sort of good people,
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you know, view society as coming apart at the scenes,
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something that you know, you and I might have some
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sympathy and say, like, all right, what's all coming to
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an end? What are these signs of, you know, the
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end times? You know, things being renewed and remade. And
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part of that is the construction of the Third Temple. So,
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for instance, right, you see this big push from people
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like Pompeo and Trump, who, let's be honest, I think
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Trump did this as a play to his base, not
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out of any to sort of support Jerusalem as the
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capital of the nation. It is. So that's one way
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in which this theology matters in kind of like the
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here and now. One of the other things is that
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part of that, in this prophecy, they're viewed as being
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seven nations against Israel which need to fall again, you'll
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notice this repetition of the number seven that goes back
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to the digression about numerology. But those seven nations among them,
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it's and I don't remember all them off the top
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of my head, but it's Somalia, Sudan, Iran, Syria, Iraq
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and some others, right. And you may notice that a
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lot of these were invaded by and so essentially, in
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addition to just being an innovation, you know, something wrong
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to believe, which has its own consequences, especially if you're
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dealing in matters of theology, it also comes into effect
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and kind of the foreign policy arena. And I know
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a lot of people and George you know Doubt as well,
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who essentially signed up for the Global War on Terror
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because of this belief, and they viewed it as a
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holy war. Yes. And one of the things that I
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really hate about this is that it takes what I
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consider the kind of like the best instincts of Americans, right,
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which is an instrict towards patriotism, and distorts it for
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things that are not in their interest, you know, distorts
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it so that they believe that they are fighting a
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Holy War, you know, fighting on behalf of Christ. And
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essentially they are without mincing words, you know, bombing civilians
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in the Middle East.
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Well or any words about it. And the justification for
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the war in Iraq was particularly disgusting. I was I've
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said several times before, and I don't mind people knowing
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I went to Liberty University. I knew Jerry folwell like
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I knew him in the sense that I was a
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student at his university and he could just remember everybody's name,
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because that's the kind of fellow that he was. That's
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one of the reasons why he was a remarkable man,
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is he could shake your hand once and he could
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remember your name forever. Not that I was at all
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important to him. I had no influence. He didn't know
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who I was really, But I was there during the
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war on Terror, and I saw how everyone there, everyone
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in authority there, justified the invasion of Iraq. And they
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were all talking about in times prophecy, they were all
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talking about dispensationalist talking points. They were talking about how
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Saddam Hussein had launched scud missiles at Israel during the
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Gulf Storm or was that the name of the operation
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in nineteen ninety two. I heard, yeah, Desert Storm, he
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just he just lobbed missiles at Israel randomly, as as
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an action of revenge. And I heard people talking about
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that when the United States invaded in two thousand and three.
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But we need to remember the record of that, like
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the justification for those those military adventures, was built on
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allegations that were unfounded. The CIA was cooking up information
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on order for the Bush administration, and they people like
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Colin Powell, made a fool of himself presenting evidence for
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weapons of mass destruction at the United Nations that that
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could not withstand scrutiny. Even just a few years later,
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Colin Powell was apologizing for that, calling that the lowest
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point in his whole career, saying that he was surrounded
401
00:26:11.799 --> 00:26:15.079
by people telling him to do this, and he gave
402
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in when his judgment should have held his hand.
403
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The result of the war.
404
00:26:21.000 --> 00:26:24.519
In Iraq was a million dead civilians at least, and
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the end of Christianity in that land, and what justified
406
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the intervention itself, at least with some Americans, I'm not
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saying with all, but with the crowd of conservative Christians
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who were very engaged in politics, at my university in
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that crowd, dispensationalist talking points and allusions to those talking
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points in the speeches of politicians, that was enough to
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secure their support for these things. And not only does
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this tax them, not only does it send their young
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men to fight and die in distant lands with no
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positive outcome for the United States. No good is done
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for Americans in this Iraqi intervention, but Christians in that
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place itself bear a disproportionate amount of cost and suffering,
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to the point that Christian belief isn't in Iraq anymore.
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It used to be ten percent of the population there
419
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and now there are no Christians left. We see another
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example of this manifested in our politics. A number of
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years ago, Senator Ted Cruz from Texas had an invitation
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to an event hosted by Arab Christians. And so these
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are mostly Orthodox and Catholic Arabs, and there are a
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number of organizations of those groups of Christians here in
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the United States. There are people like the Antiochian Orthodox Church,
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which is an Eastern Orthodox group in the United States,
427
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and also Roman Catholic groups like the Merronites and the
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Melkite Catholics. They're all Arab Catholics with Eastern write liturgies.
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They all sat down and listened to Ted Kruz, and
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ted Kruz decided to use his time with them by
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talking about the important relationship between the United States and Israel,
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and in the midst of his talk about how much
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he loved Israel, these Arabic Christians, who are not dispensationalists,
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started cat calling and hooting at him because Israel is
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extremely unpopular among them. The Zionist movement in the Holy
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Land has ostracized Christians and exiled Christians from this place
437
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where they have been settled since the time of Christ.
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These people have been there believing in Jesus for two
439
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thousand years, and if you go to the Holy Land
440
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you can still see their churches, though most of them
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are empty now right they've been displaced by Jewish Zionism
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in the Holy Land, and Christians also in that area
443
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have happened to have more resources to leave than the
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Muslim population in that area. So if you go to
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Palestine today, if you go to a Palestinian town like
446
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Nazareth or Bethlehem, you'll see that there are Palestinian churches
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there that were built by Palestinian Christians hundreds of years ago,
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and now those churches are virtually empty because everyone that
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has left, everyone that can leave those communities has left
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those communities because the situation in that part of the
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world is so miserable for people who are not Jews.
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So we we think of the Palestinians as overwhelmingly Muslim,
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and and when we when we look at at the
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territory of Palestine today, we see that is the case.
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They're overwhelmingly Muslim. But we forget that there was a
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large group of Christians in that in that place, and
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now now they're mostly in diaspora communities around the world.
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They've left. So, going back to your point, support American
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support for these adventures done in the name of the
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State of Israel or done for the benefit of the
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State of Israel, it does not help Americans. It does
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not help American Christian communities. I would argue strongly that
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it undermines the future of both. It's not sustainable to
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ship ship all all this money and resources abroad indefinitely
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and with with no limit to any of it. But
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it also undermines Christian belief in America because it discredits it.
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This is an innovative belief, and it discredits it. It
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gives it gives Native American Christians, people who grew up
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in this country believing in Christian doctrines. It gives them
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a bad experience, bad political experience, with an innovative Christian belief,
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a new Christian belief that does not correspond to historical
472
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Christian beliefs, and they see it as counterproductive and personally,
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just personally, I'm thinking back to all of the classmates
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I had at places like Liberty University who strongly identified
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all the Christianity that they had been brought up in
476
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and taught to believe with disastrous adventures like the invasion
477
00:31:52.839 --> 00:31:57.240
of Iraq, and they thought that Christianity meant George W.
478
00:31:57.400 --> 00:32:01.400
Bush and dead children and I. And if you were
479
00:32:01.440 --> 00:32:04.359
to talk to them today and ask them, well, why
480
00:32:04.519 --> 00:32:07.799
why don't you identify yourself as a Christian anymore? They
481
00:32:07.880 --> 00:32:11.240
would identify the War on Terror I had. I had
482
00:32:11.240 --> 00:32:14.759
friends that joined the Marine Corps and went to Fallujah
483
00:32:15.119 --> 00:32:19.839
and leveled city of blocks in Falluja and came back
484
00:32:19.920 --> 00:32:23.920
talking about how there were civilians in those city blocks
485
00:32:24.200 --> 00:32:27.839
and they were not allowed to do searches before they
486
00:32:27.960 --> 00:32:31.720
leveled the place, and these these people came back with
487
00:32:32.519 --> 00:32:35.839
major feelings of guilt, and they believed that they were
488
00:32:35.880 --> 00:32:39.079
serving their country. For one they weren't serving their country.
489
00:32:39.079 --> 00:32:43.640
This had nothing to do with American national interests. This
490
00:32:43.839 --> 00:32:47.920
was a money pit. Trump was absolutely right when he
491
00:32:47.960 --> 00:32:51.519
identified this as a complete waste of American resources. That
492
00:32:51.599 --> 00:32:54.359
we have nothing good to show from this adventure and
493
00:32:54.839 --> 00:32:58.880
just just a ruined country and millions of dead people
494
00:32:59.240 --> 00:33:03.119
who now hate us for what we did to their homes. Right,
495
00:33:03.240 --> 00:33:10.119
this is counterproductive, this is blowback. And my friends came
496
00:33:10.200 --> 00:33:13.640
back from tours over there. I have family that was
497
00:33:13.680 --> 00:33:18.880
there on military service, and they look back at that
498
00:33:19.720 --> 00:33:24.519
period of their lives with regret that this was misplaced,
499
00:33:24.640 --> 00:33:28.359
that this was a waste of resources, a waste of
500
00:33:28.359 --> 00:33:31.160
their lives. It took them away from their families for years,
501
00:33:31.480 --> 00:33:34.759
and there's nothing good to show for it. And many
502
00:33:34.799 --> 00:33:37.279
people walked away from their faith because of this, because
503
00:33:37.279 --> 00:33:41.039
it was so closely tied to their religious beliefs. And
504
00:33:41.119 --> 00:33:44.039
I see that as incredibly tragic and wrong, and this
505
00:33:44.119 --> 00:33:49.160
should not be this should not happen. But aside from
506
00:33:49.240 --> 00:33:51.599
all of that, it has resulted in the suffering of
507
00:33:51.759 --> 00:33:55.920
Christians in the Holy Land. It's resulted in the suffering
508
00:33:55.960 --> 00:33:59.079
of Christians and the eradication of Christian communities in the
509
00:33:59.119 --> 00:34:04.160
Middle East, and Christians are Christians in this country seem
510
00:34:04.240 --> 00:34:07.599
completely unaware of that. They don't know that it resulted
511
00:34:07.720 --> 00:34:13.280
in the the extinguish, the extinguished light of Christianity in
512
00:34:13.320 --> 00:34:14.239
places like Iraq.
513
00:34:14.719 --> 00:34:17.719
Well, and there's another layer of it that I find
514
00:34:17.760 --> 00:34:20.760
incredibly irritating. And I cannot remember the name of this
515
00:34:20.800 --> 00:34:22.440
book off the top of my head. Maybe maybe you
516
00:34:22.480 --> 00:34:23.960
can't do. Do you remember the book that came out
517
00:34:23.960 --> 00:34:27.840
maybe five or ten years ago. It was specifically about Oklahoma,
518
00:34:28.039 --> 00:34:30.599
And it's one of these books from progressives basically saying like,
519
00:34:30.719 --> 00:34:35.000
why do you know, why does Oklahoma vote for the
520
00:34:35.119 --> 00:34:38.199
GOP when they get no benefit from it? No, basically
521
00:34:38.360 --> 00:34:40.079
they really should vote for Democrats.
522
00:34:40.519 --> 00:34:41.880
What's the matter with Kansas?
523
00:34:41.960 --> 00:34:43.760
Yeah, that's what's the matter with Cansas. That's again what
524
00:34:43.800 --> 00:34:46.760
it is. And the thing that drives me crazy about
525
00:34:46.760 --> 00:34:50.800
that is that that's that's pure gloating. It's like, you know,
526
00:34:50.880 --> 00:34:56.199
exactly what's them. It's that essentially what the two options
527
00:34:56.760 --> 00:35:00.039
placed in front of kind of like white Christian and
528
00:35:00.800 --> 00:35:04.159
flyover Americans, right, is you have a party that explicitly
529
00:35:04.199 --> 00:35:06.719
hates you. You know, there's no bones about that. The
530
00:35:06.719 --> 00:35:08.719
Democratic Party has made it clear that there is no
531
00:35:08.840 --> 00:35:12.679
patronage available for these type of people, or a party
532
00:35:12.719 --> 00:35:15.360
devoted to a completely other country, which is the r
533
00:35:15.400 --> 00:35:20.559
NC right. And through this combination of church and state,
534
00:35:21.280 --> 00:35:23.199
you know, these flyover Americans have been sold a bill
535
00:35:23.239 --> 00:35:27.440
of goods where they're sort of given a proxy nationalism.
536
00:35:27.599 --> 00:35:30.960
So they don't get anything they want within the contiguous US,
537
00:35:31.360 --> 00:35:35.440
but they get to, you know, support Israel, feel good
538
00:35:35.440 --> 00:35:38.280
about it, have their tax dollars go somewhere else. And
539
00:35:38.320 --> 00:35:41.320
that is essentially what they get. That is their patronage
540
00:35:41.599 --> 00:35:45.360
from the Republican Party and no material benefit to them.
541
00:35:45.480 --> 00:35:48.760
And so what they get is basically no, they have
542
00:35:48.840 --> 00:35:52.360
no advocate at all for their own interest within the country,
543
00:35:52.800 --> 00:35:56.639
and their only reward is essentially, will you get to
544
00:35:56.679 --> 00:35:59.920
sign up and die for someone else? And again it
545
00:36:01.320 --> 00:36:05.000
I am struggling for polite words on this, but there's
546
00:36:05.039 --> 00:36:07.960
something just ghastly about the fact that, you know, these
547
00:36:08.000 --> 00:36:12.039
people are having their kind of good and natural instincts
548
00:36:12.079 --> 00:36:15.199
towards patriots. You know, they're they're kind of natural American
549
00:36:15.239 --> 00:36:18.079
idealism towards you know, becoming a you know, good and
550
00:36:18.199 --> 00:36:24.079
righteous country abroad, used to essentially propagate violence against other
551
00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:28.800
Christians in other countries. And when you go into it,
552
00:36:28.880 --> 00:36:32.119
you know, you recently recorded a reading of an article
553
00:36:32.639 --> 00:36:35.360
the Untold Story of Christian Zionism's Rise to Power in
554
00:36:35.360 --> 00:36:37.760
the United States by Whitney Web. So you can find
555
00:36:37.800 --> 00:36:40.840
a full hour plus lung reading of that on your
556
00:36:40.920 --> 00:36:44.199
YouTube channel. I'll link it where essentially it is clear
557
00:36:44.239 --> 00:36:47.920
that the Foreign Service of Israel has been directly promoting
558
00:36:47.920 --> 00:36:53.920
this belief. So prominent, prominent dispensationalist preachers like Jerry Folwell
559
00:36:54.199 --> 00:36:59.039
essentially received large monetary gifts from the State of Israel.
560
00:36:59.280 --> 00:37:03.320
And I'll put it this, given the hatred that our
561
00:37:03.360 --> 00:37:08.079
government has towards Russia, for instance, right, even the fact
562
00:37:08.119 --> 00:37:12.519
that Orthodox Christians are vaguely connected in some ways to
563
00:37:12.559 --> 00:37:15.239
Russia has put them under suspicion. Right, there's a hit
564
00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:17.199
piece that came out a few months about this. But
565
00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:19.440
the fact that through all of that, you know, there's
566
00:37:19.480 --> 00:37:22.679
been no concerned you know, looking into the fact that
567
00:37:22.760 --> 00:37:25.679
you know, Jerry Folwell's private jet, what was purchased by
568
00:37:25.719 --> 00:37:27.960
a Lakud party member, you know, or that his entire
569
00:37:28.079 --> 00:37:31.599
organization was was bailed out at least twice. Yes, exactly
570
00:37:31.679 --> 00:37:31.880
what the.
571
00:37:31.880 --> 00:37:34.400
President of the Prime Minister of Israel or a president
572
00:37:34.440 --> 00:37:37.599
of Israel that bought Jerry Folwell's jet exactly.
573
00:37:38.119 --> 00:37:42.400
And look, I have complicated feelings on mister Fallwell. I
574
00:37:42.400 --> 00:37:45.199
never met him personally. I have had a number of
575
00:37:45.239 --> 00:37:47.480
people who's told me that in his personal dealings he
576
00:37:47.559 --> 00:37:50.119
was a very good man, nice man, treated them well.
577
00:37:50.320 --> 00:37:52.880
So I don't mean to speak ill of the dead. However,
578
00:37:53.679 --> 00:37:57.000
this is wrong and in addition to just being mistaken,
579
00:37:57.079 --> 00:38:00.360
it is taking good people and ruining their life. It's
580
00:38:00.440 --> 00:38:03.840
driving them away from the faith. And John Slaughter, who's
581
00:38:03.840 --> 00:38:06.320
been on here multiple times, he used the phrase I
582
00:38:06.400 --> 00:38:09.559
like we basically said, like these churches are atheist factories,
583
00:38:09.800 --> 00:38:12.960
and we've talked about before that this is contributing to
584
00:38:13.679 --> 00:38:17.000
the brain drain in the American right and American conservatism,
585
00:38:17.119 --> 00:38:20.039
where essentially anyone who is smart enough to see this
586
00:38:20.159 --> 00:38:22.320
is a false bill of goods, you know, because it
587
00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:25.119
obviously is, you know, there's nothing to it. Anyone who's
588
00:38:25.159 --> 00:38:29.440
smart enough to see that basically is presented a dichotomy
589
00:38:29.480 --> 00:38:31.519
where it's like, well, you can either be dumb in
590
00:38:31.599 --> 00:38:35.480
conservative or smart and get out and become an apostate,
591
00:38:35.519 --> 00:38:39.639
you know, become a rabbit progressive. And it's really part
592
00:38:39.639 --> 00:38:42.639
of the reason that I have nothing but disdain for
593
00:38:42.760 --> 00:38:45.599
the kind of leaders of the American conservative movement. So
594
00:38:45.880 --> 00:38:47.559
I want to.
595
00:38:47.000 --> 00:38:52.639
Add it's it's an incredible waste of resources. I reflect
596
00:38:52.760 --> 00:38:57.159
often on the the beliefs of so many of my
597
00:38:57.280 --> 00:39:00.280
classmates and how and how they fell away from the
598
00:39:00.079 --> 00:39:03.519
they were raised in. These were people who were homeschooled
599
00:39:03.559 --> 00:39:06.400
by their parents. These are people that went to Christian
600
00:39:06.440 --> 00:39:09.519
private schools their whole lives. These are people that were
601
00:39:09.559 --> 00:39:12.840
sent off to Liberty University, which was the you know,
602
00:39:12.920 --> 00:39:18.920
the flagship school of their variety of Baptists. And yet
603
00:39:19.039 --> 00:39:24.440
these these kids, my classmates, who were the recipients of
604
00:39:24.519 --> 00:39:27.159
all of that investment, walked away from the faith their
605
00:39:27.159 --> 00:39:31.519
parents most wanted them to preserve. So you're you're quote
606
00:39:31.519 --> 00:39:35.880
from our friend mister Slaughter that these churches are atheist factories.
607
00:39:36.039 --> 00:39:39.239
I certainly am witnessed to that, and I think it's
608
00:39:39.280 --> 00:39:43.519
incredibly sad. But I'd like to I'd like to go
609
00:39:43.639 --> 00:39:48.480
back to the point. What is dispensationalism exactly?
610
00:39:49.199 --> 00:39:49.639
This is.
611
00:39:50.760 --> 00:39:54.880
Let's be nice to it and say it's an enthusiasm.
612
00:39:55.079 --> 00:39:59.880
All right, I think that this is I think that's false.
613
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:01.920
I don't I don't want to make any bones about it.
614
00:40:02.360 --> 00:40:05.519
But let's let's be nice and let's call it an enthusiasm.
615
00:40:06.119 --> 00:40:11.679
You you were crediting, uh, the the ecstatic utterances of
616
00:40:11.840 --> 00:40:15.880
a woman in a charismatic sort of service as as
617
00:40:16.000 --> 00:40:18.880
inspiration for some of Darby's teachings a little while ago.
618
00:40:19.480 --> 00:40:23.159
That that's an example of an enthusiasm, like a private
619
00:40:23.280 --> 00:40:29.559
opinion that's brought into a worship service and grabbed by
620
00:40:29.880 --> 00:40:35.960
the leaders and inflated into a Christian teaching. Now we
621
00:40:35.960 --> 00:40:43.039
we all, we all experience private religious opinions or enthusiasms.
622
00:40:43.800 --> 00:40:49.159
Some of us have had major spiritual events in our
623
00:40:49.239 --> 00:40:53.960
lives where we feel like we've we've been inspired in
624
00:40:54.039 --> 00:40:56.960
some way, or we've received something from God.
625
00:40:57.519 --> 00:40:57.920
All right.
626
00:40:58.440 --> 00:41:03.119
Not everyone has major spiritual events in their lives. And
627
00:41:03.440 --> 00:41:05.480
this is this is one thing that would that would
628
00:41:05.519 --> 00:41:10.480
divide some some Protestants or some some Christian believers from
629
00:41:10.559 --> 00:41:13.480
some groups of Protestants. There are a number of Protestants
630
00:41:13.480 --> 00:41:16.760
that say you have to have a spiritual event like
631
00:41:16.800 --> 00:41:19.960
that in order to call yourself a Christian. I'm not
632
00:41:20.039 --> 00:41:24.360
one of those people, and I don't I cannot identify
633
00:41:24.559 --> 00:41:27.880
a particular time in my life where I felt like
634
00:41:27.920 --> 00:41:32.920
I was receiving a tremendous amount of spiritual inspiration. But
635
00:41:33.320 --> 00:41:37.519
spiritual inspiration is one thing. Bringing it into church and
636
00:41:38.159 --> 00:41:41.360
proclaiming it as a teaching that Christians ought to believe,
637
00:41:41.760 --> 00:41:46.920
that is something else. That is something else. And if
638
00:41:46.960 --> 00:41:51.280
I could make a metaphor for this, church is a
639
00:41:51.360 --> 00:41:56.599
place where we are supposed to put on our best clothes.
640
00:41:57.400 --> 00:42:00.920
Church is a place where we're supposed to go with
641
00:42:01.119 --> 00:42:04.960
a proper frame of mind, a sober frame of mind. Obviously,
642
00:42:05.000 --> 00:42:07.119
some people think that church is a place to go
643
00:42:07.239 --> 00:42:11.000
in order to get very emotional and enthusiastic. I will
644
00:42:11.000 --> 00:42:13.599
take exception to that. All right, I'm gonna say no,
645
00:42:13.679 --> 00:42:16.960
that's not proper, and make of me what you will.
646
00:42:17.599 --> 00:42:20.800
But church is a place where we are supposed to
647
00:42:20.800 --> 00:42:22.760
put on a certain frame of mind. We're supposed to
648
00:42:22.800 --> 00:42:25.760
be sober, we're supposed to be dressed up properly, we're
649
00:42:25.760 --> 00:42:29.960
supposed to behave ourselves right. We have phrases that we
650
00:42:30.079 --> 00:42:33.159
used to describe that put on your Sunday best right,
651
00:42:33.679 --> 00:42:36.000
and that really does change the way that we behave
652
00:42:36.360 --> 00:42:40.000
when we dress up well. If we dress up better
653
00:42:40.119 --> 00:42:43.880
for work, or dress up better for the supermarket, then
654
00:42:43.920 --> 00:42:47.639
we dress up for church. Then there's a disparity there
655
00:42:48.079 --> 00:42:52.199
that there's something there's something amiss. Church is not supposed
656
00:42:52.199 --> 00:42:56.519
to be vulgar. Church is not a place for commonplace things.
657
00:42:57.280 --> 00:43:00.000
It's not a place for pajamas and slippers.
658
00:43:00.800 --> 00:43:01.280
It's not a.
659
00:43:01.199 --> 00:43:04.400
Place to let your hair out or let your hair down.
660
00:43:04.840 --> 00:43:05.000
Right.
661
00:43:05.440 --> 00:43:09.119
It's a place where we're supposed to present ourselves better
662
00:43:09.480 --> 00:43:13.039
than we are typically because we're presenting ourselves to God
663
00:43:13.119 --> 00:43:17.280
in some way. So my metaphor is this, we should
664
00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:24.199
not bring vulgarity into religious teaching. To bring vulgarity into
665
00:43:24.320 --> 00:43:32.679
religious teaching discredits religious teaching. It brings in, It brings
666
00:43:32.719 --> 00:43:39.320
in mockery against our religious teaching. It invites the mockery
667
00:43:39.719 --> 00:43:44.000
of our religious teaching. It brings shame on all Christians.
668
00:43:44.400 --> 00:43:48.599
And this is one of the reasons why innovation does
669
00:43:48.719 --> 00:43:53.599
not belong in the teaching of the church. If we
670
00:43:53.639 --> 00:44:00.639
can identify that teachings like dispensationalism originated from a historical
671
00:44:00.719 --> 00:44:05.880
period and do not correspond to the traditional teachings of
672
00:44:06.079 --> 00:44:09.960
Christian groups. Then it does not belong being taught in seminaries.
673
00:44:10.000 --> 00:44:13.320
It does not belong being taught in church. Now to
674
00:44:13.400 --> 00:44:16.400
your point, you mentioned something really important. You said that
675
00:44:17.039 --> 00:44:21.960
Americans are allowed to have an affection for the nation
676
00:44:22.159 --> 00:44:25.639
state of Israel, and they are not allowed to have
677
00:44:25.719 --> 00:44:29.920
an affection for their own country, for their own national group.
678
00:44:30.519 --> 00:44:38.079
We're allowed to fund and otherwise support the sacred boundaries
679
00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:41.559
of the nation of Ukraine, but we are not allowed
680
00:44:41.679 --> 00:44:46.840
to support or fund boundaries for our own country. This
681
00:44:47.000 --> 00:44:51.599
is ridiculous and it's a kind of a proxy nationalism.
682
00:44:52.119 --> 00:44:56.719
As you said, Similarly, I would say that in this
683
00:44:56.840 --> 00:45:01.760
problem of ecclesiology, that is the theology of the Christian Church,
684
00:45:01.960 --> 00:45:06.440
what what is the church in the beliefs of Christians,
685
00:45:07.199 --> 00:45:12.960
there is a proxy ecclesiology going on here in dispensationalism.
686
00:45:13.679 --> 00:45:18.440
So many Protestants, so many low church Protestants in particular,
687
00:45:19.159 --> 00:45:23.599
don't believe in a holy calendar. They don't they don't
688
00:45:23.679 --> 00:45:29.800
celebrate religious holidays, or perhaps some of them still do
689
00:45:29.880 --> 00:45:33.079
in in the form of holidays like Christmas, but they don't.
690
00:45:33.119 --> 00:45:38.199
They don't see that as something particularly connected to worship
691
00:45:38.199 --> 00:45:41.599
in the church. They don't don't have a holy calendar
692
00:45:41.679 --> 00:45:46.159
that they keep in their minds, and so they they
693
00:45:46.199 --> 00:45:50.760
praise the holy calendar that they see in the ceremonial
694
00:45:50.840 --> 00:45:54.119
law of the Jews in the Old Testament. They don't
695
00:45:54.159 --> 00:45:59.360
see themselves as a chosen group by God. They don't
696
00:45:59.400 --> 00:46:04.119
have uls to perform in their own churches. They don't
697
00:46:04.159 --> 00:46:06.360
see that as a group set apart by God, and
698
00:46:06.440 --> 00:46:11.239
so instead they see the Jews as a group set
699
00:46:11.239 --> 00:46:15.119
apart by God. They see the Jews as having rituals
700
00:46:15.199 --> 00:46:19.239
to perform that have religious significance, and they themselves do
701
00:46:19.320 --> 00:46:23.199
not see that they have any corresponding rituals as Christians.
702
00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:27.400
And this is a moment to make a controversial aside.
703
00:46:27.800 --> 00:46:34.840
I have sympathy for Protestants that embrace things like freemasonry,
704
00:46:34.880 --> 00:46:41.280
because it is an exclusive group with rituals and practices
705
00:46:41.800 --> 00:46:45.639
and has a temple and things like that. I think
706
00:46:45.679 --> 00:46:49.239
that it's natural to want those things. And if you're
707
00:46:49.280 --> 00:46:54.480
a Baptist out in Mississippi or something, and you don't
708
00:46:54.519 --> 00:46:56.920
have any of those things, and you're taught by your
709
00:46:57.000 --> 00:46:59.960
church leadership that Christians are not supposed to have those things,
710
00:47:00.039 --> 00:47:03.800
that those things are like Roman Catholic apostasy or something.
711
00:47:04.199 --> 00:47:09.280
I think that it's there's something humane and understandable about
712
00:47:09.320 --> 00:47:12.239
wanting to go and become a Freemason so that you
713
00:47:12.280 --> 00:47:15.039
can have some of those things. I think it's natural
714
00:47:15.079 --> 00:47:18.400
for people to want those things, so at least it
715
00:47:18.920 --> 00:47:24.519
goes some way explaining that phenomenon among Protestants in particular,
716
00:47:25.039 --> 00:47:30.079
but in dispensationalism, we see a lot of Protestants that
717
00:47:30.159 --> 00:47:35.400
are praising the Jewish practices and saying, no, God, God
718
00:47:35.480 --> 00:47:39.079
blesses these things. These are good things. We want to
719
00:47:39.079 --> 00:47:42.280
see these things flourish, and moreover, we want to see
720
00:47:42.840 --> 00:47:47.679
another temple constructed in Jerusalem so that the Jews can
721
00:47:47.960 --> 00:47:53.400
can better practice their religion, which they say God has blessed.
722
00:47:54.000 --> 00:48:00.760
This is extremely perverse, this is wrong. Dispensationalists will say
723
00:48:01.519 --> 00:48:07.280
that the belief that the Church was established by God
724
00:48:07.639 --> 00:48:13.000
for his people and that the Church manifests the chosen
725
00:48:13.119 --> 00:48:18.679
people of God in the body of Christ. Dispensationalists call
726
00:48:18.800 --> 00:48:24.559
that quote replacement theology. That is, the idea that the church,
727
00:48:24.639 --> 00:48:31.719
the Christian Church, replaced the Jews in religious rituals, in calendar,
728
00:48:32.400 --> 00:48:37.480
in the church calendar, in the true and proper worship
729
00:48:37.559 --> 00:48:45.679
of God. Dispensationalists dismiss that doctrine of ecclesiology, but that
730
00:48:45.880 --> 00:48:50.800
is the doctrine of the Church for all of historic Christianity,
731
00:48:51.039 --> 00:48:55.039
and in that I'm including the Protestant denominations. That's what
732
00:48:55.159 --> 00:48:59.079
Presbyterians believe, that's what Methodists believe, that's what the Church
733
00:48:59.119 --> 00:49:04.360
of England believes. That the Church is the promise given
734
00:49:04.400 --> 00:49:08.000
to Abraham. And I don't want to get us bogged
735
00:49:08.039 --> 00:49:13.679
down in scripture today, but I will quote one piece
736
00:49:13.719 --> 00:49:18.280
of scripture to this effect. What we need to do
737
00:49:18.679 --> 00:49:23.280
if we're wanting to understand these points better as Christians,
738
00:49:23.360 --> 00:49:26.800
we need to go back to the Bible and see
739
00:49:26.840 --> 00:49:29.000
what the New Testament has to say about this. The
740
00:49:29.039 --> 00:49:33.039
New Testament has an awful lot to say about people
741
00:49:33.079 --> 00:49:37.400
who continue in the beliefs and practices of the Jews
742
00:49:38.159 --> 00:49:41.639
versus Christians. They see them as opposed to one another.
743
00:49:42.280 --> 00:49:46.519
And the Apostles are emphatic on this that the Church
744
00:49:46.679 --> 00:49:51.920
is the covenanted group with God, and that Jews are
745
00:49:52.119 --> 00:49:56.719
supposed to believe in Jesus, that this is the culmination
746
00:49:57.199 --> 00:50:01.119
of the Old Testament, that Christ full fills all the
747
00:50:01.119 --> 00:50:04.239
promises of the Messiah in the Old Testament, and that
748
00:50:04.320 --> 00:50:08.960
Jews are not supposed to continue on in Judaism without
749
00:50:10.039 --> 00:50:13.280
professing their faith in Christ as their Messiah and as
750
00:50:13.440 --> 00:50:17.599
God incarnate. The New Testament is very clear on these points,
751
00:50:17.760 --> 00:50:21.960
and I'll quote just one verse to this effect. I'm
752
00:50:21.960 --> 00:50:27.440
going to quote Galatians three six and following, the apostle says,
753
00:50:27.599 --> 00:50:31.960
consider Abraham, he believed God, and it was credited to
754
00:50:32.079 --> 00:50:37.320
him as righteousness. Understand then, that those who believe are
755
00:50:37.519 --> 00:50:41.760
children of Abraham. The Scripture foresaw that God would justify
756
00:50:41.800 --> 00:50:46.039
the gentiles by faith and announce the Gospel in advance
757
00:50:46.599 --> 00:50:51.280
to Abraham. All nations will be blessed through you. So
758
00:50:51.760 --> 00:50:55.760
those who have faith are blessed along with Abraham, the
759
00:50:55.800 --> 00:50:59.000
man of faith. Okay, So here the Apostle is telling
760
00:50:59.079 --> 00:51:04.760
us the gentiles who believe in Jesus manifest the promise
761
00:51:04.920 --> 00:51:09.239
given to Abraham. It is not Jews who may literally
762
00:51:09.320 --> 00:51:13.199
be descended from Abraham. That is not what God wants.
763
00:51:13.280 --> 00:51:17.719
God wants belief in our hearts. God does not want
764
00:51:18.039 --> 00:51:24.719
physical descendants of the patriarch. And that's the major difference here.
765
00:51:24.800 --> 00:51:28.079
If we want to identify it with scripture and with
766
00:51:28.239 --> 00:51:35.320
dogma between dispensationalists, these innovators, and traditional Christian belief. The
767
00:51:35.320 --> 00:51:40.679
traditional Christian belief is that the faith in Jesus is
768
00:51:40.920 --> 00:51:44.119
the thing that marks the people of God, and we
769
00:51:44.199 --> 00:51:48.440
call the members of that group the Church. The dispensationalists
770
00:51:48.480 --> 00:51:52.760
say that there are two groups of God, that it's
771
00:51:52.800 --> 00:51:56.639
the modern state of Israel and the Jews that belong
772
00:51:56.719 --> 00:52:00.159
to that group, and the Christian Church, which some how
773
00:52:00.239 --> 00:52:05.639
exists alongside. And as you said previously, the dispensationalists want
774
00:52:05.679 --> 00:52:09.800
to bring about the end of the world by helping
775
00:52:10.320 --> 00:52:15.400
the Jews in Israel reconstruct the Temple in Jerusalem, which
776
00:52:15.440 --> 00:52:18.400
is also a very perverse thing to want. This is
777
00:52:18.519 --> 00:52:23.880
this is perverse to want the world to burn. That's bad, Okay,
778
00:52:24.000 --> 00:52:26.760
to want to see people die all around the world
779
00:52:26.840 --> 00:52:31.000
in a fiery cataclysm, that's bad to want that, And
780
00:52:31.039 --> 00:52:34.800
that is that is equivalent to washing one's hands of
781
00:52:34.880 --> 00:52:40.119
one's one's inheritance and all the beauty and value everywhere.
782
00:52:40.960 --> 00:52:41.360
It is.
783
00:52:41.480 --> 00:52:46.840
It is right to to desire the reconciliation of God
784
00:52:46.880 --> 00:52:49.719
and Man, okay. And it's it's right to want to
785
00:52:49.760 --> 00:52:51.920
be reunited with your dead loved ones.
786
00:52:52.320 --> 00:52:52.679
Okay.
787
00:52:52.760 --> 00:52:56.400
That those are good desires, but to desire the judgment
788
00:52:56.440 --> 00:53:02.719
of mankind, that that reveals an incredible disconnect with realities.
789
00:53:03.519 --> 00:53:05.920
We are not ready to meet God. You and I
790
00:53:05.960 --> 00:53:07.840
are not ready to meet God. We need to spend
791
00:53:07.880 --> 00:53:10.400
the rest of our lives preparing for that. And to
792
00:53:10.880 --> 00:53:13.719
want the end of the world is to want death.
793
00:53:14.320 --> 00:53:19.920
That's that's the death wish manifested in it. It's very
794
00:53:20.000 --> 00:53:24.480
upsetting to me. I had a ride in my taxi
795
00:53:24.599 --> 00:53:28.280
just recently that at the time was amusing to me.
796
00:53:28.320 --> 00:53:31.920
And it's funny because I was preparing for this stream.
797
00:53:31.960 --> 00:53:33.599
I've been doing a lot of reading on the side,
798
00:53:33.639 --> 00:53:36.519
getting ready to have this interview with you. And one
799
00:53:36.599 --> 00:53:39.760
night I was I was driving these folks around and
800
00:53:39.800 --> 00:53:42.760
I picked them up in this in this rather rough corner,
801
00:53:43.159 --> 00:53:46.360
and they were tourists. They weren't They weren't used to
802
00:53:46.400 --> 00:53:49.800
New Orleans. And they said they had had some street
803
00:53:49.840 --> 00:53:55.320
people harassing them and they saw drug addicts lying in
804
00:53:55.360 --> 00:53:59.199
the gutter. And they asked me about that because they
805
00:53:59.480 --> 00:54:03.239
weren't used to presumably they weren't used to American cities,
806
00:54:04.519 --> 00:54:08.480
much less New Orleans. And I said, well, the police
807
00:54:08.559 --> 00:54:12.239
just don't enforce laws relating to those things like, even if,
808
00:54:12.400 --> 00:54:16.719
even if you were to call the police because these
809
00:54:16.719 --> 00:54:20.360
people conned you or threatened you, or you saw people
810
00:54:20.440 --> 00:54:23.480
shooting up in the gutter, the police wouldn't do anything
811
00:54:23.519 --> 00:54:27.440
about it. And a woman turned to her husband in
812
00:54:27.480 --> 00:54:30.760
the back seat and she said, you see, you see,
813
00:54:30.840 --> 00:54:34.119
it's the end times. We're about to be raptured out
814
00:54:34.119 --> 00:54:39.519
of here. And I couldn't help but smile. And my
815
00:54:40.239 --> 00:54:45.159
mental response to that moment was I'm afraid it's a
816
00:54:45.159 --> 00:54:48.480
lot worse than that. This is what we're dealing with,
817
00:54:48.920 --> 00:54:53.159
and no one's going to snap their fingers and get
818
00:54:53.199 --> 00:54:57.400
out of this without paying a price. Right, this is
819
00:54:57.440 --> 00:55:02.719
our society, These are our political circumstance. We shouldn't bet
820
00:55:03.280 --> 00:55:07.360
on getting raptured out of here. We shouldn't bet on
821
00:55:07.440 --> 00:55:09.880
the end of the world taking place so that we
822
00:55:09.920 --> 00:55:11.880
don't have to deal with any of them. We are
823
00:55:11.920 --> 00:55:14.159
going to have to deal with this stuff. It's going
824
00:55:14.199 --> 00:55:16.920
to involve a lot of suffering. It's going to involve
825
00:55:17.599 --> 00:55:20.880
a big cost because we've just let all this stuff
826
00:55:21.000 --> 00:55:25.599
go for so long. So I think that's another explanation
827
00:55:25.800 --> 00:55:29.599
for why dispensationalism has become popular. We've been able to
828
00:55:29.760 --> 00:55:34.400
externalize a lot of our a lot of our political problems.
829
00:55:35.079 --> 00:55:41.280
We've been able to export them to some rapidly approaching
830
00:55:41.719 --> 00:55:46.719
judgment day that will resolve everything with no cost to anyone.
831
00:55:47.159 --> 00:55:50.039
God will intervene and fix everything in the blink of
832
00:55:50.039 --> 00:55:57.039
an eye. But that's just fantasy thinking. And we we
833
00:55:57.159 --> 00:56:00.440
believe as Christians that the world will end. We believe
834
00:56:00.480 --> 00:56:03.960
in the second coming of Jesus Christ. This is doctrinal
835
00:56:04.679 --> 00:56:08.800
teaching of ours. This is dogmatic. All Christians believe that,
836
00:56:09.440 --> 00:56:11.480
and I'm not I'm not taking any exception to that.
837
00:56:11.559 --> 00:56:15.199
I believe that too. But we we also think that
838
00:56:15.320 --> 00:56:18.440
this world is our home for the time being, and
839
00:56:18.480 --> 00:56:21.159
we have a responsibility to take care of it. We
840
00:56:21.199 --> 00:56:26.000
shouldn't we shouldn't absent ourselves from that saying, oh, well,
841
00:56:26.280 --> 00:56:29.320
it's all it's all ending right now any second now,
842
00:56:29.320 --> 00:56:32.840
it's all going to end. Uh, and take no provision
843
00:56:33.079 --> 00:56:35.280
for the future of our communities. We're supposed to take
844
00:56:35.280 --> 00:56:37.920
provision for the future of our communities. And perhaps it's
845
00:56:37.960 --> 00:56:42.000
because we've had a couple generations that have externalized all
846
00:56:42.079 --> 00:56:46.360
all of these things, not made the proper investments in
847
00:56:46.400 --> 00:56:51.960
the future of Americans. And see these chickens coming home
848
00:56:52.000 --> 00:56:56.119
to roost. Perhaps perhaps that's why they've embraced this doctrine
849
00:56:56.159 --> 00:56:59.079
that oh, well, none of that matters now, because we're
850
00:56:59.119 --> 00:57:02.320
we're in the end time now and it's all about
851
00:57:01.800 --> 00:57:03.880
to be ended well.
852
00:57:03.960 --> 00:57:05.960
And one of the things I think that there's a
853
00:57:06.000 --> 00:57:10.559
reason that this service coology is so popular among baby boomers.
854
00:57:11.719 --> 00:57:13.239
But one of the things I want to talk about
855
00:57:13.400 --> 00:57:18.800
is the way that this arose in a crisis of leadership.
856
00:57:19.159 --> 00:57:25.320
So the doctrine of dispensationalism sort of originates in England
857
00:57:25.440 --> 00:57:27.880
in the nineteenth century, but it rose to kind of
858
00:57:27.880 --> 00:57:32.320
media popularity in the US in the early nineteen twenty. Now,
859
00:57:32.400 --> 00:57:36.000
this relates to two historical events are important to understand.
860
00:57:36.039 --> 00:57:39.639
Which is one what's called the modernist crisis, which is
861
00:57:39.960 --> 00:57:44.119
this situation where a lot of this is where the
862
00:57:44.760 --> 00:57:51.239
main line evangelical or mainline conservative split happened in Protestantism,
863
00:57:51.360 --> 00:57:55.480
where essentially all of these denominations had two camps in them.
864
00:57:56.000 --> 00:58:00.280
There was an elite liberal camp that kind of around
865
00:58:00.320 --> 00:58:03.039
the nineteen twenties sort of dropped all pretenses of being
866
00:58:03.519 --> 00:58:08.840
genuinely Christian. This aside, here this sinks up well with
867
00:58:08.960 --> 00:58:12.559
what Muldbug writes about kind of the progressive Christian elites
868
00:58:12.639 --> 00:58:16.280
becoming what we consider the woke religion. Now, if you
869
00:58:16.320 --> 00:58:18.559
want to look at the kind of early forerunners of this,
870
00:58:18.960 --> 00:58:21.880
the you can look at the Quakers, but essentially started
871
00:58:21.920 --> 00:58:25.199
doing things like denying a virgin birth, denying Christ. And
872
00:58:26.039 --> 00:58:29.639
in evangelical circles they call this the Great Betrayal because
873
00:58:29.639 --> 00:58:35.079
all of these legacy American institutions, these legacy American seminaries
874
00:58:35.639 --> 00:58:40.480
like Harvard, like Yale, like Princeton, which were elite organizations,
875
00:58:40.559 --> 00:58:43.960
essentially stopped being Christian Christian in name only. So you
876
00:58:44.000 --> 00:58:47.840
have these congregations that are in many cases still very conservative,
877
00:58:48.039 --> 00:58:53.719
they're still very devout, and they're essentially left leaderless. And
878
00:58:53.760 --> 00:58:57.280
so the Schofield reference Bible, which we've mentioned multiple times is,
879
00:58:57.639 --> 00:59:00.960
you know, dispensationalless and the reason and it sold so
880
00:59:01.039 --> 00:59:03.360
well is because it's sort of coincided with that. So
881
00:59:03.400 --> 00:59:05.280
you have a large number of people and their elite
882
00:59:05.320 --> 00:59:08.000
structure has been cut off. They've been cut off from
883
00:59:08.039 --> 00:59:11.920
their access to new leaders and so they're sort of
884
00:59:12.000 --> 00:59:14.840
left rudderless. They're sort of forced to come up with
885
00:59:15.079 --> 00:59:18.679
a new leadership organization from the groundhop and the Schofield
886
00:59:18.719 --> 00:59:23.159
Bible has an addition to commentary, it also has sermon notes.
887
00:59:23.440 --> 00:59:26.119
So it was sort of a ready made solution for
888
00:59:26.280 --> 00:59:30.760
someone who is not a classically trained teacher to preach
889
00:59:30.800 --> 00:59:33.159
to a group of people. And it was used not
890
00:59:33.239 --> 00:59:36.199
only to train kind of that generation, but also to
891
00:59:36.360 --> 00:59:40.599
start new seminaries. So one of the and this is
892
00:59:40.599 --> 00:59:42.880
something that you really only see in the South, you know,
893
00:59:43.000 --> 00:59:45.559
kind of the Bible Belt is the Bible school and
894
00:59:45.679 --> 00:59:49.320
Bible schools are sort of they're not even quite seminaries.
895
00:59:49.719 --> 00:59:52.599
They're sort of in that mold, but they're much less formalized,
896
00:59:52.639 --> 00:59:55.840
they're much less institutionalized, and the vast majority of those
897
00:59:56.559 --> 01:00:00.239
draw their teaching from the Schofield Bible, and so of
898
01:00:00.320 --> 01:00:03.079
have this. And honestly, I think in a world in
899
01:00:03.119 --> 01:00:07.159
which the leadership class of the American Protestant movement kind
900
01:00:07.159 --> 01:00:11.280
of kept its senses, dispensationalism would have been a side
901
01:00:11.360 --> 01:00:13.719
note in history, you know, one of like any number
902
01:00:13.760 --> 01:00:17.960
of you know, spinoff heresies. But because the leadership, the
903
01:00:18.079 --> 01:00:24.000
leadership completely gave up, you know, turned around and betrayed
904
01:00:24.119 --> 01:00:29.840
their base, sort of had a massively outsized impact. And
905
01:00:30.000 --> 01:00:31.639
you know, you and I have said before that we
906
01:00:31.679 --> 01:00:34.800
have a lot of disdain for conservative leadership, and this
907
01:00:34.840 --> 01:00:36.760
is a part of it, that they're sort of like
908
01:00:36.880 --> 01:00:40.639
second tier leaders. And I guess that's another thing in this,
909
01:00:40.800 --> 01:00:43.840
that this is sort of something of, you know, sheep
910
01:00:43.920 --> 01:00:47.000
looking for a shepherd. And at the same time as this,
911
01:00:47.199 --> 01:00:50.400
right you have the Zionist movement picking up steam in Europe.
912
01:00:50.519 --> 01:00:52.800
You know, more Jews are moving to Israel, and so
913
01:00:53.039 --> 01:00:55.800
sort of you can forgive people for thinking, well, it
914
01:00:55.840 --> 01:00:58.679
looks like it's happening, you know, the prophecy is coming.
915
01:00:59.320 --> 01:01:01.920
And I don't know, I have kind of two feelings
916
01:01:01.920 --> 01:01:04.480
about this, because I think that what these people believe
917
01:01:04.559 --> 01:01:08.519
is harmful and bad and stupid, to put it bluntly,
918
01:01:08.880 --> 01:01:11.800
but also I feel a lot of sympathy for these people,
919
01:01:12.119 --> 01:01:14.639
you know, the people that they should be able to
920
01:01:14.679 --> 01:01:19.519
count on, hate them and despise them. And yeah, other
921
01:01:19.639 --> 01:01:22.480
relevant things kind of happening is this is also relevant
922
01:01:22.519 --> 01:01:24.760
to the Scopes monkey trial, things like that, And this
923
01:01:24.880 --> 01:01:27.639
is really the moment in which the kind of split
924
01:01:27.760 --> 01:01:31.800
between conservative Christians and broader culture began, you know, where
925
01:01:31.800 --> 01:01:35.400
these people were vilified, they were mocked, and it became
926
01:01:36.199 --> 01:01:37.960
more and more difficult kind of up to the current
927
01:01:38.000 --> 01:01:43.199
day to be a respectable devout Christian. Anyway, it's probably
928
01:01:43.280 --> 01:01:44.239
not said.
929
01:01:44.239 --> 01:01:50.639
I correspond with your statements on this. I agree with you.
930
01:01:51.000 --> 01:01:54.519
I have a lot of sympathy for these people. I
931
01:01:54.559 --> 01:01:57.199
want to be very clear. These people are my people.
932
01:01:57.440 --> 01:02:01.760
I'm one of them. I come from these people, and
933
01:02:01.840 --> 01:02:07.119
I love these people. And they seemed to me deluded,
934
01:02:07.599 --> 01:02:14.519
misled led to support things that seem obviously against their
935
01:02:14.719 --> 01:02:19.280
interests to support. And I think it's really sad and
936
01:02:19.360 --> 01:02:24.880
it's very frustrating. But you're quite right that their elites
937
01:02:25.800 --> 01:02:30.320
conspired against them. And this happened all over the country.
938
01:02:31.079 --> 01:02:37.039
There was this big division that resulted in a civil
939
01:02:37.119 --> 01:02:43.320
war over Protestant institutions all across the United States. And
940
01:02:43.360 --> 01:02:47.360
this is the Great War between the modernists and the fundamentalists.
941
01:02:48.079 --> 01:02:53.000
And what happened was the leaders of various American denominations
942
01:02:53.760 --> 01:02:58.840
came out against traditional teachings that Christians have always believed.
943
01:02:59.760 --> 01:03:03.519
They we're embracing things like the higher criticism out of
944
01:03:03.559 --> 01:03:08.119
Germany and saying, oh, well, the Bible is not what
945
01:03:08.239 --> 01:03:13.639
it purports to be. The Old Testament prophecies were written
946
01:03:14.000 --> 01:03:17.239
after the events that they described, which means that they
947
01:03:17.280 --> 01:03:22.440
aren't really prophecies. And the miracles of the New Testament
948
01:03:22.519 --> 01:03:26.679
which undergird Christian teaching, things like the virgin birth and
949
01:03:26.880 --> 01:03:33.119
the resurrection, those are miraculous things, and modern people know
950
01:03:33.280 --> 01:03:37.320
that such things never really happen, and so they're denying
951
01:03:38.199 --> 01:03:43.760
basic Christian teachings, and they face a revolt from the
952
01:03:43.800 --> 01:03:48.480
lower ranks, and the people in the pews say.
953
01:03:48.320 --> 01:03:49.039
Wait a second.
954
01:03:49.480 --> 01:03:53.239
We believe what the Creed says. We believe what the
955
01:03:53.280 --> 01:03:57.079
Bible says. We're taking these things at face value. And
956
01:03:57.119 --> 01:04:01.960
when the Bible says in prophecy that a virgin shall conceive,
957
01:04:02.079 --> 01:04:05.079
we believe that's exactly what happened. And this is manifested
958
01:04:05.119 --> 01:04:08.079
in the life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament.
959
01:04:08.559 --> 01:04:13.000
And these people then made a stand to try to
960
01:04:13.519 --> 01:04:18.079
hold on to the institutions their ancestors had built for them.
961
01:04:18.440 --> 01:04:23.400
So you saw fights over things like colleges and seminaries
962
01:04:23.920 --> 01:04:29.320
and even for the control of various denominations. And I
963
01:04:29.360 --> 01:04:35.119
don't have a taally. I don't know which fundamentalist sects
964
01:04:35.239 --> 01:04:39.639
were able to retain the control of their institutions around
965
01:04:39.679 --> 01:04:42.880
the country. I do know that here In the South,
966
01:04:43.280 --> 01:04:49.800
the fundamentalists one in the Baptist Church, and you can
967
01:04:50.320 --> 01:04:55.639
count that to their credit. They retained control of most
968
01:04:55.719 --> 01:05:01.079
of their educational institutions. And up north, where the Baptist
969
01:05:01.599 --> 01:05:06.440
Modernists won out, the Baptist Church has just withered.
970
01:05:06.519 --> 01:05:07.079
In the North.
971
01:05:07.239 --> 01:05:11.760
It became more like the Episcopal Church in doctrine, of course,
972
01:05:11.840 --> 01:05:15.480
not in practice. And it turned out there wasn't much
973
01:05:15.519 --> 01:05:18.400
reason to continue believing in those things. If you can
974
01:05:18.480 --> 01:05:23.119
just believe whatever is fashionable, why not stay at home
975
01:05:23.239 --> 01:05:26.320
on Sunday? Why give your money to that institution. If
976
01:05:26.320 --> 01:05:29.639
they're telling you that the Bible isn't actually true, and
977
01:05:29.760 --> 01:05:34.559
in Christian teaching isn't actually true, it's only spiritual or something,
978
01:05:35.880 --> 01:05:37.960
there's not as much reason to be a part of it.
979
01:05:38.000 --> 01:05:41.559
And we see that the falling away from from leftist
980
01:05:41.719 --> 01:05:45.519
and liberal denominations that continues on into the present day.
981
01:05:46.519 --> 01:05:51.760
But you're quite right what you're describing about the elites
982
01:05:52.159 --> 01:05:57.639
embracing leftist causes in this period. A very good book
983
01:05:57.800 --> 01:06:02.840
on that subject, by the way, is Richard Gamble's book
984
01:06:03.159 --> 01:06:07.960
The War for Righteousness, which was published by is I Press.
985
01:06:08.159 --> 01:06:14.400
I believe in that he's he's documenting the support of
986
01:06:14.840 --> 01:06:19.960
leftist Christians, and that would be those modernist Christians for
987
01:06:20.199 --> 01:06:25.440
Woodrow Wilson's war to save the world for democracy, to
988
01:06:25.480 --> 01:06:29.599
make the world safe for democracy, and to fight the
989
01:06:29.599 --> 01:06:36.119
war to end all wars. You know, these very utopian goals.
990
01:06:35.920 --> 01:06:41.519
It's a really interesting study. But that's left the fundamentalists
991
01:06:41.559 --> 01:06:46.239
without without that elite leadership, and they've been left with
992
01:06:46.320 --> 01:06:50.840
people like Pat Robertson and Jerry Folwell and John Hagey
993
01:06:51.400 --> 01:06:56.360
as their leaders. They've been left with tele evangelists for
994
01:06:56.559 --> 01:07:01.920
their leaders, and those people have been particularly interested in
995
01:07:02.000 --> 01:07:06.199
trying to grab the reins of the political process. We
996
01:07:06.320 --> 01:07:10.320
see that at least the one that stands out most
997
01:07:10.320 --> 01:07:12.480
to me, and it's because of my personal experience, the
998
01:07:12.519 --> 01:07:14.480
one that stands out most to me is Jerry Folwell,
999
01:07:14.880 --> 01:07:18.760
who always wanted his school to be a training ground
1000
01:07:18.800 --> 01:07:22.519
for future congressman and he wanted his law school to
1001
01:07:22.639 --> 01:07:27.960
produce future Supreme Court justices, and his school has attracted
1002
01:07:28.679 --> 01:07:33.760
any Republican aspirant to the presidency, including Donald Trump. I
1003
01:07:33.800 --> 01:07:37.480
remember when Donald Trump came to speak at Liberty and
1004
01:07:37.880 --> 01:07:40.719
revealed that he did not know how to talk to
1005
01:07:40.800 --> 01:07:43.440
low church Baptists, and he didn't know how to talk
1006
01:07:43.440 --> 01:07:45.719
about the Bible. He tried to talk about the Bible
1007
01:07:45.760 --> 01:07:49.599
in his speech and messed it up. He tried to
1008
01:07:49.679 --> 01:07:55.639
quote Second Corinthians and said, you know, in two Corinthians
1009
01:07:56.440 --> 01:08:00.880
whatever reference, and everyone laughed at him for that because
1010
01:08:00.920 --> 01:08:04.159
he didn't know how to quote scripture. He was obviously
1011
01:08:04.199 --> 01:08:07.239
out of his depth. But it only it only goes
1012
01:08:07.280 --> 01:08:12.920
to show that that liberty was always about getting involved
1013
01:08:12.960 --> 01:08:18.960
with politics. But in in my judgment here, given the
1014
01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:22.239
metaphor that I drew a little while ago, bringing up
1015
01:08:22.680 --> 01:08:27.760
current political events in church to make an argument about
1016
01:08:27.880 --> 01:08:32.479
where Christian should stand on these things. If it's if
1017
01:08:32.520 --> 01:08:38.560
it's something that's in conversation right now and is controvertible,
1018
01:08:39.279 --> 01:08:43.039
that's something that intelligent people, informed people can disagree about.
1019
01:08:43.560 --> 01:08:48.720
Politics has no place there. Politics is very vulgar. Now
1020
01:08:48.800 --> 01:08:54.479
I want I want to explain myself to say, Christians
1021
01:08:54.600 --> 01:08:57.479
believe that marriage is between a man and a woman
1022
01:08:58.000 --> 01:09:01.920
is not a controversial thing. But that is a political thing. Now,
1023
01:09:02.439 --> 01:09:05.239
when I say not a controversial thing, I'm saying that's
1024
01:09:05.319 --> 01:09:11.880
obviously what Christians have always believed, okay. Or when Christians
1025
01:09:11.880 --> 01:09:18.159
say Christians have always argued against abortion, We have records
1026
01:09:18.760 --> 01:09:21.600
that date back to the first and second century on
1027
01:09:21.600 --> 01:09:25.399
that point that that's not controversial to say that that's
1028
01:09:25.399 --> 01:09:28.840
what Christians have always believed, but it's become political now.
1029
01:09:29.399 --> 01:09:33.199
I'm not saying that Christians should not say those things
1030
01:09:33.199 --> 01:09:37.000
in a teaching position in their churches today. I'm saying
1031
01:09:37.039 --> 01:09:41.880
the exact opposite. Actually, Christians teach what Christians traditionally believe
1032
01:09:42.399 --> 01:09:47.359
in church. What Christians should not do is opine about
1033
01:09:47.479 --> 01:09:52.880
the controversies in the local race for congressmen or county
1034
01:09:52.880 --> 01:09:57.880
commissioner from the pulpit, because that's vulgar. That's the point
1035
01:09:57.880 --> 01:10:01.359
that I'm making. And so at at places like Liberty,
1036
01:10:01.600 --> 01:10:06.640
where the beliefs, the Christian beliefs of Baptists was so
1037
01:10:06.880 --> 01:10:13.840
closely wedded with national political concerns and even the concerns
1038
01:10:13.880 --> 01:10:19.119
of wars abroad, it had the effect of vulgarizing what
1039
01:10:19.319 --> 01:10:24.399
is sacred. And that is an only negative effect, that
1040
01:10:24.600 --> 01:10:30.119
only discredited what is holy. And this is why we
1041
01:10:30.239 --> 01:10:36.760
have such a profound duty to make sure that holy
1042
01:10:36.880 --> 01:10:42.840
things are not sullied, that holy things should never should
1043
01:10:42.920 --> 01:10:47.359
never be sullied by combining them with vulgar things. We
1044
01:10:47.359 --> 01:10:49.920
should not give our enemies any reason to mock us
1045
01:10:49.920 --> 01:10:52.359
on those grounds. We should not give our enemies any
1046
01:10:52.399 --> 01:10:55.000
reason to point out, Oh, look at them, they were
1047
01:10:55.039 --> 01:10:59.119
advocating for this political policy, and the whole thing was foolish.
1048
01:10:59.159 --> 01:11:01.640
The whole thing was a failure. You see, you can't
1049
01:11:01.680 --> 01:11:04.800
trust those people. If you can't trust those people on
1050
01:11:05.199 --> 01:11:08.199
what's going on right now, what makes you think you
1051
01:11:08.239 --> 01:11:11.920
can trust them to teach you about the hereafter? What
1052
01:11:12.000 --> 01:11:14.079
makes you think that you can trust them to teach
1053
01:11:14.119 --> 01:11:16.520
you about God and about how to relate to God.
1054
01:11:17.399 --> 01:11:22.560
Those arguments are reinforced, those arguments are strengthened every time
1055
01:11:23.079 --> 01:11:28.000
a pastor weighs into the mud of politics to make
1056
01:11:28.000 --> 01:11:31.039
an opinion from the pulpit. Church is not a place
1057
01:11:31.039 --> 01:11:34.079
for opinions, is what I'm saying. We should only get
1058
01:11:34.079 --> 01:11:36.920
what is real there. We should only get what is
1059
01:11:37.039 --> 01:11:40.199
tested there. We should only get what Christians have been
1060
01:11:40.239 --> 01:11:43.319
believing for the history of the Church.
1061
01:11:43.720 --> 01:11:44.039
There.
1062
01:11:44.560 --> 01:11:47.319
And occasionally the church has to deal with a modern heresy,
1063
01:11:47.760 --> 01:11:52.199
and that's when we traditionally have counsels to decide those things.
1064
01:11:52.520 --> 01:11:55.079
But the councils are always very careful to frame their
1065
01:11:55.159 --> 01:11:58.039
language and what Christians have always believed at all times
1066
01:11:58.119 --> 01:12:01.680
and in all places. That's why that is so very
1067
01:12:01.800 --> 01:12:02.560
very important.
1068
01:12:03.039 --> 01:12:07.199
I think that there's another layer to this, which is
1069
01:12:08.000 --> 01:12:11.680
when I you and I are both familiar with kind
1070
01:12:11.720 --> 01:12:14.479
of the points of elite theory, and when I look
1071
01:12:14.520 --> 01:12:18.479
at you know, who are the like, where are where
1072
01:12:18.520 --> 01:12:21.439
is there still some kind of spark left in the West.
1073
01:12:22.000 --> 01:12:25.239
It's in these communities. You know. You you mentioned it
1074
01:12:25.279 --> 01:12:28.319
a kind of an unscripted video on your channel that
1075
01:12:28.680 --> 01:12:30.560
these are the only group of people in the West
1076
01:12:30.560 --> 01:12:33.359
who still seem to be having children. And as you've mentioned,
1077
01:12:33.439 --> 01:12:37.560
they invest an astonishing amount in their children. You know,
1078
01:12:37.560 --> 01:12:39.600
they pay to send them to private school, which is
1079
01:12:39.680 --> 01:12:43.119
very expensive. You know, they send them to private universities,
1080
01:12:43.159 --> 01:12:46.439
which are also very expensive, and with the expectation that
1081
01:12:46.439 --> 01:12:50.800
they will kind of continue in their you know, broad
1082
01:12:50.920 --> 01:12:54.079
let's just say pro nomion. But the problem is, you know,
1083
01:12:54.079 --> 01:12:57.319
when you build all of that on something as incorrect
1084
01:12:57.359 --> 01:13:00.000
as this, you need captures. And so as far as
1085
01:13:00.119 --> 01:13:02.680
is what I believe are kind of the the core
1086
01:13:03.680 --> 01:13:06.439
kind of growths that need to be excized from this
1087
01:13:06.560 --> 01:13:11.479
movement there, and they're kind of linked. It's Christian Zionist dispensationalism.
1088
01:13:11.520 --> 01:13:13.960
I'll just kind of lump that into one and then
1089
01:13:14.000 --> 01:13:15.760
maybe you know something for another day, which is the
1090
01:13:15.840 --> 01:13:20.720
kind of like milk toast civic nationalism. And in each case, right,
1091
01:13:20.760 --> 01:13:22.960
we're sort of we have a community of people who
1092
01:13:23.000 --> 01:13:26.640
has good instincts, but they are playing with to borrow
1093
01:13:26.640 --> 01:13:30.079
a term from the the anti colonialist right, they're playing
1094
01:13:30.079 --> 01:13:32.760
with the master's tools, and because of that, they will
1095
01:13:32.840 --> 01:13:36.000
never be able to kind of keep that premise and
1096
01:13:36.119 --> 01:13:40.520
break out. Now you've mentioned before, you know that there's
1097
01:13:40.560 --> 01:13:43.279
sort of this dissonance between what these people think and
1098
01:13:43.319 --> 01:13:45.720
what they believe, you know, with regards to your own employment,
1099
01:13:45.760 --> 01:13:48.560
with what they you know, these people will say, oh,
1100
01:13:48.640 --> 01:13:51.720
we want to be dissident, you know, Oh we want
1101
01:13:51.760 --> 01:13:55.560
to be you know, kind of insulated from the world,
1102
01:13:56.079 --> 01:13:59.039
and yet they're kind of not committed to it. And
1103
01:13:59.079 --> 01:14:01.399
I see doctrines like this as being a part of that.
1104
01:14:02.079 --> 01:14:04.439
And so I realized that, you know that you and
1105
01:14:04.479 --> 01:14:08.920
I didn't get into kind of the theological nitty gritty.
1106
01:14:08.920 --> 01:14:12.279
I don't see it as that important really, But the
1107
01:14:12.319 --> 01:14:14.880
reason that this matters is I view this as being
1108
01:14:14.960 --> 01:14:18.039
one of the things standing between our people and they
1109
01:14:18.079 --> 01:14:20.840
are our people. You know, you know where I live,
1110
01:14:20.880 --> 01:14:22.399
you know, the kind of circles that I run in
1111
01:14:23.359 --> 01:14:27.399
and essentially getting out of this. You mentioned again this
1112
01:14:27.520 --> 01:14:29.680
idea of like, oh, we'll just stand back, it'll all
1113
01:14:29.680 --> 01:14:33.119
sort itself out. And that's another major stumbling block, you know,
1114
01:14:33.159 --> 01:14:35.159
the idea that you don't need to work, you don't
1115
01:14:35.159 --> 01:14:38.880
need to prepare, you know, essentially God will will come
1116
01:14:38.920 --> 01:14:43.640
back and you know, make everything better. And again that's
1117
01:14:43.680 --> 01:14:46.720
why this matters, you know, because in addition to motivating
1118
01:14:46.760 --> 01:14:49.199
people to do the wrong thing, it keeps them from
1119
01:14:49.239 --> 01:14:53.479
doing anything positive. So again, George, I appreciate your time.
1120
01:14:53.760 --> 01:14:55.680
We're sort of, you know, wrapping this up. Is there
1121
01:14:55.680 --> 01:14:56.479
anything you want to say?
1122
01:14:56.479 --> 01:15:02.199
And in summary, yeah, I made an impromptu stream just recently,
1123
01:15:02.399 --> 01:15:06.159
you just mentioned, I went to a homeschool co op
1124
01:15:06.800 --> 01:15:14.159
and I saw our people. They weren't saying explicitly dispensationalist
1125
01:15:14.199 --> 01:15:19.560
things at this meeting, but they were saying all sorts
1126
01:15:19.600 --> 01:15:24.760
of absurd things about the American flag and what it symbolizes.
1127
01:15:25.479 --> 01:15:29.479
They were saying obviously untrue things about it. And they
1128
01:15:29.479 --> 01:15:34.520
were doing this with noble purpose. They want their children
1129
01:15:34.680 --> 01:15:39.479
to love their country. They want their children to want
1130
01:15:39.520 --> 01:15:43.960
to serve their community and defend their community. They want
1131
01:15:44.000 --> 01:15:49.279
to preserve the freedoms they've inherited from their ancestors, specifically
1132
01:15:49.319 --> 01:15:52.319
their freedom of religion. They said, all of those things.
1133
01:15:52.640 --> 01:15:56.560
What they're unaware of is that their own government is
1134
01:15:56.640 --> 01:16:03.000
acting against their interests. Their own government is ignoring the Constitution.
1135
01:16:03.520 --> 01:16:07.079
Their own government is not protecting their freedom of religion,
1136
01:16:07.760 --> 01:16:10.600
or their freedom of speech, or their freedom of assembly,
1137
01:16:10.920 --> 01:16:15.760
or their property rights, or their protection against warrantless search
1138
01:16:15.800 --> 01:16:18.399
and seizure. All of this, all of those things have
1139
01:16:18.439 --> 01:16:22.199
been swept away, and they are unaware. They thought that
1140
01:16:22.239 --> 01:16:25.680
their government was still worth the blood of their children,
1141
01:16:26.279 --> 01:16:29.520
that this government is worth the blood of their children,
1142
01:16:29.920 --> 01:16:35.920
And that just floored me. I don't know how they
1143
01:16:35.960 --> 01:16:40.079
can cope so hard as to believe that. But also
1144
01:16:40.199 --> 01:16:46.000
what really disturbed me about about that service that I
1145
01:16:46.079 --> 01:16:51.239
witnessed was that the only children there that would continue
1146
01:16:51.239 --> 01:16:55.319
to believe that were children who had deliberately close their
1147
01:16:55.319 --> 01:17:00.319
eyes to what their government is doing and refuse to
1148
01:17:00.560 --> 01:17:03.199
believe what is obvious about what their government is doing.
1149
01:17:03.920 --> 01:17:07.079
It reminds me of another loved one that I have,
1150
01:17:08.720 --> 01:17:13.319
someone I'm closely connected to who believes in the Q conspiracies.
1151
01:17:14.119 --> 01:17:19.880
And I was talking to this man and getting along
1152
01:17:19.960 --> 01:17:24.479
with him. I don't seek out to have fights with
1153
01:17:24.600 --> 01:17:28.079
people about things like this or even to contradict them,
1154
01:17:28.279 --> 01:17:32.960
especially when it's a loved one of mine. And he
1155
01:17:33.079 --> 01:17:36.920
was telling me how Trump was still president, that Hillary
1156
01:17:36.960 --> 01:17:42.600
Clinton was dead and we aren't seeing actually Joseph Biden,
1157
01:17:43.159 --> 01:17:47.760
we're seeing a clone of Joseph Biden or something like that,
1158
01:17:48.520 --> 01:17:52.840
and that John F. Kennedy Junior is vice president. He
1159
01:17:52.880 --> 01:17:55.800
believes all of these things, and he says, yeah, and
1160
01:17:55.840 --> 01:17:58.479
everything is going to be fine. And he also he
1161
01:17:58.560 --> 01:18:01.439
said something very interesting to me. He said, none of
1162
01:18:01.439 --> 01:18:05.039
the churches are ready for what's going to happen. And
1163
01:18:05.399 --> 01:18:08.079
I said, well, what do you mean and he said, well,
1164
01:18:08.159 --> 01:18:11.560
when it's all revealed that Trump is still in charge,
1165
01:18:12.199 --> 01:18:16.159
and that John F. Kennedy Junior is still alive, and
1166
01:18:16.399 --> 01:18:21.039
that the United States government has been overthrown in this
1167
01:18:21.159 --> 01:18:26.079
secret revolution behind the scenes, he said, millions of Americans
1168
01:18:26.119 --> 01:18:29.720
are going to return to faith in Jesus. And it
1169
01:18:29.920 --> 01:18:34.560
just blew me away. I was like, how would that follow?
1170
01:18:34.560 --> 01:18:36.439
What does the one have to do with the other?
1171
01:18:37.199 --> 01:18:42.520
I don't understand. And it is people. It seems to me,
1172
01:18:43.199 --> 01:18:45.680
I have no other way of describing what's going on.
1173
01:18:45.800 --> 01:18:49.960
It seems that these people are deliberately closing their eyes
1174
01:18:50.000 --> 01:18:54.319
to what's going on, and they have a sunk cost
1175
01:18:54.560 --> 01:18:58.960
in these things. To go to a less radical example,
1176
01:18:59.039 --> 01:19:03.279
the homeschool moms who were telling that their children, telling
1177
01:19:03.319 --> 01:19:07.720
their children that the flag had symbolism of the Trinity
1178
01:19:08.119 --> 01:19:13.520
associated with it, and the sanctity of womanhood was associated
1179
01:19:13.560 --> 01:19:16.600
with the colors of the flag and things like that.
1180
01:19:17.279 --> 01:19:22.960
They could continue to believe in this ersatz civic religion
1181
01:19:23.600 --> 01:19:27.439
and continue to sacrifice to these people and institutions that
1182
01:19:27.560 --> 01:19:32.159
want them to be destroyed, or they will wake up
1183
01:19:32.199 --> 01:19:36.920
to the fact that this is all counterproductive. But where
1184
01:19:36.960 --> 01:19:39.800
does that leave them if they if they see, oh
1185
01:19:39.840 --> 01:19:42.720
wait a second, my government really does want me dead.
1186
01:19:43.520 --> 01:19:46.760
I've been sacrificing to them and telling my children to
1187
01:19:46.760 --> 01:19:51.239
have confidence in these institutions when in fact this is
1188
01:19:51.399 --> 01:19:54.399
all against my interests. Does that cause them to lose
1189
01:19:54.439 --> 01:19:54.880
their faith?
1190
01:19:54.920 --> 01:19:55.119
Then?
1191
01:19:55.520 --> 01:19:57.520
And I was talking to a good friend of mine
1192
01:19:57.560 --> 01:20:00.560
about this just recently. He and I. He knows he
1193
01:20:00.600 --> 01:20:04.159
knows a lot more about dispensationalism than I do. And
1194
01:20:05.119 --> 01:20:08.039
I was talking to him about this, and he said, well,
1195
01:20:08.720 --> 01:20:11.239
it could be that the religion of a lot of
1196
01:20:11.239 --> 01:20:16.760
these people is in fact that counterproductive civic religion, and
1197
01:20:16.840 --> 01:20:20.079
it does not merit their faith, and it should not survive.
1198
01:20:20.640 --> 01:20:25.439
So maybe they maybe we're looking at massive disillusionment. Can
1199
01:20:25.479 --> 01:20:30.000
you imagine where these people will be left if the
1200
01:20:30.039 --> 01:20:37.399
state of Israel is discredited, repudiated as genocidal by the
1201
01:20:37.520 --> 01:20:41.880
United Nations, say, by a consensus of world powers. And
1202
01:20:41.960 --> 01:20:47.640
if the United States has a new administration that repudiates
1203
01:20:47.680 --> 01:20:51.800
its support of Israel or announces hard limits to that support,
1204
01:20:52.359 --> 01:20:55.159
it could shake the faith of many of those people.
1205
01:20:55.479 --> 01:20:58.560
And I don't want to I don't want to misrepresent
1206
01:20:59.560 --> 01:21:03.760
these things, but this is what the dispensationalist writers and
1207
01:21:03.840 --> 01:21:07.880
leaders have to say about it. How Lindsay, who wrote
1208
01:21:07.920 --> 01:21:11.680
a very important book called The Late Great Planet Earth
1209
01:21:12.039 --> 01:21:19.159
a dispensationalist interpretation all right, an important dispensationalist thinker, how Lindsay.
1210
01:21:19.800 --> 01:21:24.079
How Lindsay said, the United States has been protected by
1211
01:21:24.119 --> 01:21:29.239
God because it has been a haven for Israelites and
1212
01:21:29.319 --> 01:21:34.199
an ally of their survival. That's what makes America exceptional.
1213
01:21:34.800 --> 01:21:39.640
This is very close to what people at Liberty were saying.
1214
01:21:40.000 --> 01:21:44.119
The whole time I was there, that America is special,
1215
01:21:44.159 --> 01:21:47.880
America is exceptional because we support Israel. That it's not
1216
01:21:48.000 --> 01:21:51.119
at all unusual to hear a dispensationalists say that what
1217
01:21:51.359 --> 01:21:57.600
happens when these illusions are dissolved. If support of Israel
1218
01:21:57.840 --> 01:22:02.279
is what makes them crit in their view, and not
1219
01:22:02.439 --> 01:22:06.800
their confession that Christ is God, where does that leave them? Well,
1220
01:22:07.079 --> 01:22:12.079
it's a very disturbing question. I feel very sorry for
1221
01:22:12.119 --> 01:22:16.479
the suffering that they must go through. That suffering is inevitable.
1222
01:22:17.079 --> 01:22:20.239
It's going to happen. They will be disillusioned because these
1223
01:22:20.239 --> 01:22:23.600
beliefs are false. It's not going to trouble me. I
1224
01:22:23.600 --> 01:22:26.239
mean it'll trouble me because people I love are suffering,
1225
01:22:26.600 --> 01:22:29.840
because people I love are having their faith tested. But
1226
01:22:30.720 --> 01:22:35.279
that faith must be refined, it must have their impurities
1227
01:22:35.520 --> 01:22:36.279
burned out of it.
1228
01:22:36.640 --> 01:22:42.960
And I think that's something we're witnessing. I'm, as you
1229
01:22:43.600 --> 01:22:48.920
probably picked up on, kind of pessimistic by nature. But
1230
01:22:48.960 --> 01:22:51.680
when I look at what's currently happening in the conservative movement,
1231
01:22:51.720 --> 01:22:56.359
there has been a turnover and people like Glenn Back,
1232
01:22:56.560 --> 01:23:00.199
people like Ben Shapiro, who I mean, Glenn Back is
1233
01:23:00.000 --> 01:23:03.119
a Mormon, you know who? And Mormons buy into this.
1234
01:23:03.920 --> 01:23:09.319
Ben Shapiro is Ben Shapiro. They've sort of begun to
1235
01:23:09.359 --> 01:23:12.680
alienate themselves. And I think that this is partially generational.
1236
01:23:14.319 --> 01:23:17.359
The baby Boomers and gen Z buy into this much more.
1237
01:23:17.640 --> 01:23:20.199
And maybe it's just the fact that millennials in gen
1238
01:23:20.319 --> 01:23:23.000
Z are less Christian or less churched, and so they
1239
01:23:23.039 --> 01:23:25.079
get less of it. But it does sort of seem
1240
01:23:25.119 --> 01:23:28.359
that this is an idea that is dying, you know,
1241
01:23:28.399 --> 01:23:32.159
whether you want to say it or not. And on
1242
01:23:32.159 --> 01:23:34.199
one hand, you know, I would prefer to live in
1243
01:23:34.239 --> 01:23:37.279
a more Christian country than not, even if it's kind
1244
01:23:37.319 --> 01:23:41.039
of a suboptimal form of Christianity. But at the same time,
1245
01:23:41.039 --> 01:23:43.640
I think you're right, this needs to die. It is dying,
1246
01:23:44.039 --> 01:23:45.640
and I don't think we should bemoan it.
1247
01:23:46.079 --> 01:23:51.359
Well, I will, I will reserve my sympathies for those
1248
01:23:51.439 --> 01:23:55.359
that suffer from this, because I love them. But this
1249
01:23:55.560 --> 01:24:00.079
is not what Christians believe, and this is counterproductive to
1250
01:24:00.520 --> 01:24:06.039
Christianity in this place. This is counterproductive to American Christianity.
1251
01:24:06.439 --> 01:24:12.119
It causes people to despise the Christian message, and the
1252
01:24:12.239 --> 01:24:17.119
Christian message is the Gospel. It's not any specific innovative
1253
01:24:17.159 --> 01:24:20.720
teaching about the modern state of Israel. It does not
1254
01:24:20.880 --> 01:24:27.600
involve our crazy, are insane modern political problems. The Christian
1255
01:24:27.640 --> 01:24:31.880
gospel is that Jesus is God and he saves us
1256
01:24:31.880 --> 01:24:35.159
from our sins, and our sins cause us to suffer
1257
01:24:35.199 --> 01:24:38.840
and die. All right, So this is good news that
1258
01:24:38.960 --> 01:24:41.520
Jesus saves us and that we're supposed to believe in it.
1259
01:24:41.920 --> 01:24:46.039
That's the Christian gospel, and dispensationalism is contrary to this.
1260
01:24:46.800 --> 01:24:49.680
Dispensationalists say, no, it's more important for us to support Israel,
1261
01:24:50.000 --> 01:24:55.119
and that's ridiculous. That is vulgarity as opposed to what
1262
01:24:55.239 --> 01:24:58.760
is holy and true and golden. And so this does
1263
01:24:58.800 --> 01:25:02.399
not deserve to survive, and it's going to cause a
1264
01:25:02.399 --> 01:25:05.359
lot of suffering to those that have so heavily invested
1265
01:25:05.439 --> 01:25:08.600
in it. And we see, we have all these major
1266
01:25:08.640 --> 01:25:12.560
institutions all over the place, and they have been perpetuating
1267
01:25:12.600 --> 01:25:15.680
this belief, and they've been popularizing this belief. This is
1268
01:25:15.720 --> 01:25:20.640
something that's even out in pop culture. Nicholas Cage was
1269
01:25:20.800 --> 01:25:25.159
in a movie about this. It was one of those
1270
01:25:25.199 --> 01:25:28.479
lesser known Nicholas Cage movies, but they actually got Nicholas
1271
01:25:28.520 --> 01:25:33.399
Cage for that. The movie was called Left Behind, which
1272
01:25:33.479 --> 01:25:38.359
is a very popular series of novels about this theology.
1273
01:25:38.920 --> 01:25:43.520
And that is not what Christians have historically believed. And
1274
01:25:43.600 --> 01:25:46.960
you don't have to look far outside of the United
1275
01:25:46.960 --> 01:25:50.199
States to find that no one's heard about this stuff.
1276
01:25:50.199 --> 01:25:54.199
This stuff is really weird. As ask Christians from the
1277
01:25:54.199 --> 01:25:56.720
Middle East if they've heard about this stuff and they
1278
01:25:56.800 --> 01:26:01.119
think it's crazy, they think that it is. It's parochial,
1279
01:26:01.520 --> 01:26:04.079
right in the sense that it's isolated to a certain area.
1280
01:26:04.680 --> 01:26:11.000
It's isolated to like the like anglophone Americans, and those
1281
01:26:11.039 --> 01:26:15.399
are all all signs this is not the Catholic teaching.
1282
01:26:15.560 --> 01:26:18.079
This is not what Christians have always believed in all times,
1283
01:26:18.079 --> 01:26:21.399
in all places. So it does not deserve to survive.
1284
01:26:21.520 --> 01:26:23.720
And it's done a lot of harm and it I
1285
01:26:23.760 --> 01:26:27.000
think it will cause a lot of people to lose
1286
01:26:27.039 --> 01:26:31.680
their faith in Christ such such as they profess it,
1287
01:26:32.399 --> 01:26:37.399
because it has marred that teaching so badly. So I
1288
01:26:37.520 --> 01:26:39.199
want to and I don't want to see that happen.
1289
01:26:39.239 --> 01:26:43.840
You know. I'd prefer more people confessing than not, and
1290
01:26:43.920 --> 01:26:49.680
I'd prefer a level of cultural Christianity. But like I said,
1291
01:26:50.520 --> 01:26:55.079
it will refine people's teachings, and that is necessary and inevitable.
1292
01:26:55.239 --> 01:26:56.560
It has to happen at some point.
1293
01:26:56.920 --> 01:26:59.880
So Bagbee, we're have time. If people want to find
1294
01:27:00.439 --> 01:27:01.920
more of your work, what's a good way for them
1295
01:27:01.960 --> 01:27:02.319
to do that.
1296
01:27:02.920 --> 01:27:05.760
Well, I have my YouTube channel where you can find
1297
01:27:05.760 --> 01:27:09.600
some of these recordings. We've mentioned that storage Bagbee on YouTube.
1298
01:27:10.600 --> 01:27:15.439
I am also releasing a book. It's an old history
1299
01:27:15.439 --> 01:27:19.920
book that I have edited and I'm re releasing. It's
1300
01:27:19.960 --> 01:27:24.720
called The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama by Walter Fleming.
1301
01:27:25.600 --> 01:27:28.199
It has been delayed several times. I've had a lot
1302
01:27:28.239 --> 01:27:34.000
of formatting problems. But my work ought to be done today.
1303
01:27:34.079 --> 01:27:38.880
So it depends on if the publisher can get this
1304
01:27:39.039 --> 01:27:43.560
approved for publication today. It might go online today. So
1305
01:27:44.319 --> 01:27:47.800
we'll figure that out and I will certainly publicize its
1306
01:27:47.840 --> 01:27:51.319
release once it's actually for sale. I expected we'll go
1307
01:27:51.399 --> 01:27:53.199
for sale on Amazon very soon.
1308
01:27:53.600 --> 01:27:56.039
All right, Well, I will be sure to short of
1309
01:27:56.039 --> 01:27:57.960
link that as well. If you guys want to support
1310
01:27:58.000 --> 01:28:01.239
my show in this available on Apple Spot, YouTube, anywhere
1311
01:28:01.399 --> 01:28:03.000
you want to listen to podcasts. If you want to
1312
01:28:03.000 --> 01:28:05.760
support the show more directly, you can check out my
1313
01:28:05.920 --> 01:28:09.119
fitness sponsor, Axios doing some good work really expanding the
1314
01:28:09.159 --> 01:28:11.560
program there and again, Bagbe, thank you so much for
1315
01:28:11.600 --> 01:28:14.800
your time. Thank you good to be here, and everyone
1316
01:28:14.840 --> 01:28:17.760
at home remember keep your head up. Well, I can't
1317
01:28:17.840 --> 01:28:21.520
last forever. Good night, all right, George Bagbe, Welcome back
1318
01:28:21.520 --> 01:28:22.479
to the show. How are you doing.
1319
01:28:23.000 --> 01:28:27.680
I'm doing well. I've been driving very hard this holiday
1320
01:28:27.720 --> 01:28:30.600
weekend and so I'm kind of recovering from that. But
1321
01:28:31.319 --> 01:28:34.079
We've got a really good subject today and I've I've
1322
01:28:34.079 --> 01:28:35.279
been really looking forward to it.
1323
01:28:35.560 --> 01:28:38.640
Yeah, for those listening in the future, it is New
1324
01:28:38.680 --> 01:28:42.640
Year's Day and both Bagbie and I are are somewhat
1325
01:28:42.640 --> 01:28:44.640
the worse for where in each case though it's not
1326
01:28:44.680 --> 01:28:47.399
because we were up late partying, but I'm stuck with
1327
01:28:47.439 --> 01:28:50.600
this kind of eternal throat sickness, which you can probably hear.
1328
01:28:50.920 --> 01:28:53.560
And obviously Bagbe drives a cab and turns out that
1329
01:28:53.840 --> 01:28:56.439
New Year's is a pretty busy day for him. So anyway,
1330
01:28:56.560 --> 01:29:01.960
we'll get into it. So you have recently republished a book,
1331
01:29:02.479 --> 01:29:06.199
and that book is about our topic today, So do
1332
01:29:06.239 --> 01:29:08.560
you want to first introduce our topic and then maybe
1333
01:29:08.720 --> 01:29:10.279
the book that you've republished as well.
1334
01:29:10.840 --> 01:29:14.840
Yes, the topic is the reconstruction of the United States
1335
01:29:15.159 --> 01:29:18.680
that follows the War between the states the Civil War,
1336
01:29:19.479 --> 01:29:24.520
and the book is The Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama.
1337
01:29:25.079 --> 01:29:28.520
This is one of many books published by the so
1338
01:29:28.600 --> 01:29:34.239
called Dunning School of the Civil War historiography. They were
1339
01:29:34.279 --> 01:29:39.720
all students of a certain professor at Columbia named William A. Dunning,
1340
01:29:40.439 --> 01:29:44.800
and they all got very deep into the primary sources
1341
01:29:44.840 --> 01:29:50.239
in their native states and wrote state specific histories of
1342
01:29:50.399 --> 01:29:55.800
the reconstruction period. And these students, the most famous of them,
1343
01:29:56.479 --> 01:29:59.520
went to the Southern States and did their work there,
1344
01:29:59.560 --> 01:30:02.760
but there were northern state histories that came out of
1345
01:30:02.880 --> 01:30:08.560
this school of historians as well. These were mostly published
1346
01:30:08.600 --> 01:30:13.199
around the turn of the century, and they are rather inaccessible.
1347
01:30:14.119 --> 01:30:19.479
They're extremely good quality because they are compendums of the
1348
01:30:19.520 --> 01:30:23.920
sources of the times. They draw very heavily on these
1349
01:30:23.960 --> 01:30:27.960
primary sources, and that's one of the reasons why they
1350
01:30:28.119 --> 01:30:33.479
are very durable and valuable. But it's also a very controversial,
1351
01:30:34.800 --> 01:30:38.760
very controversial period in American history, and the Dunning School
1352
01:30:38.840 --> 01:30:43.640
has been purposefully marginalized because they take an older view.
1353
01:30:45.119 --> 01:30:48.840
It used to be the establishment view of this period
1354
01:30:48.840 --> 01:30:53.680
of American history, but it's been marginalized and deliberately excluded
1355
01:30:53.760 --> 01:30:57.520
from the conversation about this period. What's really interesting about
1356
01:30:57.560 --> 01:31:04.640
this at the moment as a contemporary concern is suddenly
1357
01:31:05.239 --> 01:31:10.640
these reconstruction policies and laws are front page news all
1358
01:31:10.680 --> 01:31:15.720
around the country, mostly because of controversy about the upcoming
1359
01:31:16.159 --> 01:31:21.119
twenty twenty four presidential election. And these these laws, in
1360
01:31:21.159 --> 01:31:25.840
particular the fourteenth Amendment, are being used to justify very
1361
01:31:25.960 --> 01:31:31.199
radical policies in our own time. So it's a curious
1362
01:31:31.239 --> 01:31:35.720
thing that this old conversation about what happened in American
1363
01:31:35.800 --> 01:31:41.399
history and what justifies or or makes makes these things unjustifiable,
1364
01:31:42.079 --> 01:31:45.479
that is now a topic of popular interest once again.
1365
01:31:46.079 --> 01:31:50.800
And it's interesting because the two other and I realized
1366
01:31:50.840 --> 01:31:53.479
this may be seen as overly broad, but the two
1367
01:31:53.920 --> 01:31:59.239
other major post war I guess kind of social planning
1368
01:31:59.279 --> 01:32:03.760
operations that the Empire of Lies has embarked on. Well,
1369
01:32:04.439 --> 01:32:08.079
obviously there's the denossification, right what we did to Europe,
1370
01:32:08.640 --> 01:32:11.079
But the blueprints for that and what is sort of
1371
01:32:11.479 --> 01:32:15.079
maybe going to come back after the next election, well
1372
01:32:15.079 --> 01:32:18.920
that the blueprint of that is found in reconstruction. So
1373
01:32:19.800 --> 01:32:24.199
let's start kind of immediately when you know, the hostilities
1374
01:32:24.439 --> 01:32:27.239
end as far as the War between the Straits is
1375
01:32:27.640 --> 01:32:30.640
how long does it take between that moment and the
1376
01:32:30.640 --> 01:32:33.720
start of I guess what we would know is reconstruction. Actually,
1377
01:32:33.880 --> 01:32:35.359
you know, before I get into that, do you want
1378
01:32:35.359 --> 01:32:37.640
to maybe define what reconstruction is? Because I realize I
1379
01:32:37.640 --> 01:32:42.439
have a more international audience than I I often say,
1380
01:32:42.520 --> 01:32:44.520
and so there are perhaps some of us who don't
1381
01:32:44.520 --> 01:32:45.960
necessarily know their America.
1382
01:32:46.039 --> 01:32:52.159
Sure, yes, reconstruction refers to the period after the American
1383
01:32:52.239 --> 01:32:57.079
Civil War. It's a period of military governments in the
1384
01:32:57.119 --> 01:33:02.840
South of the imposition of martial law and political policy
1385
01:33:03.720 --> 01:33:09.239
made by force of arms, not through normal means of
1386
01:33:09.399 --> 01:33:15.359
consensus and political process, but through military governments and through
1387
01:33:15.439 --> 01:33:21.399
the intimidation of soldiers in the Southern States. And it
1388
01:33:21.479 --> 01:33:29.439
refers to this period of radical idealism that nominally motivated
1389
01:33:29.720 --> 01:33:35.399
the Republican Party, which dominated the federal government after the war. This,
1390
01:33:35.479 --> 01:33:42.600
of course, was Lincoln's party, and the Democrats were marginalized
1391
01:33:42.760 --> 01:33:46.920
as the party of rum, Romanism and rebellion.
1392
01:33:47.840 --> 01:33:48.520
At this time.
1393
01:33:48.760 --> 01:33:51.520
These are the things that were associated with the Democratic Party.
1394
01:33:51.520 --> 01:33:53.600
This is back when the Democratic Party was much more
1395
01:33:53.600 --> 01:33:57.359
interesting and fun than it is now. I really like
1396
01:33:57.640 --> 01:34:02.479
the legacy of this particular political It was associated with
1397
01:34:03.239 --> 01:34:09.560
the immigrant Catholics, with people that liked alcohol, so anti
1398
01:34:09.640 --> 01:34:16.439
prohibition forces, and with the former Confederate States, thereby calling
1399
01:34:16.479 --> 01:34:20.600
it the party of rum Romanism and rebellion. Sounds like
1400
01:34:20.640 --> 01:34:23.640
a lot of fun to me. But they were marginalized
1401
01:34:23.720 --> 01:34:27.920
during this time. Lots of Democratic voters, these are white
1402
01:34:28.199 --> 01:34:33.000
ex confederates in the South were disenfranchised during this time
1403
01:34:33.720 --> 01:34:37.399
very importantly, and this is the probably the number one
1404
01:34:37.520 --> 01:34:40.920
emphasis in most of the history you'd read on the
1405
01:34:40.960 --> 01:34:47.359
period today. The slaves were all legally freed by the
1406
01:34:47.439 --> 01:34:50.239
thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. This is the first of
1407
01:34:50.279 --> 01:34:56.399
the reconstruction Amendments. That was the legal end of slavery
1408
01:34:56.800 --> 01:35:01.039
in the United States, not the emancipated proclamation by the
1409
01:35:01.079 --> 01:35:06.159
thirteenth Amendment in eighteen sixty five. In eighteen sixty six
1410
01:35:06.279 --> 01:35:10.760
we see the fourteenth Amendment, which redefines citizenship and also
1411
01:35:11.279 --> 01:35:17.199
excludes ex confederates from voting and holding office. And then
1412
01:35:17.279 --> 01:35:19.960
finally you have the Fifteenth Amendment, the last of the
1413
01:35:19.960 --> 01:35:25.960
Reconstruction Amendments, which guarantees voting rights to all American citizens,
1414
01:35:26.279 --> 01:35:32.399
regardless of their former status of being slaves. So reconstruction
1415
01:35:32.600 --> 01:35:41.279
is this time of the rebuilding of American American constitutional government.
1416
01:35:42.680 --> 01:35:48.439
It's a reforming of Republican institutions, particularly in the South,
1417
01:35:49.279 --> 01:35:54.439
Republican meaning representative government institution. And it's a period that
1418
01:35:54.600 --> 01:35:59.199
was done by force. These reforms were done by force,
1419
01:35:59.439 --> 01:36:04.399
not through consensus. The constitutions of all the Southern states
1420
01:36:04.399 --> 01:36:07.720
were rewritten during this time. And it was also a
1421
01:36:07.760 --> 01:36:13.359
time very famous for corruption in high places. Mark Twain
1422
01:36:13.439 --> 01:36:17.520
famously referred to this period as the Gilded Age. So
1423
01:36:17.560 --> 01:36:19.880
it looks really glittery on the outside, but on the
1424
01:36:19.920 --> 01:36:26.920
inside it's worthless gilded. It's an age of corruption in
1425
01:36:27.000 --> 01:36:35.119
high places. You have probably the most infamous American presidential regimes,
1426
01:36:36.199 --> 01:36:41.640
like the US Grant regime, which sees the vice president
1427
01:36:42.560 --> 01:36:49.479
arrested for corruption, the president's personal secretary and several cabinet
1428
01:36:49.520 --> 01:36:54.520
members all indicted for corruption and the embezzlement of public funds.
1429
01:36:55.239 --> 01:37:00.199
Even the word lobbyist first comes into use during this
1430
01:37:00.319 --> 01:37:06.239
period because the Republican Republican regime in Washington, d c.
1431
01:37:07.039 --> 01:37:11.920
Is handing out huge sums of money to special interest
1432
01:37:11.960 --> 01:37:16.560
groups during this time. So the way that the United
1433
01:37:16.600 --> 01:37:22.359
States government operates fundamentally transforms during this period, and that
1434
01:37:22.399 --> 01:37:26.960
makes it of particular interest the civil rights aspect, the
1435
01:37:27.640 --> 01:37:34.800
end of slavery, the radical sudden enfranchisement with no previous
1436
01:37:34.880 --> 01:37:39.880
plan of all black Americans in the South, not in
1437
01:37:39.920 --> 01:37:46.279
the North. We should specify these reforms that enfranchise black
1438
01:37:46.399 --> 01:37:50.960
voters in the South do not initially affect northern states
1439
01:37:51.000 --> 01:37:54.119
at all, not that that matters very much. There are
1440
01:37:54.199 --> 01:37:56.960
very few black people living in the North at this time.
1441
01:37:57.800 --> 01:37:59.159
The vast majority of them live.
1442
01:37:59.079 --> 01:37:59.520
In the South.
1443
01:38:00.319 --> 01:38:05.439
But that is a huge issue during this period, and
1444
01:38:05.479 --> 01:38:07.760
that is usually what is focused on.
1445
01:38:08.399 --> 01:38:15.520
So let's go through three constitutional amendments and contrast that
1446
01:38:15.720 --> 01:38:20.880
to how American governance was handled before. Does that sound reasonable? Sure?
1447
01:38:22.319 --> 01:38:25.960
And that's very topical for us right now, because the
1448
01:38:26.000 --> 01:38:30.640
Fourteenth Amendment in particular is very emphasized in our discourse
1449
01:38:30.720 --> 01:38:34.760
right now. So let me go back to an earlier
1450
01:38:34.840 --> 01:38:38.479
question you had, just when did all this reconstruction begin.
1451
01:38:39.600 --> 01:38:45.359
Historians start tracking the progress of reconstruction policies during the
1452
01:38:45.359 --> 01:38:50.000
war itself. So while the South is being invaded in
1453
01:38:50.039 --> 01:38:53.479
the course of the Civil War, military regimes are set
1454
01:38:53.560 --> 01:38:59.039
up around the South and military governments are established. And
1455
01:38:59.359 --> 01:39:03.640
Lincoln was always adamant that the Southern states had not
1456
01:39:03.920 --> 01:39:07.239
left the Union. They remained in the Union, and they
1457
01:39:08.159 --> 01:39:14.520
were commandeered by rebel factions that did not represent the
1458
01:39:14.920 --> 01:39:20.800
states that they portended to represent. So Lincoln never recognized
1459
01:39:21.000 --> 01:39:24.880
that the South had left the Union. He never recognized
1460
01:39:24.920 --> 01:39:30.399
the legitimacy of the Confederate States or the Confederate Government,
1461
01:39:31.680 --> 01:39:35.399
the Union of the Confederate States. He never recognized them
1462
01:39:35.479 --> 01:39:38.920
as legitimate bodies. And he said that they were all
1463
01:39:38.960 --> 01:39:43.600
in conspiracy, in rebellion against the federal government. So when
1464
01:39:43.680 --> 01:39:47.720
the federal armies went into Southern states, they would set
1465
01:39:47.880 --> 01:39:53.359
up rival Union governments when when they didn't just run
1466
01:39:53.439 --> 01:39:57.039
things like a military camp. So this happened in several states,
1467
01:39:57.039 --> 01:39:59.920
and this is this is an important feature to talk
1468
01:40:00.039 --> 01:40:03.960
about the Reconstruction Amendments because it makes sense of several
1469
01:40:04.000 --> 01:40:09.239
of them. In states where the federal government had a
1470
01:40:09.439 --> 01:40:14.760
long standing occupation, states like Tennessee, which was invaded very early.
1471
01:40:15.920 --> 01:40:23.199
In states like Louisiana, the Union army established rival state
1472
01:40:23.239 --> 01:40:29.479
governments in those states, and those governments actually sent representatives
1473
01:40:29.520 --> 01:40:34.560
to Congress, and these were all Republicans. The most famous
1474
01:40:34.640 --> 01:40:40.479
instance of that is the future President Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.
1475
01:40:41.119 --> 01:40:45.159
He was a Democrat. He was a Southerner from the
1476
01:40:45.239 --> 01:40:49.079
highlands of Tennessee. He was a Unionist. He had the
1477
01:40:49.119 --> 01:40:53.279
distinction of being the only Southern Congressman that did not
1478
01:40:53.600 --> 01:40:56.800
leave the capital when his states seceded from the Union.
1479
01:40:57.239 --> 01:40:59.800
He did not recognize the right of secession, and so
1480
01:40:59.840 --> 01:41:03.640
he stayed in the capitol and became a favorite of
1481
01:41:03.680 --> 01:41:08.640
Abraham Lincoln because he was a loyal Southerner, loyal to
1482
01:41:08.680 --> 01:41:12.640
the Union. So Abraham Lincoln rewarded him by making him
1483
01:41:12.840 --> 01:41:17.479
vice president on his Republican ticket in eighteen sixty four
1484
01:41:17.560 --> 01:41:21.680
when he ran for reelection. And this very ironically, after
1485
01:41:21.760 --> 01:41:25.199
Lincoln is assassinated, makes Andrew Johnson President of the United States,
1486
01:41:25.399 --> 01:41:29.760
which is the craziest thing. Following the Civil War. You
1487
01:41:29.800 --> 01:41:34.239
have a Southern Democrat who is President of the United
1488
01:41:34.279 --> 01:41:39.640
States immediately following the Civil War. It's the most unlikely accident.
1489
01:41:40.319 --> 01:41:42.479
Not surprisingly, he does not get along with the radical
1490
01:41:42.520 --> 01:41:47.920
Republicans and is impeached unsuccessfully. They do not remove him
1491
01:41:47.920 --> 01:41:52.359
from office. He's acquitted by a single vote. But he's
1492
01:41:52.399 --> 01:41:56.640
a very important example of these Union governments that were
1493
01:41:56.640 --> 01:41:59.640
set up in these occupied states in the South. Well
1494
01:42:00.319 --> 01:42:07.560
immediately after Lincoln's assassination. Andrew Johnson is president because he's
1495
01:42:07.720 --> 01:42:14.640
Lincoln's second vice president. The process of renovating the Union
1496
01:42:14.800 --> 01:42:19.960
at this point, following the Great American Civil War, where
1497
01:42:20.119 --> 01:42:23.199
half of the country destroys the other half of the country,
1498
01:42:25.039 --> 01:42:28.159
the big question of the time is how is the
1499
01:42:28.279 --> 01:42:32.319
Union going to work at this point. Previously, the conservative
1500
01:42:32.399 --> 01:42:39.520
position in Antebellum America, in pre war America was that
1501
01:42:39.960 --> 01:42:45.079
the states had formed a consensus about what functions of
1502
01:42:45.199 --> 01:42:49.880
government the federal government would have, what powers does the
1503
01:42:49.920 --> 01:42:55.039
federal government have, and they wrote down and agreed upon
1504
01:42:55.359 --> 01:42:59.239
this consensus, and that is what the Constitution is. So
1505
01:42:59.279 --> 01:43:02.760
the Constitution is a long list of things the states
1506
01:43:02.800 --> 01:43:07.159
agree the federal government can and cannot do. And after
1507
01:43:07.239 --> 01:43:10.960
they wrote down the Constitution, or their representatives wrote it down,
1508
01:43:11.439 --> 01:43:14.560
it went to the state governments for ratificate. And that's
1509
01:43:14.600 --> 01:43:18.119
the story of all the states of the Union up
1510
01:43:18.319 --> 01:43:22.680
until the Civil War. After the Civil War, we have
1511
01:43:22.840 --> 01:43:29.159
this big problem because it's obvious that there are many
1512
01:43:29.199 --> 01:43:33.760
more powers in that federal government than people had imagined before.
1513
01:43:34.399 --> 01:43:37.920
The federal government has waged a war against the states
1514
01:43:38.680 --> 01:43:41.800
in the name of union, and this was how Lincoln
1515
01:43:42.039 --> 01:43:46.680
justified his military actions that began the war. Now, Lincoln
1516
01:43:46.800 --> 01:43:52.159
added further justifications as the war progressed. Most famously, he
1517
01:43:52.279 --> 01:43:56.159
said the war was going to end slavery, and that
1518
01:43:56.199 --> 01:44:00.279
the war was justified because it would end slavery. He
1519
01:44:00.399 --> 01:44:03.840
very famously alludes to this in the Gettysburg Address and
1520
01:44:03.880 --> 01:44:07.359
then states it much more plainly in the second Inaugural Address.
1521
01:44:07.640 --> 01:44:11.279
But if we read the first Inaugural Address, he is
1522
01:44:11.640 --> 01:44:15.359
very careful to skirt the issue of slavery. He says
1523
01:44:15.399 --> 01:44:18.199
that he isn't doing anything in regards to slavery and
1524
01:44:18.279 --> 01:44:20.039
doesn't think that he has any right to do so.
1525
01:44:20.680 --> 01:44:24.119
But by the time we get to April of eighteen
1526
01:44:24.199 --> 01:44:30.439
sixty five, Lee surrenders at Appomatox Courthouse. The other Confederate
1527
01:44:30.520 --> 01:44:35.279
armies are in a hopeless condition. They quickly surrender. The
1528
01:44:35.359 --> 01:44:39.760
question is what sort of government does the United States
1529
01:44:39.840 --> 01:44:44.920
have at this point? Andrew Johnson President Andrew Johnson is marginalized.
1530
01:44:45.079 --> 01:44:48.760
He has his ideas about how to bring the Union
1531
01:44:48.800 --> 01:44:57.520
together post war. Andrew Johnson seems to illustrate Abraham Lincoln's
1532
01:44:58.000 --> 01:45:05.359
conciliatory ideas about restoring the Union. Andrew Johnson stays up
1533
01:45:05.960 --> 01:45:11.359
all night long signing pardons for ex Confederates who write
1534
01:45:11.399 --> 01:45:15.439
to him asking for the restoration of their citizenship rights.
1535
01:45:16.159 --> 01:45:21.000
Andrew Johnson tells the ex Confederate states that all they
1536
01:45:21.079 --> 01:45:25.399
need to do is send representatives back to Washington, d c.
1537
01:45:26.159 --> 01:45:30.680
And they are restored to their status in the Union.
1538
01:45:31.359 --> 01:45:37.680
But this runs into problems. Congress at this point is
1539
01:45:37.920 --> 01:45:44.920
dominated by the Republican Party. The Southern States, the former
1540
01:45:44.920 --> 01:45:50.000
Confederate States were the major Democratic stronghold in the South.
1541
01:45:50.039 --> 01:45:53.000
They were the stronghold of the Democratic Party. When they
1542
01:45:53.079 --> 01:45:57.119
left the Union, they withdrew their Congressional representatives. All except
1543
01:45:57.159 --> 01:46:01.600
Andrew Johnson left. So Congress from the moment of the
1544
01:46:01.600 --> 01:46:05.760
secession of the Southern States has been overwhelmingly dominated by
1545
01:46:05.800 --> 01:46:09.039
Lincoln's Republican Party, and through the course of the war,
1546
01:46:09.159 --> 01:46:15.960
this party becomes very radicalized and very antagonistic against the South,
1547
01:46:16.279 --> 01:46:19.600
not surprisingly because it's a war, right, they feel very
1548
01:46:19.600 --> 01:46:23.720
bitter towards the South, and their people are encouraging them
1549
01:46:23.760 --> 01:46:28.920
in this. It is a reflection of popular sentiment. More
1550
01:46:29.039 --> 01:46:34.560
or less Andrew Johnson's conciliatory attitude, just as Abraham Lincoln's
1551
01:46:34.840 --> 01:46:38.680
conciliatory attitude towards the end of the war. Lincoln was
1552
01:46:38.720 --> 01:46:42.600
famous for saying, with malice towards noun and charity for all,
1553
01:46:43.000 --> 01:46:47.239
let us bind up the nation's wounds. He's known for
1554
01:46:47.279 --> 01:46:52.760
saying these very nice and soothing things about the Union.
1555
01:46:52.840 --> 01:46:56.720
Following the war. Andrew Johnson seems to be working that out,
1556
01:46:56.960 --> 01:47:01.000
and that is very unpopular in Congress. So Congress does
1557
01:47:01.079 --> 01:47:04.640
a couple of things here. Well, Congress starts doing a
1558
01:47:04.680 --> 01:47:09.560
great number of things, but most importantly, they decide they
1559
01:47:09.560 --> 01:47:13.680
are going to run the restoration of the Union out
1560
01:47:13.720 --> 01:47:18.239
of Congress, and they are going to get around the
1561
01:47:18.279 --> 01:47:24.760
president's conciliatory policies towards the South. The Republican leadership in
1562
01:47:24.880 --> 01:47:31.319
Congress is very close with Secretary of War Edwin Stanton,
1563
01:47:31.880 --> 01:47:36.039
who is Lincoln's Secretary of War, not surprisingly Lincoln's last
1564
01:47:36.199 --> 01:47:41.800
and most effective secretary of war. He is a radical Republican,
1565
01:47:42.039 --> 01:47:47.880
Edwin Stanton, and he starts disobeying the orders of President Johnson.
1566
01:47:48.399 --> 01:47:55.119
President Johnson tells Edwin Stanton that Southerners are to hold elections,
1567
01:47:55.760 --> 01:48:01.039
that these ex Confederates are allowed to reform their state
1568
01:48:01.159 --> 01:48:07.159
governments to hold constitutional conventions. The idea is that these
1569
01:48:07.479 --> 01:48:12.680
ex Confederate states need to repudiate their former Confederate Constitution
1570
01:48:13.319 --> 01:48:19.199
and rejoin the Union. Ratify the Philadelphia Constitution once again,
1571
01:48:19.239 --> 01:48:23.239
and rejoin the Union. Edwin Stanton is commanding the army,
1572
01:48:23.920 --> 01:48:28.039
and he's sending out the orders to all the Southern generals,
1573
01:48:28.039 --> 01:48:33.399
and he is actively subverting the political process in the
1574
01:48:33.439 --> 01:48:36.760
Southern States at this point. So Andrew Johnson attempts to
1575
01:48:36.840 --> 01:48:41.880
remove Edwin Stanton from office, and Edwin Stanton refuses to
1576
01:48:42.000 --> 01:48:46.800
leave and is backed up by his allies in Congress.
1577
01:48:47.479 --> 01:48:52.840
Then the president's enemies in the Republican Congress, they pass
1578
01:48:52.960 --> 01:48:58.479
articles to impeach the president for attempting to remove a
1579
01:48:58.520 --> 01:49:03.439
cabinet officer for attempting to remove Edwin Stanton from office. Now,
1580
01:49:03.640 --> 01:49:10.079
that is a remarkable and crazy episode. Andrew Johnson was
1581
01:49:10.159 --> 01:49:14.840
wanting to appoint ulysses As Grant as Secretary of War
1582
01:49:15.199 --> 01:49:19.399
to replace Stanton. And Grant is the most popular man
1583
01:49:19.479 --> 01:49:23.000
in America at this point, He's the victor of the
1584
01:49:23.119 --> 01:49:28.520
army right. He couldn't have picked a more popular fellow
1585
01:49:28.800 --> 01:49:33.479
to take this position. And yet Edwin Stanton barricaded himself
1586
01:49:33.600 --> 01:49:37.720
in his office to resist removal and gets backed up
1587
01:49:38.119 --> 01:49:44.439
by these really wild anti Southern Republicans in Congress. Congress
1588
01:49:44.479 --> 01:49:48.279
then decides that they're going to impeach the president. They
1589
01:49:48.520 --> 01:49:52.199
very very narrowly fail on that point, but then they
1590
01:49:52.319 --> 01:49:58.000
start imposing very strict terms on the South, very punitive
1591
01:49:58.119 --> 01:50:04.119
terms on the Southern state. Firstly, the Republicans turn away
1592
01:50:04.920 --> 01:50:10.760
the representatives sent to Congress by the Southern States. Not surprisingly,
1593
01:50:10.960 --> 01:50:15.840
these are people that were voted on by these ex
1594
01:50:15.920 --> 01:50:24.279
Confederate Democrats in the South, and the Southerners vote Alexander
1595
01:50:25.159 --> 01:50:30.000
Alexander Stevens to be the senator from Georgia for instance.
1596
01:50:30.079 --> 01:50:33.319
Alexander Stevens was the former vice president of the Confederate
1597
01:50:33.359 --> 01:50:39.159
States and a notable statesman from pre war Georgia. Well,
1598
01:50:39.720 --> 01:50:42.760
he's the leader of these people. These people are voting
1599
01:50:43.359 --> 01:50:47.760
for their wartime leaders to lead them after the war.
1600
01:50:48.399 --> 01:50:55.039
They vote ex Confederate generals into Congress, and these men
1601
01:50:55.199 --> 01:50:59.520
show up in Washington, d c. And are barred from
1602
01:50:59.720 --> 01:51:04.880
entry into the capital by the Republicans. The Republicans in
1603
01:51:04.960 --> 01:51:10.760
Congress declare that there are no legal governments in the
1604
01:51:10.800 --> 01:51:15.720
Southern States, and they declare martial law throughout the South.
1605
01:51:16.239 --> 01:51:21.479
And this is getting around the president's authority with the
1606
01:51:21.520 --> 01:51:26.239
Secretary of War. The Secretary of War isn't answering to
1607
01:51:26.279 --> 01:51:29.199
the president with all of this, He's answering to radical
1608
01:51:29.279 --> 01:51:32.720
leaders in Congress. So this is not the way that
1609
01:51:33.039 --> 01:51:36.119
the American government was designed to work, but this is
1610
01:51:36.159 --> 01:51:40.039
how it is is working effectually during this time. Now,
1611
01:51:40.079 --> 01:51:43.640
at the exact same time, taking the long way around
1612
01:51:43.760 --> 01:51:48.159
to your original question, what about these reconstruction amendments. At
1613
01:51:48.159 --> 01:51:51.920
the exact same time these things are going on in Washington,
1614
01:51:52.000 --> 01:51:56.560
d C. We have these major constitutional questions, this big
1615
01:51:56.600 --> 01:52:03.039
crisis is brewing. The Southern state governments are ratifying the
1616
01:52:03.079 --> 01:52:06.319
thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution at this time. Now, the
1617
01:52:06.399 --> 01:52:10.600
thirteenth Amendment of the Constitution is the amendment that formally
1618
01:52:10.680 --> 01:52:16.000
abolishes the institution of slavery. Every Southern state abolishes the
1619
01:52:16.000 --> 01:52:22.720
institution of slavery. There's one weird exception when it comes
1620
01:52:22.760 --> 01:52:25.279
to the thirteenth Amendment. The state of Mississippi does not
1621
01:52:25.439 --> 01:52:30.119
ratify the thirteenth Amendment, but they do write a new
1622
01:52:30.199 --> 01:52:34.359
state constitution which abolishes slavery. So it's not as if
1623
01:52:34.359 --> 01:52:37.319
they are trying desperately to hold on to slavery. At
1624
01:52:37.319 --> 01:52:39.359
the end of the Civil War, it's just a different
1625
01:52:39.359 --> 01:52:42.079
way of doing it, and they don't want to be
1626
01:52:42.800 --> 01:52:46.279
strong armed into ratifying amendments to the Constitution down there
1627
01:52:46.319 --> 01:52:49.199
in Mississippi, so they do it their own way. But
1628
01:52:49.319 --> 01:52:53.439
every Southern state abolishes slavery, and this is through their
1629
01:52:53.760 --> 01:52:58.119
representative governments. At the exact same time, the radicals in
1630
01:52:58.800 --> 01:53:01.520
the Republican led Congress in DC say there are no
1631
01:53:01.760 --> 01:53:06.399
legal governments in the South and that justifies their treatment
1632
01:53:06.600 --> 01:53:12.000
as conquered territory to be administered by martial law. And
1633
01:53:12.640 --> 01:53:18.199
this is one of the very many reasons why reconstruction
1634
01:53:18.880 --> 01:53:22.279
is a maddening period to study. It is a very
1635
01:53:22.319 --> 01:53:26.520
frustrating period. It is a very confusing period because legally
1636
01:53:26.800 --> 01:53:32.439
this doesn't make sense. It's not a time that it's
1637
01:53:32.479 --> 01:53:35.840
not a time where anyone can justify what's going on.
1638
01:53:36.479 --> 01:53:38.439
No one can make sense of what's going on or
1639
01:53:38.439 --> 01:53:43.039
how it's all, how it all makes sense constitutionally. Even
1640
01:53:43.720 --> 01:53:46.560
even if you are trying to take the side of
1641
01:53:47.039 --> 01:53:51.960
the radical Republicans, you have to admit that they are
1642
01:53:52.279 --> 01:53:57.520
there going far beyond the law to do all.
1643
01:53:57.399 --> 01:53:58.399
Of these things.
1644
01:53:58.920 --> 01:54:03.159
So in the South, at this time, the slaves have
1645
01:54:03.279 --> 01:54:09.079
been declared free. This is certainly the most important result
1646
01:54:09.319 --> 01:54:12.680
of the American Civil War the end of slavery. I
1647
01:54:12.720 --> 01:54:16.800
do not dispute this. This was a This was a
1648
01:54:16.920 --> 01:54:20.920
huge social, economic, and political change in the United States.
1649
01:54:21.399 --> 01:54:23.920
But there are a lot of other things going on
1650
01:54:24.000 --> 01:54:27.640
at this time as well. Just to give you an example,
1651
01:54:27.880 --> 01:54:32.039
a wartime example, but it still fits. One of the
1652
01:54:32.039 --> 01:54:34.680
things that I'm doing right now is I'm giving Civil
1653
01:54:34.720 --> 01:54:39.680
War tours in the French Quarter in New Orleans. Occasionally
1654
01:54:39.800 --> 01:54:42.880
I have some people and I give them this tour.
1655
01:54:43.560 --> 01:54:47.000
And one of the stories that I tell is how
1656
01:54:47.159 --> 01:54:53.119
the Union army arrived in New Orleans and declared Confederate
1657
01:54:53.439 --> 01:54:58.800
currency void. This shut down the banks in New Orleans.
1658
01:55:00.000 --> 01:55:05.399
Everyone was using Confederate currency and this was declared not
1659
01:55:05.560 --> 01:55:11.560
legal tender. When the Union arrives, then the Union publicizes
1660
01:55:12.039 --> 01:55:17.359
that Congress has declared the confiscation of all rebel property.
1661
01:55:17.920 --> 01:55:19.840
This is one of the things that the Republicans do
1662
01:55:19.880 --> 01:55:23.319
when they take over Congress in eighteen sixty two. The
1663
01:55:23.359 --> 01:55:27.760
Confiscation Act of eighteen sixty two declares anyone in arms
1664
01:55:27.840 --> 01:55:31.199
against the United States Government has forfeited their property rights,
1665
01:55:31.600 --> 01:55:35.159
and their property may be seized and auctioned and This
1666
01:55:35.319 --> 01:55:38.279
is one of the original things that's used to justify
1667
01:55:38.600 --> 01:55:42.640
the manumission of slaves. So people who own slaves who
1668
01:55:42.640 --> 01:55:46.560
are in arms in the Confederate States have forfeited their
1669
01:55:46.600 --> 01:55:50.600
property rights to their slaves. Some Union generals take that
1670
01:55:50.720 --> 01:55:55.479
act to meanness and declare the emancipation of slaves in
1671
01:55:55.560 --> 01:56:01.640
military districts based on this law. Down in New Orleans.
1672
01:56:01.760 --> 01:56:05.520
What this meant was General Butler, the Union general in
1673
01:56:05.600 --> 01:56:09.399
New Orleans, warns the people of New Orleans that they
1674
01:56:09.479 --> 01:56:14.279
have to take oaths to be loyal to President Lincoln
1675
01:56:14.760 --> 01:56:19.600
and to the Union, or the military authorities could seize
1676
01:56:20.000 --> 01:56:24.439
everything that they own. And there are lines outside of
1677
01:56:24.720 --> 01:56:30.640
the army headquarters in New Orleans for people to come
1678
01:56:30.640 --> 01:56:32.680
in and take the oath with their hand on the
1679
01:56:32.680 --> 01:56:36.079
Bible that they will be loyal to Lincoln and his government.
1680
01:56:36.880 --> 01:56:41.800
Not surprisingly, the people with the most to lose, the wealthy,
1681
01:56:42.039 --> 01:56:47.199
the merchant class, are the ones most tempted to go
1682
01:56:47.239 --> 01:56:51.399
and take this oath to safeguard what they own. The
1683
01:56:52.279 --> 01:56:55.920
women of the city, which are the majority of the
1684
01:56:56.000 --> 01:56:57.640
people in the city at this time. You know, most
1685
01:56:57.640 --> 01:57:00.399
of the able bodied men are off at war at
1686
01:57:00.439 --> 01:57:04.640
this time. The women of the city come and be rate.
1687
01:57:05.079 --> 01:57:07.960
The men that stand in line to take this oath,
1688
01:57:08.000 --> 01:57:13.239
they call them cowards, and there's this very emotional exchange.
1689
01:57:14.800 --> 01:57:19.079
It's this very sad thing to imagine. But one of
1690
01:57:19.079 --> 01:57:22.359
the things that follows is that General Butler goes around
1691
01:57:22.359 --> 01:57:26.800
New Orleans seizing the property of ex confederates. He sezes
1692
01:57:26.880 --> 01:57:30.840
the property of Confederate generals, Confederate officers, people that he
1693
01:57:31.000 --> 01:57:35.319
knows are in arms, and he can use newspapers as
1694
01:57:35.760 --> 01:57:39.399
evidence for this that they are in command in posts
1695
01:57:39.520 --> 01:57:42.760
outside of the city, and he starts seizing their property,
1696
01:57:43.199 --> 01:57:47.279
and according to the military law, and according to the
1697
01:57:47.319 --> 01:57:51.600
martial law, it is auctioned off. Now this presents a
1698
01:57:51.600 --> 01:57:57.000
big problem because Confederate currency has been outlawed. So unless
1699
01:57:57.279 --> 01:58:03.680
you have assigned loyalty oath which safeguards your property rights,
1700
01:58:04.399 --> 01:58:06.760
and you have a lot of gold and silver, coin
1701
01:58:07.680 --> 01:58:11.439
or or some other some other source of wealth that's
1702
01:58:11.479 --> 01:58:16.800
that's liquid and exchangeable, you have no ability to participate
1703
01:58:16.840 --> 01:58:20.279
in the auctions that follow from the seized property. So
1704
01:58:20.479 --> 01:58:25.000
General Butler auctions off seized Confederate property around New Orleans,
1705
01:58:25.720 --> 01:58:30.439
and he turns up to the auctions himself and wins
1706
01:58:30.560 --> 01:58:34.439
a lot of these auctions and sends the movable property
1707
01:58:34.520 --> 01:58:38.439
back to Boston, where he was from. And he leaves
1708
01:58:38.479 --> 01:58:41.720
New Orleans after after a tenure of only nine months.
1709
01:58:42.079 --> 01:58:45.680
General Butler leaves New Orleans a multimillionaire. And this is
1710
01:58:45.840 --> 01:58:51.199
this is all arguably legal under martial law. After the
1711
01:58:51.399 --> 01:58:55.239
end of the war. This is happening throughout the South,
1712
01:58:55.880 --> 01:58:58.319
not just in in the great city of New Orleans.
1713
01:58:58.399 --> 01:59:02.880
It's it's something that's happening everywhere. After the war, twenty
1714
01:59:03.000 --> 01:59:07.079
five percent of the able bodied men of the South
1715
01:59:07.680 --> 01:59:13.279
have died. A whole quarter of the military age male
1716
01:59:13.319 --> 01:59:19.800
population is dead. Another quarter is wounded or maimed, lots
1717
01:59:19.800 --> 01:59:23.800
of them with missing limbs. A whole twenty percent of
1718
01:59:23.840 --> 01:59:27.760
the farms in the South in eighteen sixty five have
1719
01:59:27.920 --> 01:59:32.159
been abandoned. And this is very surprising when we think
1720
01:59:32.239 --> 01:59:35.600
of the death toll right and the proportion of men
1721
01:59:35.720 --> 01:59:41.039
lost in battle. There simply aren't enough men around to
1722
01:59:41.159 --> 01:59:43.479
save the farms, to do anything with them, to even
1723
01:59:43.560 --> 01:59:47.000
make them liveable or habitable, and so they are abandoned.
1724
01:59:47.560 --> 01:59:51.680
A huge proportion of the population is reduced to penury
1725
01:59:52.239 --> 01:59:57.239
and even made into refugees dependent on friends and family
1726
01:59:57.680 --> 02:00:01.560
elsewhere at the exact same time in eighteen sixty five,
1727
02:00:01.960 --> 02:00:07.319
when federal authority is enforced throughout the South, the federal
1728
02:00:07.399 --> 02:00:13.399
government imposes four years of back taxes on the South.
1729
02:00:14.000 --> 02:00:18.199
So the Southerners said, well, we are at an independent country.
1730
02:00:18.319 --> 02:00:21.199
We've seceded from the Union. You know, we aren't paying
1731
02:00:21.399 --> 02:00:25.800
taxes to the federal government. When the federal government came back,
1732
02:00:26.039 --> 02:00:32.000
they imposed punitive taxes and back taxes on all of
1733
02:00:32.039 --> 02:00:35.880
the Southerners and told them to pay up. And when
1734
02:00:35.880 --> 02:00:40.640
they couldn't pay, they seized their property. So a huge
1735
02:00:40.680 --> 02:00:45.319
amount of property around the Southern states went to the
1736
02:00:45.359 --> 02:00:50.840
auction block for back taxes. This caused property values to
1737
02:00:50.960 --> 02:00:57.199
plummet throughout the South. In some states, this was particularly bad.
1738
02:00:57.960 --> 02:01:03.720
In places like Mississippi, one fifth of the state was
1739
02:01:04.560 --> 02:01:08.000
auctioned off for back taxes. A whole fifth of the
1740
02:01:08.039 --> 02:01:12.319
state was put to auction because the people there could
1741
02:01:12.319 --> 02:01:18.640
not pay the taxes. After the war, it's difficult to
1742
02:01:18.720 --> 02:01:24.039
explain just how utterly destroyed the South was in the
1743
02:01:24.680 --> 02:01:29.680
years after the war. I have a quote here to
1744
02:01:29.760 --> 02:01:36.239
illustrate this. A Massachusetts journalist his name was Sidney Adams.
1745
02:01:37.000 --> 02:01:40.319
He made a tour through Southern States in eighteen sixty five,
1746
02:01:40.960 --> 02:01:43.760
and he said you can only get over the roads
1747
02:01:43.880 --> 02:01:49.399
walled by desolation. He described Charleston, South Carolina, as a
1748
02:01:49.439 --> 02:01:55.039
city of ruins, of desolation, of vacant houses, of widowed women,
1749
02:01:55.479 --> 02:02:02.560
of rotting wharves, deserted warehouses, of wild gardens, of miles
1750
02:02:02.560 --> 02:02:08.479
of grass grown streets. A British traveler who visited Tennessee
1751
02:02:09.319 --> 02:02:12.199
wrote that the area consists, for the most part of
1752
02:02:12.359 --> 02:02:16.079
plantations in a state of semi ruin. The trail of
1753
02:02:16.159 --> 02:02:20.479
war is visible throughout the valley, in burnt up ginhouses,
1754
02:02:21.079 --> 02:02:25.680
ruined bridges, mills and factories, and of large tracts of
1755
02:02:25.720 --> 02:02:30.600
once cultivated land stripped of every vestige of fencing. One
1756
02:02:30.640 --> 02:02:33.920
of the things that we should remember when we're talking
1757
02:02:33.920 --> 02:02:39.000
about this period of reconstruction. It is a time that
1758
02:02:39.279 --> 02:02:45.039
is cunningly labeled because we know that war is so destructive.
1759
02:02:45.399 --> 02:02:48.840
But reconstruction is not the rebuilding of the United States.
1760
02:02:48.880 --> 02:02:52.720
It is not the restoration of what was lost. It
1761
02:02:52.800 --> 02:02:57.880
is not recompense or effort made to restore things that
1762
02:02:57.920 --> 02:03:01.199
were destroyed. It was not the rebuilding of the country.
1763
02:03:01.520 --> 02:03:07.159
Reconstruction was the rebuilding of the way our country's institutions worked.
1764
02:03:07.960 --> 02:03:13.399
It was a radical tinkering with the fundamental laws of
1765
02:03:13.439 --> 02:03:17.199
the country, and it was done. It was done by force,
1766
02:03:17.439 --> 02:03:20.960
it was done by military government. Well, I've been talking
1767
02:03:21.000 --> 02:03:24.800
here for a long time. I hope I haven't overworn myself.
1768
02:03:25.199 --> 02:03:29.279
No, not at all. It's it's interesting you bring up
1769
02:03:29.960 --> 02:03:34.960
that kind of the the fatal irony of that phreeze reconstruction,
1770
02:03:35.680 --> 02:03:38.119
because you know, buried within this is one there. There's
1771
02:03:38.159 --> 02:03:40.840
part of it that's just base looting, you know, and
1772
02:03:40.880 --> 02:03:43.199
maybe we can get into, you know, the rise of
1773
02:03:43.439 --> 02:03:46.800
the organization's like the plan why that that arose kind
1774
02:03:46.800 --> 02:03:49.680
of in reaction to that. But there's another level of it, right,
1775
02:03:49.720 --> 02:03:52.760
which is this idea that you see again in the
1776
02:03:52.760 --> 02:03:56.119
Morgenthele plan, you know, or the Marshall Plan. You know,
1777
02:03:56.159 --> 02:03:59.199
what is kind of teased in you know, their wildest
1778
02:03:59.279 --> 02:04:03.399
dreams about is this idea that essentially they know better
1779
02:04:03.479 --> 02:04:08.840
they can reconstruct, you know, certain ideas, certain proclivities out
1780
02:04:08.880 --> 02:04:14.159
of people and society can be remade in their image.
1781
02:04:14.359 --> 02:04:18.039
And to a certain degree they were successful, I would
1782
02:04:18.079 --> 02:04:21.079
argue in the case of reconstruction, they were very very unsuccessful, right,
1783
02:04:21.119 --> 02:04:23.680
It went poorly it was, it was ended early. But
1784
02:04:23.720 --> 02:04:28.039
it is this this kind of like megomaniacal desire to
1785
02:04:28.079 --> 02:04:32.000
remake other societies. Like say what you will. But there's
1786
02:04:32.039 --> 02:04:36.359
something kind of honest about pre modern war. Right, it's
1787
02:04:36.399 --> 02:04:39.920
either you know, kind of an internecine thing between you know,
1788
02:04:39.960 --> 02:04:43.239
different factions, in which case it's a political struggle, or
1789
02:04:43.239 --> 02:04:46.960
if it's a war between different peoples it was. It
1790
02:04:47.039 --> 02:04:48.680
might not be pretty, it might not be nice, but
1791
02:04:48.720 --> 02:04:51.720
it's understandable and kind of an animal level, right, Different
1792
02:04:51.840 --> 02:04:55.920
packs of wolves fight, so Roman Carthage fights. But something
1793
02:04:55.960 --> 02:04:58.720
like this, whereas there's this layer of social engineering, I
1794
02:04:58.800 --> 02:05:01.319
just I find it very.
1795
02:05:01.159 --> 02:05:08.479
Distasteful, absolutely, and that's a good transition to the so
1796
02:05:08.560 --> 02:05:13.399
called civil rights aspect of this period. So as I've admitted,
1797
02:05:14.000 --> 02:05:17.680
the end of slavery is the single most important result
1798
02:05:17.800 --> 02:05:20.079
of the American Civil War, and the fact that it
1799
02:05:20.119 --> 02:05:24.359
was done by violence and by force, not by political process,
1800
02:05:25.119 --> 02:05:29.000
that this is a very important distinction. Every country in
1801
02:05:29.039 --> 02:05:34.479
the world that abolished slavery did it through a political process.
1802
02:05:34.800 --> 02:05:40.680
That means they talked about it, everyone's everyone's concerns were
1803
02:05:40.720 --> 02:05:46.600
taken into account. There were compromises made to accommodate concerns.
1804
02:05:47.319 --> 02:05:50.880
There was a plan. People were thinking about how this
1805
02:05:51.079 --> 02:05:54.399
was going to play out, and it was executed through
1806
02:05:54.479 --> 02:06:00.720
a political process according to that country's traditions. Whatever it was. Okay,
1807
02:06:00.760 --> 02:06:03.800
this is how Turkey did it, this is how Brazil
1808
02:06:04.159 --> 02:06:07.960
did it, This is how Great Britain did it. The
1809
02:06:08.119 --> 02:06:11.720
United States was the only country in the world to
1810
02:06:11.800 --> 02:06:17.840
abolish slavery. Perhaps I should say HATI abolished slavery by
1811
02:06:18.119 --> 02:06:23.600
violence rather than by political process and consensus, and it
1812
02:06:23.720 --> 02:06:27.479
was done without any consideration for the future. What was
1813
02:06:27.520 --> 02:06:30.960
going to happen after that is a very important thing
1814
02:06:31.000 --> 02:06:36.279
to remember about this process. So back to congressional reconstruction.
1815
02:06:37.319 --> 02:06:41.560
I would I find myself talking about the state of
1816
02:06:41.640 --> 02:06:44.079
the South after the war and kind of the practical
1817
02:06:44.119 --> 02:06:47.000
results of the war. The fact that every bank failed,
1818
02:06:47.520 --> 02:06:51.159
the fact that no one had any money at precisely
1819
02:06:51.479 --> 02:06:58.119
the moment that the country became a free labor economy.
1820
02:06:57.960 --> 02:07:02.600
The irony of this is overwhelming. Right, Everyone's supposed to
1821
02:07:02.600 --> 02:07:06.000
have wages now and no one has any money, and
1822
02:07:06.039 --> 02:07:08.239
no one can get any money, and the country has
1823
02:07:08.279 --> 02:07:11.560
been decimated, and you know, a quarter of the of
1824
02:07:11.600 --> 02:07:15.840
the white men are dead. Right, This is really really bad.
1825
02:07:16.399 --> 02:07:18.720
And this, by the way, is one of the reasons
1826
02:07:18.720 --> 02:07:24.079
why Northerners who came South with money at this time,
1827
02:07:24.439 --> 02:07:29.399
the so called carpetbaggers, are an extremely important group of people.
1828
02:07:29.880 --> 02:07:33.680
They had a political voice in a time when white
1829
02:07:33.720 --> 02:07:39.159
Southerners were excluded from the political process. They had money
1830
02:07:39.239 --> 02:07:44.199
when no one else had money. They were disproportionately important
1831
02:07:44.279 --> 02:07:47.079
in every way. And if it had not been for
1832
02:07:47.119 --> 02:07:51.560
the carpetbaggers, the so called carpetbaggers that came from the
1833
02:07:51.600 --> 02:07:57.000
northern States into the South immediately after the war, the
1834
02:07:57.039 --> 02:08:02.119
reconstruction period would have been far worse. I mean that
1835
02:08:03.039 --> 02:08:05.800
there would have been terrible famine. Many people would have
1836
02:08:05.840 --> 02:08:11.520
been dead from famine and suffering in other ways. The
1837
02:08:12.439 --> 02:08:17.079
carpetbaggers served a very important economic role, even even if
1838
02:08:17.520 --> 02:08:20.960
they're condemned for their political role, and we can understand
1839
02:08:21.000 --> 02:08:24.520
why they were resented, but nevertheless, I think they're a
1840
02:08:24.640 --> 02:08:29.600
very important group. I find myself talking about those things
1841
02:08:29.640 --> 02:08:32.479
with more ease. But we do need to turn back
1842
02:08:32.520 --> 02:08:38.479
to congressional reconstruction. At the same time, the Congress is
1843
02:08:38.920 --> 02:08:42.800
insisting that no legal governments exist in the South, and
1844
02:08:42.840 --> 02:08:46.800
they use this to declare martial law throughout the South,
1845
02:08:46.880 --> 02:08:49.479
and the occupation of the South by the Union armies
1846
02:08:50.159 --> 02:08:57.000
who police the voters, intimidate the voters, encourage the newly
1847
02:08:57.279 --> 02:09:02.760
freed slaves to participate in politics, while they are excluding
1848
02:09:02.920 --> 02:09:06.000
all of the former white citizens from the political process.
1849
02:09:06.840 --> 02:09:11.399
This is very This is all a huge social experiment,
1850
02:09:11.960 --> 02:09:15.479
and it has an effect of pitting the races against
1851
02:09:15.560 --> 02:09:20.279
one another and breeding lots of resentments. We can understand
1852
02:09:20.319 --> 02:09:24.079
how that would work. At the same time they're doing this,
1853
02:09:24.960 --> 02:09:32.920
Congress insists that Southern legislatures, which they say have no authority,
1854
02:09:33.439 --> 02:09:40.039
should rewrite their state constitutions with Republican committees in charge.
1855
02:09:40.560 --> 02:09:45.239
The Democrats have practically been outlawed in the South. They
1856
02:09:45.239 --> 02:09:51.600
have been so marginalized through disenfranchisement. In particular, even though
1857
02:09:51.600 --> 02:09:55.279
the Democrats in the South, the Democratic Party leaders take
1858
02:09:55.479 --> 02:10:01.479
special pains to appoint as their official leader the men
1859
02:10:01.680 --> 02:10:06.079
of those states who were always against secession and on
1860
02:10:06.119 --> 02:10:10.520
the sidelines of the Civil war. Naturally enough, we can
1861
02:10:10.560 --> 02:10:14.000
say those were not their natural leaders, that those were
1862
02:10:14.079 --> 02:10:17.359
not the people they wanted in charge of their institutions.
1863
02:10:17.640 --> 02:10:21.399
They were just the only men around who stood any
1864
02:10:21.720 --> 02:10:26.560
chance to make an argument to the Radical Republican Congress
1865
02:10:27.279 --> 02:10:30.920
that the Democrat the Democratic Party of the Southern States
1866
02:10:31.319 --> 02:10:35.760
was at all legitimate to be participating in politics at all.
1867
02:10:36.399 --> 02:10:39.239
Even though they did those things, they were still being excluded.
1868
02:10:39.560 --> 02:10:42.840
So the radical Republicans say that all the Southern states
1869
02:10:42.880 --> 02:10:47.439
have to rewrite their constitution. This happens in places like
1870
02:10:48.399 --> 02:10:53.960
South Carolina and Alabama, for instance. This happens with committees
1871
02:10:54.359 --> 02:11:00.720
of Republican politicians who come from the North, or are
1872
02:11:01.560 --> 02:11:07.199
collaborator Southerners who declare for the Republican Party, or they
1873
02:11:07.239 --> 02:11:14.000
are newly enfranchised blacks from that state, or blacks that
1874
02:11:14.079 --> 02:11:17.960
come from elsewhere in the country, and they are put
1875
02:11:18.000 --> 02:11:22.279
in charge of rewriting those state constitutions. The Democratic committees
1876
02:11:22.520 --> 02:11:29.039
in those states file complaints to Congress saying this is
1877
02:11:30.880 --> 02:11:34.720
very lopsided, this is very unfair. You have taken a
1878
02:11:34.880 --> 02:11:39.840
very small minority of our population. If you think back
1879
02:11:39.960 --> 02:11:45.600
just a few years, in Lincoln's original election in eighteen sixty,
1880
02:11:45.720 --> 02:11:50.119
there was no Republican Party in the Southern States. Abraham
1881
02:11:50.199 --> 02:11:54.520
Lincoln did not receive a single vote in the states
1882
02:11:54.560 --> 02:11:58.159
that joined the Confederate States. It wasn't as if Lincoln
1883
02:11:58.399 --> 02:12:03.960
was an unpopular candidate by our standards in American history.
1884
02:12:04.880 --> 02:12:08.560
There was no organization for the Republican Party in those states,
1885
02:12:08.560 --> 02:12:11.399
and he did not receive a single vote in those states.
1886
02:12:12.079 --> 02:12:18.560
He was seen as such an alien candidate, so far
1887
02:12:18.600 --> 02:12:22.119
removed from the concerns of those voters. But now that
1888
02:12:23.119 --> 02:12:28.920
political party is reforming the basic political institutions of these
1889
02:12:28.960 --> 02:12:35.159
states for their own benefit. The radical Republicans in Congress
1890
02:12:35.920 --> 02:12:39.399
then pass on to the Southern States. At the same
1891
02:12:39.439 --> 02:12:44.039
time they say, is there are no legal institutions in
1892
02:12:44.079 --> 02:12:48.399
these states, they hand them an amendment to the Constitution.
1893
02:12:48.560 --> 02:12:52.399
They hand them the famous fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution
1894
02:12:53.000 --> 02:12:57.359
with a threat Congress. The Republicans in Congress tell the
1895
02:12:57.399 --> 02:13:01.640
Southern states in eighteen sixty six, ratify the fourteenth Amendment
1896
02:13:02.359 --> 02:13:07.920
or you will have no representation in Congress. And a
1897
02:13:08.039 --> 02:13:12.000
number of Southern states try to hold out on this.
1898
02:13:12.920 --> 02:13:15.960
Even with a lot of Republicans in charge in these
1899
02:13:15.960 --> 02:13:20.279
Southern states, several of these states decide they are going
1900
02:13:20.319 --> 02:13:26.960
to withhold consideration of the fourteenth Amendment because the way
1901
02:13:27.079 --> 02:13:31.039
that it is forced on them with a Blackmaile threat,
1902
02:13:31.720 --> 02:13:34.520
we will not give you, we will not permit you
1903
02:13:34.600 --> 02:13:40.279
to have Republican institutions, representative government, not not even a
1904
02:13:40.279 --> 02:13:44.880
shadow of it. With all the disenfranchisement that's gone on
1905
02:13:45.079 --> 02:13:50.279
in the enfranchisement that has gone on in these states
1906
02:13:50.399 --> 02:13:53.439
in this short period of time, we won't let you
1907
02:13:53.520 --> 02:13:59.039
have it unless you ratify a constitutional amendment. It makes
1908
02:13:59.079 --> 02:14:02.760
no sense. Are they part of the Union or did
1909
02:14:02.800 --> 02:14:05.920
they actually leave the Union? Lincoln said they never left
1910
02:14:05.960 --> 02:14:09.279
the union. President Johnson said, they never left the Union.
1911
02:14:09.520 --> 02:14:12.920
They just need to send representation back to Congress, and
1912
02:14:13.079 --> 02:14:17.079
they've been restored as states in the Union. The radical
1913
02:14:17.119 --> 02:14:22.520
Republicans forwarded a theory to justify their behavior that when
1914
02:14:22.560 --> 02:14:27.359
the states seceded from the Union, they committed political suicide
1915
02:14:27.600 --> 02:14:32.600
and ceased to exist as bodies, as legal bodies, and
1916
02:14:32.640 --> 02:14:37.279
this was their justification to treat the Southern States as
1917
02:14:37.640 --> 02:14:41.560
conquered territory, which was basically what they were. They declared
1918
02:14:41.600 --> 02:14:45.920
them military districts during this time. Yet at the same
1919
02:14:45.960 --> 02:14:49.439
time they're demanding that they ratify amendments to the Constitution.
1920
02:14:49.960 --> 02:14:53.960
The only bodies that can ratify amendments to the Constitution
1921
02:14:54.159 --> 02:14:57.199
are states of the Union. So they're trying to have
1922
02:14:57.279 --> 02:15:03.520
it both ways. The government of Florida in eighteen sixty six,
1923
02:15:04.399 --> 02:15:08.720
wrote Let's see a resolution of the Florida House of Representatives.
1924
02:15:09.399 --> 02:15:13.520
They said, beyond the postal service, our people derive no
1925
02:15:13.640 --> 02:15:17.359
benefit from our existence as a state of the Union.
1926
02:15:17.640 --> 02:15:21.039
We are denied representation even when we elect a man
1927
02:15:21.239 --> 02:15:26.039
who never sympathized with the Confederacy's rebellion. We are at
1928
02:15:26.079 --> 02:15:29.880
the same time subject to the most onerous taxation, and
1929
02:15:29.960 --> 02:15:33.439
our civil law is enforced only when it meets the
1930
02:15:33.479 --> 02:15:38.000
approval of the local military commanders. Now that was their
1931
02:15:38.039 --> 02:15:44.680
reason to not consider the fourteenth Amendment. But Congress. Congress
1932
02:15:44.720 --> 02:15:47.800
decided to drag this out as long as it took
1933
02:15:48.279 --> 02:15:53.039
to ratify the fourteenth Amendment, and eventually the Southern States did.
1934
02:15:53.680 --> 02:15:57.319
And this is part of the process of reconstruction. It
1935
02:15:57.600 --> 02:16:05.439
was a process of threats, of blackmail, of cynical looting,
1936
02:16:06.319 --> 02:16:12.199
of the enfranchisement of certain populations, not the Indians, by
1937
02:16:12.239 --> 02:16:16.399
the way, the fourteenth Amendment deliberately excludes the Indians from citizenship.
1938
02:16:16.760 --> 02:16:21.920
That comes later, all right, But enfranchising the black population
1939
02:16:22.680 --> 02:16:27.439
to make them a loyal block of the Republican Party
1940
02:16:27.680 --> 02:16:33.319
of Lincoln's party, and to make the Republican Party the
1941
02:16:33.360 --> 02:16:38.399
dominant party of the United States in perpetuity. This was
1942
02:16:38.840 --> 02:16:44.399
what the Republican leadership in Washington, d C. Openly avowed
1943
02:16:44.600 --> 02:16:49.760
as their goals in this time. They also some of
1944
02:16:49.760 --> 02:16:55.200
the more extreme members, people like Benjamin Butler, the former
1945
02:16:55.520 --> 02:16:59.600
Union commander in New Orleans now United States Senator in
1946
02:16:59.719 --> 02:17:04.639
Massachusetts or from Massachusetts. Benjamin Butler is one of Andrew
1947
02:17:04.719 --> 02:17:11.719
Johnson's greatest enemies in the impeachment. UH. Benjamin Butler is
1948
02:17:11.719 --> 02:17:14.079
is one of the leaders of the radical Republicans in
1949
02:17:14.120 --> 02:17:21.000
Congress during reconstruction. Other others like Thatteus Stevens of Massachusetts,
1950
02:17:21.079 --> 02:17:24.719
who has a big war, a big role prior to
1951
02:17:24.760 --> 02:17:29.040
the Civil War, very famously beaten over the head by
1952
02:17:29.200 --> 02:17:35.799
South Carolina Congressman Preston Brooks for insulting family members in
1953
02:17:36.200 --> 02:17:39.000
UH in speeches on on the floor of Congress.
1954
02:17:39.440 --> 02:17:39.639
Uh.
1955
02:17:39.760 --> 02:17:42.799
Thatteus Stevens is another one of these very harsh uh
1956
02:17:42.840 --> 02:17:49.000
antagonists of the Southern people. And UH, let's see, I
1957
02:17:49.079 --> 02:17:51.440
might be getting this wrong. Did I say Thatteus Stevens
1958
02:17:52.079 --> 02:17:56.159
I believe, yes, Okay, Thatteus. I'm getting this wrong. Thadeus
1959
02:17:56.200 --> 02:17:59.040
Stevens was a congressman from Pennsylvania. I'm getting that wrong.
1960
02:17:59.440 --> 02:18:00.559
Whom I think up.
1961
02:18:00.680 --> 02:18:02.840
I'm the wrong person to ask. We're entirely too far
1962
02:18:02.879 --> 02:18:04.360
in the leads for my knowledge of America.
1963
02:18:04.479 --> 02:18:08.200
I'm sorry, sorry, I'm I'm I'm forgetting this. The senator
1964
02:18:08.479 --> 02:18:13.159
from Massachusetts, he's just slipped my mind Thatteus Stevens. Let
1965
02:18:13.200 --> 02:18:16.719
me let me refresh my my statement on that Thatteus
1966
02:18:16.719 --> 02:18:20.879
Stevens said that he wanted to see the South depopulated
1967
02:18:21.360 --> 02:18:24.799
of white Southerners. He wanted to force them to immigrate.
1968
02:18:25.600 --> 02:18:29.200
So you have from from people like Thatteus Stevens, who
1969
02:18:29.280 --> 02:18:33.120
is a who is a very peculiar character, evidently had
1970
02:18:33.159 --> 02:18:37.000
a long affair with a a black woman.
1971
02:18:37.639 --> 02:18:38.040
Uh.
1972
02:18:38.319 --> 02:18:43.440
Really peculiar fellow, very spiteful fellow.
1973
02:18:43.840 --> 02:18:44.680
I don't, I don't.
1974
02:18:44.440 --> 02:18:46.120
Want to do him.
1975
02:18:46.399 --> 02:18:46.639
I don't.
1976
02:18:46.680 --> 02:18:50.920
I don't want to malign him unfairly. But he had
1977
02:18:51.239 --> 02:18:56.079
a reputation, even among his admirers, of being very bitter
1978
02:18:56.479 --> 02:19:01.239
towards his enemy. Okay, but Thatteus Stevens saying saying that
1979
02:19:01.319 --> 02:19:08.600
the Southern States should be ethnically cleansed and the property
1980
02:19:08.600 --> 02:19:15.000
there redistributed to loyal freedmen. That those are the newly
1981
02:19:15.120 --> 02:19:21.760
enfranchised black Americans and Union soldiers as as war booty,
1982
02:19:23.360 --> 02:19:28.239
even taking taking like a Roman view of the Southern
1983
02:19:28.280 --> 02:19:33.000
States as as conquered provinces uh with with all their
1984
02:19:33.040 --> 02:19:38.559
wealth to be redistributed as plunder. This this happened on
1985
02:19:38.600 --> 02:19:41.879
a certain scale, but it was not That was not
1986
02:19:42.000 --> 02:19:45.799
actually how reconstruction took place. I should say Thadeus Stevens
1987
02:19:45.799 --> 02:19:49.879
did not get everything that he wanted. But these these
1988
02:19:50.399 --> 02:19:54.440
radicals in Congress, they force the Fourteenth Amendment on the
1989
02:19:54.479 --> 02:20:01.120
Southern States. In the Southern legislatures, in desperation, eventually ratify
1990
02:20:01.280 --> 02:20:05.000
the most controversial amendment to the Constitution, the fourteenth Amendment.
1991
02:20:05.200 --> 02:20:07.520
So let's get in. Let's get into the details of
1992
02:20:07.559 --> 02:20:12.040
the fourteenth Amendment. The first, it's the longest amendment in
1993
02:20:12.079 --> 02:20:17.479
the Constitution, I should say first, it is the most complicated.
1994
02:20:18.719 --> 02:20:22.000
It has several sections to it, and it has been
1995
02:20:22.120 --> 02:20:26.600
used to justify a great many of the most controversial
1996
02:20:26.719 --> 02:20:32.360
things in constitutional law in the United States. It has
1997
02:20:32.399 --> 02:20:39.920
been used to justify the elimination of laws regulating abortion
1998
02:20:40.280 --> 02:20:44.600
in the States. Row versus Wade used the Fourteenth Amendment
1999
02:20:44.760 --> 02:20:48.520
to justify striking down all laws prohibiting abortion in the
2000
02:20:48.639 --> 02:20:54.799
United States. It was used to justify Lawrence versus Texas,
2001
02:20:55.079 --> 02:21:00.520
which struck down all laws prohibiting or criminalizing sodomy in
2002
02:21:00.559 --> 02:21:05.120
the United States. It was used to justify Obergfel versus Hodges,
2003
02:21:05.719 --> 02:21:12.760
which struck down all state laws regulating the definition of marriage,
2004
02:21:13.600 --> 02:21:18.799
proclaiming marriage to be a institution between a man and
2005
02:21:18.840 --> 02:21:22.440
a woman. It's been used for all of these controversial
2006
02:21:22.799 --> 02:21:26.559
Supreme Court cases, these major culture war cases, if you will,
2007
02:21:27.239 --> 02:21:31.719
because the first part of the Fourteenth Amendment limits what
2008
02:21:31.840 --> 02:21:36.440
state governments can do. It gives the federal government power
2009
02:21:36.559 --> 02:21:41.280
to strike down things that state governments have done in law.
2010
02:21:41.840 --> 02:21:44.520
And if you note, the Supreme Court cases that I
2011
02:21:44.639 --> 02:21:48.239
mentioned all have to do with striking down state laws.
2012
02:21:49.000 --> 02:21:52.399
It is the Supreme Court striking down state laws. What
2013
02:21:52.440 --> 02:21:58.920
we call the incorporation of the Bill of Rights, the
2014
02:21:59.000 --> 02:22:06.159
application of constitutional limitations to state governments. The Fourteenth Amendment
2015
02:22:06.879 --> 02:22:13.000
applies federal power to state governments. Now, if you recall
2016
02:22:13.360 --> 02:22:18.559
towards the beginning of our investigation, I said that in
2017
02:22:18.680 --> 02:22:24.600
Annabellum America, the conservative view, if you will, was that
2018
02:22:24.959 --> 02:22:31.040
the states came together to decide what powers their common
2019
02:22:31.159 --> 02:22:35.799
federal government might have over them, what powers they would
2020
02:22:35.840 --> 02:22:40.719
cede to a general government, and those powers were all
2021
02:22:40.840 --> 02:22:45.559
listed in the Constitution, the Philadelphia Constitution. The Constitution then
2022
02:22:45.600 --> 02:22:49.360
went back to the state legislatures for ratification, and there
2023
02:22:49.440 --> 02:22:54.120
was debate about that. The Constitution was then further defined
2024
02:22:54.239 --> 02:22:57.440
by the Bill of Rights, which followed the ratification of
2025
02:22:57.479 --> 02:23:00.479
the Constitution. And the Bill of Rights are another long
2026
02:23:00.520 --> 02:23:03.920
list of things the federal government can and cannot do,
2027
02:23:05.040 --> 02:23:10.079
summarized with the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution. The tenth Amendment,
2028
02:23:10.440 --> 02:23:13.799
the last of the Bill of Rights, says that anything
2029
02:23:14.079 --> 02:23:18.200
not explicitly listed in the Constitution is reserved to the states.
2030
02:23:18.879 --> 02:23:23.120
The fourteenth Amendment turns this on its head, and this
2031
02:23:23.239 --> 02:23:25.280
is one of the reasons why the fourteenth Amendment is
2032
02:23:25.360 --> 02:23:29.879
such a consequential and important amendment. The fourteenth Amendment says
2033
02:23:30.079 --> 02:23:33.719
the federal government regulates what state governments can do. The
2034
02:23:33.760 --> 02:23:37.760
tenth Amendment says the exact opposite. Now, the Tenth Amendment
2035
02:23:37.840 --> 02:23:42.159
was never repealed, but the South's defeat in eighteen sixty
2036
02:23:42.200 --> 02:23:46.399
five has sealed the fate and interpretation of the tenth Amendment.
2037
02:23:46.719 --> 02:23:49.840
People still talk about the tenth Amendment these days, but
2038
02:23:50.760 --> 02:23:53.600
I think they forget about eighteen sixty five when they
2039
02:23:53.639 --> 02:23:56.440
talk about it. I think the question was settled back then.
2040
02:23:57.600 --> 02:24:01.840
Doesn't mean that I'm happy about that or anything, Okay.
2041
02:24:01.920 --> 02:24:05.680
I'm just saying that that's the way it has worked out, okay,
2042
02:24:06.360 --> 02:24:09.760
And that doesn't mean it's the end of the story.
2043
02:24:09.559 --> 02:24:13.559
We still have these things in our law, and we
2044
02:24:13.600 --> 02:24:15.760
still think about them and care about them, and maybe
2045
02:24:15.760 --> 02:24:18.360
we'll do something with them. I'm not here to say that,
2046
02:24:18.799 --> 02:24:23.000
but okay. So that's what the Fourteenth Amendment did it.
2047
02:24:23.000 --> 02:24:27.479
It says no State shall make or enforce any law
2048
02:24:28.040 --> 02:24:31.000
that shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of
2049
02:24:31.000 --> 02:24:34.479
the United States. Nor shall any State deprive any person
2050
02:24:34.520 --> 02:24:37.079
of life, liberty, or property without due process of law,
2051
02:24:37.760 --> 02:24:40.799
nor deny any person within his jurisdiction the equal protection
2052
02:24:40.879 --> 02:24:41.200
of law.
2053
02:24:41.280 --> 02:24:41.639
All right.
2054
02:24:41.680 --> 02:24:45.200
That is the really famous statement in Section one of
2055
02:24:45.239 --> 02:24:50.680
the Fourteenth Amendment that applies federal laws to the states.
2056
02:24:51.040 --> 02:24:51.399
All Right.
2057
02:24:52.040 --> 02:24:57.000
The Bill of Rights has the exact opposite formulation. The
2058
02:24:57.040 --> 02:25:01.159
Bill of Rights very famously says Congress shall make no
2059
02:25:01.600 --> 02:25:05.239
law a bridging freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom
2060
02:25:05.280 --> 02:25:06.959
to press, so on, and so forth.
2061
02:25:07.200 --> 02:25:07.600
All right.
2062
02:25:08.079 --> 02:25:11.280
The Fourteenth Amendment says no state shall make or enforce
2063
02:25:11.280 --> 02:25:16.520
any law, and the federal government decides which laws. That's
2064
02:25:16.559 --> 02:25:20.719
why that has become so consequential. The Supreme Court decides
2065
02:25:21.399 --> 02:25:25.000
what due process means. The states don't have any say
2066
02:25:25.000 --> 02:25:27.680
in that. That's why state laws get shot down by
2067
02:25:27.680 --> 02:25:28.399
the Supreme Court.
2068
02:25:28.760 --> 02:25:32.399
Is this really the moment in which the kind of
2069
02:25:32.440 --> 02:25:36.120
true final seat of power in American governance becomes the
2070
02:25:36.159 --> 02:25:38.840
Supreme Court? Or is that going on before?
2071
02:25:38.639 --> 02:25:42.239
There was a lot of argument about that. Before, before
2072
02:25:43.079 --> 02:25:48.319
the Fourteenth Amendment, state governments would defy the Supreme Court.
2073
02:25:49.120 --> 02:25:55.319
One funny instance of that, there was a Supreme Court
2074
02:25:55.440 --> 02:25:58.840
case that said the Bank of the United States had
2075
02:25:59.159 --> 02:26:02.879
the ability to operate in any state, and states could
2076
02:26:02.959 --> 02:26:05.719
not say no to the Bank of the United States.
2077
02:26:07.000 --> 02:26:09.879
It was McCulla versus Maryland. This is a very early
2078
02:26:09.959 --> 02:26:15.680
Supreme Court case that federal law trump's state law. All right,
2079
02:26:15.760 --> 02:26:19.520
it's a very important early Supreme Court case, McCulla versus Maryland.
2080
02:26:20.280 --> 02:26:22.159
There was a law.
2081
02:26:22.000 --> 02:26:25.959
Passed by the state of Ohio. I like these northern
2082
02:26:26.040 --> 02:26:31.120
states that stand out in constitutional history, because I love
2083
02:26:31.200 --> 02:26:33.559
to point out it's not just southern states that are
2084
02:26:33.600 --> 02:26:36.440
always defying the federal government on this stuff. Northern States
2085
02:26:36.440 --> 02:26:40.799
did it too. It was an American thing. We used
2086
02:26:40.799 --> 02:26:43.799
to have more in common. On that, the State of
2087
02:26:43.840 --> 02:26:47.399
Ohio passed a law taxing the Bank of the United States.
2088
02:26:47.479 --> 02:26:52.440
This was precisely the issue that was at stake in
2089
02:26:52.799 --> 02:26:56.719
McCulla versus Maryland. The State of Maryland had passed attacks
2090
02:26:57.239 --> 02:27:00.719
against the federal corporation, the Bank of the United States.
2091
02:27:00.840 --> 02:27:03.719
The idea back then was the federal government did not
2092
02:27:04.000 --> 02:27:09.799
have the constitutional authority to set up corporations. Right, It
2093
02:27:09.879 --> 02:27:12.399
shows a difference between our world and theirs. We kind
2094
02:27:12.440 --> 02:27:14.879
of take corporations for granted. We can we can hardly
2095
02:27:14.879 --> 02:27:19.280
imagine our lives without these huge federally chartered corporations everywhere,
2096
02:27:19.440 --> 02:27:23.479
all protected by the Bill of Rights. Remember Mitt Romney,
2097
02:27:23.959 --> 02:27:28.239
corporations are people, my friend. We can hardly imagine our
2098
02:27:28.280 --> 02:27:30.719
world without that. But back then, states actually tried to
2099
02:27:30.799 --> 02:27:35.239
keep them out. They didn't want wealth and power concentrated
2100
02:27:35.239 --> 02:27:40.239
in New York City or whatever. So Maryland attacked the
2101
02:27:40.239 --> 02:27:45.040
Bank of the United States and that was declared void
2102
02:27:45.079 --> 02:27:48.639
by the Supreme Court in McCullough versus Maryland. Well, later on,
2103
02:27:48.879 --> 02:27:53.079
the state of Ohio decided they would tax the Bank
2104
02:27:53.120 --> 02:27:54.079
of the United States.
2105
02:27:54.319 --> 02:27:55.040
In Ohio.
2106
02:27:55.559 --> 02:27:58.479
And so they sent the tax collectors down to the
2107
02:27:58.520 --> 02:28:01.360
Bank of the United States branch and presented the bill.
2108
02:28:02.079 --> 02:28:04.239
And the Bank of the United States, you know, filled
2109
02:28:04.280 --> 02:28:07.799
with a bunch of smug federal people. They're like, uh oh,
2110
02:28:08.239 --> 02:28:13.399
you know. The Supreme Court and the authorities of Ohio
2111
02:28:14.120 --> 02:28:19.319
sent down safecrackers and they busted open the bank vaults
2112
02:28:19.479 --> 02:28:21.559
in the Bank of the United States and cleared it
2113
02:28:21.600 --> 02:28:25.639
out as taxes, and the thing shut down. And it
2114
02:28:26.559 --> 02:28:30.799
reminds you of the famous line from President Andrew Jackson.
2115
02:28:31.319 --> 02:28:34.680
The Supreme Court has made its ruling. Let's see them
2116
02:28:34.799 --> 02:28:38.200
enforce it, all right. Just because the Supreme Court made
2117
02:28:38.200 --> 02:28:42.440
a ruling and it is seen as constitutional law, did
2118
02:28:42.479 --> 02:28:46.840
not mean that the states would obey it. After the
2119
02:28:46.879 --> 02:28:50.520
Civil War, no one was under any illusions that the
2120
02:28:50.559 --> 02:28:53.879
states could say no to the federal government anymore. And
2121
02:28:53.959 --> 02:28:59.159
that's a very significant change. So that is one of
2122
02:28:59.200 --> 02:29:01.559
the main things about the fourteenth Amendment. But let me
2123
02:29:01.600 --> 02:29:05.799
talk about the other ones. I'm not meaning to keep
2124
02:29:05.840 --> 02:29:08.200
you here all day with all this talk about the
2125
02:29:08.319 --> 02:29:14.000
legalities of reconstruction. But the other element in Section one
2126
02:29:14.120 --> 02:29:20.680
of the fourteenth Amendment is extremely consequential. It redefines citizenship. Now,
2127
02:29:20.719 --> 02:29:24.159
it is very important to note that the Southern States
2128
02:29:24.200 --> 02:29:29.799
were strong armed, blackmailed, had to sit under a martial
2129
02:29:29.920 --> 02:29:35.159
law through a very oppressive regime for years in order
2130
02:29:35.239 --> 02:29:40.280
to redefine what Americans understood to be citizenship. Previous to
2131
02:29:40.399 --> 02:29:47.040
the Civil War, every state separately regulated who was eligible
2132
02:29:47.120 --> 02:29:52.120
for the suffrage. This is a very important point. Every
2133
02:29:52.239 --> 02:29:56.680
state had a different law about who could vote, and
2134
02:29:56.719 --> 02:30:00.559
that was because every state was seen to have publican
2135
02:30:00.680 --> 02:30:06.760
institutions of its own that it was responsible for. Ultimately,
2136
02:30:07.360 --> 02:30:12.319
the Fourteenth Amendment gives us a federal definition of citizenship,
2137
02:30:12.440 --> 02:30:14.639
and this is a very important one. This is a
2138
02:30:14.920 --> 02:30:17.920
this is a radical one. This has a lot to
2139
02:30:17.959 --> 02:30:23.760
do with how American identity has developed over time. We
2140
02:30:24.120 --> 02:30:29.879
see this this uh, this law influences American identity in
2141
02:30:30.000 --> 02:30:32.879
major ways. We we are perhaps much more aware of
2142
02:30:32.920 --> 02:30:37.680
that with our immigration questions today. The first part of
2143
02:30:37.680 --> 02:30:42.040
the fourteenth Amendment says, all persons born or naturalized in
2144
02:30:42.079 --> 02:30:45.680
the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof our citizens,
2145
02:30:46.399 --> 02:30:48.040
all you need to do to be a citizen is
2146
02:30:48.079 --> 02:30:48.799
to be born here.
2147
02:30:49.079 --> 02:30:52.959
Well, and it's interesting, and this is something that I
2148
02:30:52.959 --> 02:30:55.600
don't want to fall into this trap, you know, of
2149
02:30:55.680 --> 02:30:59.840
merely saying, you know, oh, the the left doesn't respect
2150
02:31:00.079 --> 02:31:02.920
the textual basis of the law, because it's obviously true.
2151
02:31:03.000 --> 02:31:06.639
You know, this has been true arguably, you know, ever
2152
02:31:06.680 --> 02:31:10.559
since the set of amendments, even before then. But if
2153
02:31:10.559 --> 02:31:13.879
you look at, you know, the construction of the fourteenth Amendment,
2154
02:31:13.920 --> 02:31:17.920
it is so clearly not talking about an infinite number
2155
02:31:17.959 --> 02:31:20.520
of Central and South Americans. You know it was it
2156
02:31:20.559 --> 02:31:25.799
was written with regards to slaves. And I mean, I
2157
02:31:25.840 --> 02:31:29.280
can dislike the original interpretation of the fourteenth Amendment, but
2158
02:31:30.000 --> 02:31:33.440
it's very clearly was not designed for its current application.
2159
02:31:33.559 --> 02:31:39.680
I guess indeed has this has huge ramifications, of course,
2160
02:31:39.840 --> 02:31:41.559
and we can never get to the bottom of it.
2161
02:31:41.600 --> 02:31:45.120
But Section two of the fourteenth Amendment, this, this is
2162
02:31:45.120 --> 02:31:48.719
a very long amendment, has to do with changing the
2163
02:31:48.760 --> 02:31:56.200
way that representation in Congress is apportioned. You you may
2164
02:31:56.239 --> 02:32:01.000
remember from Civics or if you've ever taken or if
2165
02:32:01.040 --> 02:32:04.479
you've ever read the Constitution itself. The Constitution is very
2166
02:32:04.479 --> 02:32:08.280
famous for the three fifths clause, which has to do
2167
02:32:08.440 --> 02:32:13.520
with the apportionment of representation in Congress based on population.
2168
02:32:14.280 --> 02:32:19.239
The three fifths clause refers to slaves counted for purposes
2169
02:32:19.239 --> 02:32:24.920
of representation. Because they were not citizens, they were only
2170
02:32:25.040 --> 02:32:30.799
counted as three fifths. This way, the South had a
2171
02:32:31.159 --> 02:32:36.040
measure of additional representation based on its slave population. The
2172
02:32:36.239 --> 02:32:41.920
argument was, of course, that the well being of the
2173
02:32:42.000 --> 02:32:48.399
slave population was represented in congressman, just as a father
2174
02:32:48.639 --> 02:32:53.159
would represent the interests of his wife and children. All right,
2175
02:32:53.200 --> 02:32:58.239
so it's we could call it a patriarchal or feudalistic
2176
02:32:59.040 --> 02:33:04.760
justification in a representative mode. This is of course, before
2177
02:33:04.879 --> 02:33:09.719
women's suffrage, and men were seen as representing the interests
2178
02:33:09.760 --> 02:33:14.399
of their womenfolk in representative institutions, and women were seen
2179
02:33:14.559 --> 02:33:20.319
as non political members of society, that they did not
2180
02:33:20.520 --> 02:33:24.159
have a public role in making law or executing law.
2181
02:33:24.840 --> 02:33:27.840
And this is actually a very profound point. We know
2182
02:33:27.920 --> 02:33:31.559
that this is mocked, dismissed. We are so used to
2183
02:33:31.600 --> 02:33:35.520
the mockery and cynical takes about the exclusion of women.
2184
02:33:35.680 --> 02:33:41.440
For instance, we tend to mouth them ourselves, or even
2185
02:33:41.479 --> 02:33:43.840
to fall into patterns of thought when we think about this,
2186
02:33:44.680 --> 02:33:47.319
think about it a different way, if you will. The
2187
02:33:47.399 --> 02:33:51.840
idea was that God has divided humanity into at least
2188
02:33:51.959 --> 02:33:56.559
two groups, men and women, and women have a special
2189
02:33:56.760 --> 02:34:02.959
role in society to foster and nurture, whereas men have
2190
02:34:03.120 --> 02:34:08.239
a special duty and burden in society to deal out
2191
02:34:08.399 --> 02:34:12.319
legitimate violence when necessary. All right, men go to war,
2192
02:34:12.520 --> 02:34:15.479
women stay home. Women are not supposed to shed blood.
2193
02:34:15.959 --> 02:34:18.399
Women are not supposed to bear arms. All right.
2194
02:34:18.479 --> 02:34:23.479
Now, it's not that they can't in extremists right self
2195
02:34:23.520 --> 02:34:26.120
defense or something like that. But the idea is that
2196
02:34:26.159 --> 02:34:28.399
this is why women do not make laws. This is
2197
02:34:28.440 --> 02:34:31.000
why women do not execute. Women do not have blood
2198
02:34:31.040 --> 02:34:33.760
on their hands. Women bring life into the world. They
2199
02:34:33.760 --> 02:34:35.680
are the only members of society that can do that.
2200
02:34:36.639 --> 02:34:40.079
And that's a different and important way of looking at it. Okay,
2201
02:34:40.079 --> 02:34:44.000
that's the way they looked at it. But they also said, well, obviously,
2202
02:34:44.079 --> 02:34:48.120
slaves don't take part in politics. Politics involves the dealing
2203
02:34:48.200 --> 02:34:51.680
out of legitimate violence, among other things. Slaves are just
2204
02:34:51.719 --> 02:34:55.200
not a part of this. Slaves do not bear arms.
2205
02:34:55.239 --> 02:35:00.000
Slaves are enthralled to their masters, and their masters look
2206
02:35:00.120 --> 02:35:00.520
over them.
2207
02:35:00.520 --> 02:35:00.840
So the.
2208
02:35:02.920 --> 02:35:08.399
Three fifths clause in the Constitution deals out representative the
2209
02:35:08.440 --> 02:35:12.200
representative apportionment of the states based on the slave population.
2210
02:35:12.520 --> 02:35:16.399
The second part of the Fourteenth Amendment undoes that. Okay,
2211
02:35:16.440 --> 02:35:19.639
because now the slaves are all counted as freemen. They
2212
02:35:19.639 --> 02:35:24.399
are now citizens because of birthright citizenship in the first section.
2213
02:35:24.680 --> 02:35:28.200
All right, So Section three. No person shall be a
2214
02:35:28.239 --> 02:35:31.479
senator or representative in Congress, or elector of President and
2215
02:35:31.600 --> 02:35:35.440
Vice President, or hold any office civil or military under
2216
02:35:35.440 --> 02:35:39.799
the United States or under any State, who, having previously
2217
02:35:39.840 --> 02:35:42.360
taken an oath as a member of Congress, or as
2218
02:35:42.360 --> 02:35:45.440
an officer of the United States, or as any member
2219
02:35:45.440 --> 02:35:49.360
of any state legislature, or as an executive or judicial
2220
02:35:49.440 --> 02:35:52.479
officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the
2221
02:35:52.559 --> 02:35:56.760
United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against
2222
02:35:56.760 --> 02:36:00.959
the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.
2223
02:36:01.479 --> 02:36:04.319
But Congress may vote of two thirds of each House
2224
02:36:04.920 --> 02:36:06.559
to remove such disability.
2225
02:36:07.040 --> 02:36:07.479
All right.
2226
02:36:08.040 --> 02:36:13.040
This is specifically to disenfranchise ex Confederates. If you can
2227
02:36:13.079 --> 02:36:19.040
prove any of these people have anyone that has held office,
2228
02:36:20.719 --> 02:36:24.280
anyone related to the pre war government that supported the
2229
02:36:24.280 --> 02:36:28.680
Confederates in any way, if they've given aid or comfort. Okay,
2230
02:36:29.000 --> 02:36:33.440
that's a very low bar to disenfranchise. This is how
2231
02:36:33.600 --> 02:36:36.680
the radical Republicans in Congress were going to make sure
2232
02:36:37.079 --> 02:36:39.440
they were not going to be looking across the aisle
2233
02:36:39.559 --> 02:36:42.319
at any of their former enemies from the Civil War.
2234
02:36:42.639 --> 02:36:47.200
And this disenfranchise is a This disenfranchise is the leadership
2235
02:36:47.200 --> 02:36:49.239
class of the South. Okay, the leadership class of the
2236
02:36:49.239 --> 02:36:52.319
South participated in the war. This is this is a
2237
02:36:52.399 --> 02:36:55.959
very consequential thing. And by the way, this is the
2238
02:36:56.000 --> 02:37:00.399
justification for some of the Shenanigans who are seeing today,
2239
02:37:00.440 --> 02:37:02.200
which I don't mean to get into right now, but
2240
02:37:02.719 --> 02:37:06.120
this is what the fourteenth Amendment was written for. It
2241
02:37:06.159 --> 02:37:10.600
was written to disenfranchise an entire class of people, and
2242
02:37:11.840 --> 02:37:20.760
it was forced into law through these extreme malevolent ways,
2243
02:37:21.079 --> 02:37:27.680
all right, by by garrisoning black conscripts in Southern states
2244
02:37:27.719 --> 02:37:28.959
to intimidate the population.
2245
02:37:29.360 --> 02:37:29.719
All right.
2246
02:37:30.000 --> 02:37:33.200
Section four, we're getting to the entire The validity of
2247
02:37:33.200 --> 02:37:36.440
the public debt of the United States, authorized by law,
2248
02:37:36.520 --> 02:37:40.239
including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for
2249
02:37:40.360 --> 02:37:46.319
services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.
2250
02:37:46.799 --> 02:37:47.159
All right.
2251
02:37:47.559 --> 02:37:51.159
This is because there were there were plenty of people
2252
02:37:51.280 --> 02:37:54.360
right after the war saying, well, we've just borrowed an
2253
02:37:54.360 --> 02:38:00.399
incredible amount of money. They issued paper currency, which acted
2254
02:38:00.520 --> 02:38:05.840
like treasury bonds. Okay, the paper currency, every single item
2255
02:38:06.000 --> 02:38:11.000
of paper currency, every every artifact of paper currency. The
2256
02:38:11.000 --> 02:38:16.479
the green backs issued by Lincoln's government, the first green
2257
02:38:16.760 --> 02:38:19.959
paper money that we had in the United States. By
2258
02:38:20.000 --> 02:38:23.639
the way, it was all supposed to be redeemed by
2259
02:38:23.680 --> 02:38:28.879
the by the Treasury with lawful money, and lawful money,
2260
02:38:28.879 --> 02:38:31.799
according to the Constitution, is gold and silver coin.
2261
02:38:32.280 --> 02:38:32.639
All right.
2262
02:38:33.319 --> 02:38:38.959
So the green backs were a temporary paper currency, and
2263
02:38:39.040 --> 02:38:42.239
there were there there was a big controversy during reconstruction
2264
02:38:42.360 --> 02:38:45.959
about repudiating the green backs. Let's just not redeem this stuff.
2265
02:38:46.040 --> 02:38:50.079
Let's just make it permanent paper currency or do something else.
2266
02:38:50.280 --> 02:38:53.559
Let's let's avoid the responsibility of redeeming the stuff.
2267
02:38:53.719 --> 02:38:54.000
Okay.
2268
02:38:54.040 --> 02:38:57.600
So the fourteenth Mindment says, no, we're definitely definitely redeeming
2269
02:38:57.639 --> 02:39:03.879
this stuff, and we're guarantee that everyone that was rewarded
2270
02:39:04.319 --> 02:39:12.399
in war through payment in the greenbacks these certificates of
2271
02:39:13.200 --> 02:39:17.280
future payment, they are definitely going to get their money
2272
02:39:17.319 --> 02:39:20.120
out of the system, and no one is going to
2273
02:39:20.440 --> 02:39:25.399
argue about this anymore. The United States will pay its debts.
2274
02:39:26.079 --> 02:39:26.399
Okay.
2275
02:39:26.399 --> 02:39:28.760
So the fourteenth Amendment, and this is something that comes
2276
02:39:28.840 --> 02:39:33.520
up in conversation every time the government gets shut down. Okay, again,
2277
02:39:33.559 --> 02:39:36.200
the fourteenth Amendment is brought up and says, well, it's
2278
02:39:36.239 --> 02:39:39.959
the law. The government has to pay its debts. It's
2279
02:39:40.000 --> 02:39:42.479
part of the fundamental law. It's part of constitutional law
2280
02:39:42.559 --> 02:39:46.319
that the federal government has to pay its debts. So
2281
02:39:47.239 --> 02:39:51.719
when we have a budget crisis and the US government
2282
02:39:51.840 --> 02:39:56.040
is deciding which bills it can afford to pay, it's
2283
02:39:56.079 --> 02:39:59.639
definitely going to pay the interest on the national debt.
2284
02:40:00.280 --> 02:40:05.479
It at least constitutionally, unless it violates the constitution, it
2285
02:40:05.520 --> 02:40:07.719
has to pay the interest on the debt. But the
2286
02:40:08.639 --> 02:40:12.399
section goes on it says, neither the United States nor
2287
02:40:12.559 --> 02:40:16.079
any state shall assume or pay any debt or obligation
2288
02:40:16.600 --> 02:40:21.399
incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States,
2289
02:40:22.000 --> 02:40:26.680
or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave.
2290
02:40:27.360 --> 02:40:30.559
But all such debts, obligations, and claims shall be held
2291
02:40:30.639 --> 02:40:34.879
illegal and void. All right, So, finally, the United States
2292
02:40:34.959 --> 02:40:37.479
government will not pay any compensation for the end of
2293
02:40:37.479 --> 02:40:41.440
slavery and the end. No one is going to be
2294
02:40:41.479 --> 02:40:46.120
paid for their confederate bonds, no one will be compensated
2295
02:40:46.120 --> 02:40:50.479
for Confederate currency. All of that is written off, no
2296
02:40:50.680 --> 02:40:56.159
debate anymore. So it shuts down these big questions during reconstruction.
2297
02:40:56.639 --> 02:41:00.520
But even though even though this is very constant quinchal
2298
02:41:00.559 --> 02:41:04.040
in that it destroys an incredible amount of wealth in
2299
02:41:04.079 --> 02:41:07.520
the South through the stroke of a pen, it's still
2300
02:41:07.559 --> 02:41:09.760
brought up in conversation today when it comes to the
2301
02:41:10.319 --> 02:41:16.319
national debt. Lastly, in an conclusion section five the Fourteenth Amendment,
2302
02:41:16.680 --> 02:41:19.799
Congress shall have the power to enforce or appropriate legislation
2303
02:41:20.120 --> 02:41:24.479
the provisions of this article all right into the fourteenth Amendment.
2304
02:41:24.680 --> 02:41:28.200
Well, I think that we are at time it might
2305
02:41:28.200 --> 02:41:30.639
be a good idea to come back if we want
2306
02:41:30.639 --> 02:41:34.959
to discuss kind of the fifteenth Amendment and maybe some
2307
02:41:35.040 --> 02:41:37.120
other parts of reconstruction, because there's some things that I
2308
02:41:37.159 --> 02:41:38.879
wanted to bring up, and I guess this is just
2309
02:41:38.879 --> 02:41:42.639
a deep topic. But as we've said before, you know,
2310
02:41:42.719 --> 02:41:44.879
you have a book on the topic that will be linked.
2311
02:41:44.879 --> 02:41:47.200
I've received my copy. I have not gone through it
2312
02:41:47.280 --> 02:41:49.760
yet because there's a lot in there. You know, it's
2313
02:41:49.799 --> 02:41:51.840
incredibly dense, and I got it just a few days ago.
2314
02:41:52.280 --> 02:41:54.719
But if people want to find more of you and
2315
02:41:54.719 --> 02:41:56.159
more of your work, what's a good way for them
2316
02:41:56.159 --> 02:41:56.520
to do that.
2317
02:41:57.079 --> 02:42:02.840
Yes, indeed, I'm so excited about the the publication of
2318
02:42:02.879 --> 02:42:05.079
this book I've been working on this book to bring
2319
02:42:05.120 --> 02:42:08.120
it back into print for a long time, and I'm
2320
02:42:08.120 --> 02:42:12.000
working on other projects there as well. The book is
2321
02:42:12.280 --> 02:42:16.479
the Civil War and Reconstruction in Alabama. It's by Walter
2322
02:42:16.760 --> 02:42:21.360
Lynwood Fleming and it's one of these state specific histories
2323
02:42:21.479 --> 02:42:25.520
of reconstruction and I've brought back into print to make
2324
02:42:25.559 --> 02:42:30.079
it accessible again. You can find it on Barnesennoble dot com.
2325
02:42:30.840 --> 02:42:33.239
Perhaps we can link it in the show notes there.
2326
02:42:33.360 --> 02:42:36.799
I'll make sure that you have that information. You can
2327
02:42:36.840 --> 02:42:44.120
find more information about my work. I'm newly on Twitter.
2328
02:42:44.559 --> 02:42:47.280
I've never been on Twitter before, but i am now
2329
02:42:47.799 --> 02:42:53.760
kind of to promote my book. I'm at Tallman Books
2330
02:42:54.239 --> 02:42:57.840
on Twitter, and I've got a YouTube channel as well.
2331
02:42:58.239 --> 02:43:01.920
Look up George Bagbee on YouTube and you can find
2332
02:43:01.959 --> 02:43:05.559
some of my recording there. I record essays things that
2333
02:43:05.639 --> 02:43:09.600
interest me. I'm recording a couple of books there right now.
2334
02:43:09.639 --> 02:43:12.840
I'm recording some C. S. Lewis and some GK. Chesterton
2335
02:43:12.959 --> 02:43:13.319
right now.
2336
02:43:13.760 --> 02:43:16.200
Well, great, I'm looking forward to that. I've been listening
2337
02:43:16.239 --> 02:43:18.840
to a lot of your backlog over the holidays. I
2338
02:43:18.920 --> 02:43:21.159
kind of lost track of it, so I'll be sure
2339
02:43:21.200 --> 02:43:23.360
to catch those when they drop. As far as my stuff,
2340
02:43:23.399 --> 02:43:25.959
you know, you guys can find me on any podcasterer
2341
02:43:25.959 --> 02:43:29.200
that's Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you like watching podcasts. And
2342
02:43:29.280 --> 02:43:31.520
also I've been putting out a lot more on substack,
2343
02:43:31.600 --> 02:43:33.840
so you can find the Jay Burton Show on substack
2344
02:43:33.879 --> 02:43:38.360
as well. I'll be on Urn's show on Wednesday. That
2345
02:43:38.399 --> 02:43:42.120
will be third I believe to discuss an article I've written,
2346
02:43:42.360 --> 02:43:44.319
So if you want to get a look at it
2347
02:43:44.319 --> 02:43:46.479
before I discuss it live or see some other stuff
2348
02:43:46.479 --> 02:43:48.879
I posted, that's a good way to do that. If
2349
02:43:48.879 --> 02:43:50.440
you want to support us directly, the best way to
2350
02:43:50.440 --> 02:43:53.600
do it is Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching. A couple
2351
02:43:53.639 --> 02:43:57.559
of guys in my community have launched the Fat Bastard Challenge,
2352
02:43:57.879 --> 02:44:01.639
which is free. It's not something I even came up with. Scratchy,
2353
02:44:01.639 --> 02:44:03.680
who's been on here a couple of times, did which
2354
02:44:03.760 --> 02:44:07.319
essentially a weight loss program for the first quarter of
2355
02:44:07.360 --> 02:44:10.120
the year. I think it ends sometime in March. Heroic
2356
02:44:10.159 --> 02:44:12.559
Whale and Arthur Dane, who both had been on the
2357
02:44:12.600 --> 02:44:15.479
show before, are acting as judges. So I'll include a
2358
02:44:15.479 --> 02:44:17.280
link to that. If you want to get in on
2359
02:44:17.440 --> 02:44:20.760
the action and just do something. It's just accountability. There's
2360
02:44:20.799 --> 02:44:22.760
no sales or anything to it, but you should do
2361
02:44:22.799 --> 02:44:24.760
that as well. And again, Bagbee, thank you so much
2362
02:44:24.799 --> 02:44:25.280
for coming on.
2363
02:44:25.799 --> 02:44:28.159
It's my pleasure and I look forward to doing more
2364
02:44:28.200 --> 02:44:30.120
on Reconstruction with you in the future.
2365
02:44:30.639 --> 02:44:33.639
Definitely. And everyone at home, keep your head up. The
2366
02:44:33.680 --> 02:44:35.200
life can't last forever. Good Night,