Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:06] Speaker B: Welcome to the Truth Exchange podcast. This is a weekly program with Dr. Jeffrey J. Ventrella where he answers questions from subscribers around the globe, answering questions about worldview, cultural apologetics and other miscellaneous items. I'm your host, Joshua Gilo and this is another edition of the Director's bag.
There is a retrieval of this top man down, this Christian prince who's going to change everything. There is this underlying tone of statism where it's all the power is condensed in to one. We're seeing young people want to go back to having a Christian king, because having a Christian king he'll get rid of all the red tape and he can change all the policies and procedures and make everything a Christian nation.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: The Bible doesn't specify the structure per se of civil government. Perhaps it's a monarchy, perhaps it's a constitutional republic, perhaps it's a parliamentary sort of system. Bible doesn't specify that. It does specify though the nature of humankind. And it does specify how society should function and how the state should function with respect to society. And so when you have this notion of a king, what I'm hearing today is not so much a lust for a monarchy, but a lust for a political messiah. In other words, politics becomes, to use a big word, salvific, that this person's going to solve all the problems. And I think that's very dangerous and it's very unchristian. The idea is that you have civil society, the state is part of that and it has structural pluralism, meaning that it enforces the rule of law equally applied upon the just and the unjust, the Christian and the non Christian. But it does so by incorporating the law of God as it applies to society. So things like the protection of life, things like understanding and respect for both natural authority and political authority, I'm thinking of the family and so on, so forth. Things like protecting against theft, in whatever form, it is all honoring speech so that you protect the ability to speak. I believe that there's a theological justification for free speech, but at the same time you protect against defamation, libel, slander, obscenity, pornography. These kinds of things would not qualify because they tract from and undermine human flourishing. But the state is to do that now. But the state doesn't have jurisdiction over the citizens hearts. So for example, the tenth commandment, you shall not covet. Well, you shouldn't covet. But there's no enforcement mechanism there by the state unless it's accompanied by an overt act. If I covet in my heart, that's not a crime. If I covet my heart and take my neighbor's Tesla, that's a crime. But it's not because I coveted it, it's because I stole it. It's a form of theft. And so that's how that works. Now I mentioned at the outset of that kind of long answer is that the Bible does specify the nature of humanity. Humanity is fallen. We are finite and we are fallen. Well, those two things argue against the collectivization and consolidation of power. Because we are finite, we, we can't possibly have all the information we need to make all the right policy decisions, which is the genius of a virtuous market. That information is transmitted and dissipated, not collectivized. This is why collective economic systems fail, why they have shortages, require rationalizations, and have rampant inflation and all kinds of things because they can't process the information well enough. So we are finite, and then in addition, we are fallen. And so when you consolidate power in fallen persons, what could possibly go wrong? Well, lots of things could go wrong. So what our founders did is understanding that. And you look at the Federalist Papers, which was of course the political theories and propaganda, popular propaganda, that led to the ratification of the Constitution. Well, the Federalist Papers all throughout presuppose the fallenness, the avarice of humanity. And for that reason they dissipated political power. They were scared to death because they'd just been under what a tyrannical monarch, King George iii. And so they wanted to dissipate that power by separating the legislative, the executive and the judicial functions, separating the national from the states, having the states be able to push back.
This is a side note. The ratification of the 17th Amendment, which permitted or authorized the direct election of senators, greatly undermined the check on the federal government because the states legislatures used to appoint senators. And that meant the senators were beholden to the states, not to the federal government. And so now we have one great check and pushback that's been diluted over the years since I think it's 1919 for 100 years. So we think, oh, we need democracy. The founders despise democracy because the collective of fallen people can get it wrong. And so we have, you know, minorities being oppressed. This is the danger. When you combine the lust for a political messiah with populism, you've got who are the dangers that the founders structurally opposed. And that's what I think a lot of these new right people just don't understand.
And then I think the third thing they don't understand.
I was just reading some, actually some Marxists this morning. To kind of get into their heads. And it was struck by the fact that a Marxist named korsch who in 1923 wrote an important piece that reinvigorated Marx's Marxist thought with Hegelianism. Okay, so you got Hegel operating again.
Well, it's very interesting. His view of truth has nothing to do with the correspondence to reality, which is the Christian view. Truth equals reality. If it corresponds with reality, it's true. Not so. Truth is what promotes movement toward the revolution.
What promotes movement toward the revolution. So what do we see on the new right today? No enemies to the right don't critique people. It doesn't really matter what you say. You're a boomer. The truth. Don't rebut me. Why? Because that just moves the needle for this idea of so called Christian nationalism and some of the other errors that these people embrace. They are operationally Marxist and they don't even know it. It's really a sad situation.
[00:07:49] Speaker B: There's a podcast out there that is, I think is guilty of hagiography where they idealize certain kings and they say that once we get this Christian king in and overthrow the current administration or government, then all will be well. But that just to me, that that comes with war, that comes at the hands of innocent lives and so on.
Restructuring a government system is just terrifying to me to think that that could happen in my lifetime if the new alt right truly does take power and take control.
[00:08:22] Speaker A: I think you're exactly right. And notice your description of it is classic revolutionary. They want to upset the status quo, not refine it, not reform it. They want to blow it up, they want to bring it down. And that's just a revolutionary impulse. And that of course is a violation of the fifth commandment.
You know, Jesus did not, and the apostles did not hold up signs that said slaves lot, slave lives matter. We're going to be rebel rousers in the Roman situation. No, what they did is they proclaimed the truth. They understood the imago day. They understood there's neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female within the kingdom of God. And they acted accordingly. They demonstrated those truths. That's how they believed in and they made cultural change which ultimately led to political change. But they didn't do it coercively and they didn't do it. I mean there were, put it this way, Christianity is certainly revolutionary, but not in a Marxist sense at all. And I, I am, I am troubled by this, this poo poohing of violence and this pedestaling by hagiography as you indicate some of these kings that did absolutely wicked acts, and frankly, some of the threats that even some of those prior kings had, we don't have. They. It's, it's illusory to think that those sorts of, I mean, every one of those guys that are doing this stuff got up with running water and didn't have tuberculosis and had penicillin and all these kinds of things like flush toilets, it's a very different situation. And for them to catapult to, to, to bring forward and say, oh, that's exactly what we need.
It's, it's very immature and it shows they really haven't read deeply or broadly.
[00:10:24] Speaker B: What are the blind sights that liberalism does have? So, for instance, like the New Right is always saying, okay, Boomer, okay, Boomer. Is there any credibility to their. The. Even though it's slanderous and it is, as you said, it is fifth Commandment, it's repulsive to me because I just having six kids, you know, we talk about the fifth Commandment a lot in my household, right. And as I started to raise my kids, start to become teens all the more. I don't want my children speaking that way to me. I certainly don't as an adult. Do not speak that way to my parents. And so when I see it on Twitter and whatnot, and they say, okay, Boomer, is, is there any, is there any credibility to some of, some of the accusations? Is there a blind spot that liberalism does have that you think can be amended?
[00:11:22] Speaker A: It's interesting. So there's been, of course, an attack on classical liberalism. And these folks will call them we're post liberal or that sort of thing. But the alt right guys and the Young Restless reforms 2.0 guys really don't articulate any solid criticisms. They just dismiss it. They dismiss it and say it's failed and you're old, therefore your arguments don't matter. As if turning a page on a calendar invalidates logic or history. It's ridiculous. So I think you're talking about two different things. What happens is in the critics of classical liberalism today, the popular critics of it, they have a caricature of classical liberalism. They say it's all about. It's just this gave us expressive individualism. It was just licentiousness, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, etc, etcetera. Well, some versions of that. They're critiquing a version of it, or they're critiquing one instantiation of it, but they're not critiquing. Actually the Full orb theory. So what would be the blind spot? One blind spot would be to reduce classical liberalism to mere economic functioning or human action. So this would be kind of agnostic or even atheistic. So if there's a market for it, it's worth doing. And that sort of reductionism, well of course that's flawed because that leads to, hey, there's a market in sex trafficking, there's a market in organ trafficking, there's a market in pornography, let's just do it. It makes a lot of money. But of course, right, the profit motive isn't the highest good. But actual classical liberalism presupposed a binding universal ethic, the law of God and a virtuous market. Some things needed to be controlled. It wasn't anarcho capitalism at all. But a lot of people are reading classical liberalism as if that's the point, that it's just libertarianism on steroids. That's certainly not what conservatives have taught throughout, both in Burkean kind of conservatism and then if you look at the American experiment, Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley and some of those people. So it's very different. In fact, Buckley famously kicked out the hoots and the nutters from the conservative movement and hopefully that will be happening again. Purging these kinds of statists under the guise of, oh, we're Christian nationalists. Well, you're a statist and that's not classical liberalism.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: What I hear about the failing of the classical liberalism project is things like, and we've talked about this before, drag queen story hour at libraries or the, the whole trans movement, a lot of the whole. Sexual liberation is the byproduct of class.
[00:14:14] Speaker A: Yeah, well see, I mean that's the problem is because what it says is that some of these protections like free speech are procedural and only procedural, meaning the content doesn't matter, the substance doesn't matter. My argument would be that's a distortion of classical liberalism because I've already said there's a binding law of God, a divine law, and I've also said that has to be a virtuous market. And I've also said that that which precipitates harm to a society can be and should be restrained or eliminated. So you know, Robbie George of Princeton has, has made clear, and he's a conservative all the way down. But drag queen story area has no place, particularly in a state funded platform and that sort of thing. Why? Because that would be like saying, hey, I'm going to have a, a white supremacist story hour in children. We're going to, we're going to say naughty words and we're going to disparage humans made in the image of God simply because of the color of their skin. But hey, I have a free speech right. Well, that's just obviously noxious and it's unacceptable.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Yeah, okay.
[00:15:32] Speaker A: A computer doing something part. My back of the computer has actually come off now and the lid doesn't close things a year old. I don't get it. I didn't drop it. I didn't do anything. And anyway, sorry as an editing piece, but so my point is that that is a caricature. Yes, there have been people who say they're classical liberals and conservatives, but the person who was defending Drag Queen Story Hour on free speech grounds also came out and supported Kamala Harris for president despite her utterly radical anti life policies. So you really can't trust that. Don't, don't. It's like if a math right comes out and says, I'm a mathematician and two plus two is five, you wouldn't say math is wrong. You'd say that guy is wrong. Well, the same thing is true here. The fact that someone calls themselves conservative and says, oh yeah, Drag King Story Hour is the price we pay for freedom. You say you're crazy. That's not true at all. That's not what classical liberalism is.
[00:16:35] Speaker B: Could you explain for the listeners you had said that the law of God is the precedent for a classical liberal society.
So if the, if the law of God sets the stage or the tone, how then does other religions, how does someone practice another religion factor into that kind of equation?
[00:16:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. So the issue would be distinction between belief and practice. There is no state authority to constrain a person's creeds or belief. Again, the state lacks jurisdiction over the non corporeal part of the human being. Heart, mind, that sort of thing. And so you can believe whatever you want to believe. Certain thoughts are injurious, but the state doesn't have jurisdiction over that. And in fact, you. The state should not coerce religious confession. So, you know, we had. Unfortunately, during the medieval era there was. And a bit later they would like kidnap.
This is the.
At that time, the Roman Catholic Church would kidnap children of Jews and baptize them and bring the kids up as Christians, not Jews, because that saves them, that sort of thing. Well, the problem of course is you're coercing the will and a coerced faith is not a true faith at all. And so you would never have the state or worse, a confession that that's what the communists do with their struggle sections and all that. So that would not be it. The law of God recognizes the dignity, the inherent dignity of the human person and does not coerce belief, does not overbear the will. But what the state does do is provides incentives for searching to the truth, providing freedom to grapple with, to debate, to engage with, to deal with what we would call apologetics so that that truth can shine brightly and go forth with respect to that. Then you have the next layer when it comes to the exercise of that faith. If you say that, well, you know, our faith meets and must meet on Wednesdays, okay, not a real problem. If your faith says we must meet on Wednesdays for four hours, okay, that's not disruptive of society. And if you say as part of that four hours we're going to sacrifice our firstborn by killing them, that state's going to step in because there's concurrent jurisdictions, there's some behavior that are so injurious both to humans and to society at large, the state is going to say no, that religious practice, just calling it religious is not enough to suit save it because it is objectively injurious to the people and to society. So we're not going to allow that. We're not going to allow polygamy. But my faith allows polygamy. No, we're not going to allow that. Now, sad to say, a lot of Western nations have kowtowed to Islam and have winked their eyes at this kind of multiple marriages that Islam has. I think that's a mistake. I think legally they say only have one, but they do allow them to practice kind of this weird cohabitative deal. And that's a mistake. But you know, we can, we can have a robust discussion about where that line is drawn. But certainly, you know, child molestation, child sacrifice, that's going to be out of bounds. So the Aztec true believer doesn't get to practice this religion within a Tristan infused classical liberal regime.
[00:20:30] Speaker B: This concludes a recording of the Director's Bag. For more resources from Truth Exchange, please visit us online at www.truthexchange.com. you can follow us on X as well as Facebook for more updates and content related to Truth Exchange. Be sure to join us next week for more questions from the Director's Bag. I'm your host Joshua Wagilo, and this is the Truth Exchange podcast.
