0:01

Does truth exist? Because you have faith,

0:03

does that make this book cool? Does

0:06

God exist? So when someone says

0:08

there is no truth, if you apply the

0:10

claim to itself, what should you say? Is

0:14

that true? They don't

0:16

think Christianity is true. They're

0:18

talked out of it. You know why they're talked

0:20

out of it? Because they've never

0:23

been talked into it. Cross-examining skeptical

0:25

and atheistic views. Welcome

0:28

to Cross-Examining with Dr. Frank

0:31

Turek. Ladies

0:33

and gentlemen, what practical things

0:35

can you do to stop

0:37

encroaching wokeness in our culture,

0:39

in our schools, in your

0:42

places of business? And

0:45

how can you advance the self-evident truce

0:47

of our founding? We

0:49

have again with us Dr.

0:52

James Lindsay of newdiscourses.com. He

0:56

was on the podcast last week on

0:58

the American Family Radio Network and we

1:00

had a wonderful conversation. If

1:02

you haven't listened to that podcast, you need

1:04

to go back and listen to it because

1:07

we're just going to continue our conversation. James

1:10

is an internationally known expert

1:13

on critical theory. He's spoken all over the world

1:15

on this for good reason. He knows his stuff.

1:18

He's read all the original material. He's written

1:20

several of his own books. The

1:22

newest book is called The Queering of the

1:24

American Child. We talked a

1:26

little bit about that in the last podcast.

1:29

But James, before we

1:31

get back to that discussion of critical theory,

1:34

I first heard about you. It

1:36

must be five or six years ago because

1:40

you and two other colleagues actually

1:44

successfully exposed

1:47

woke educators via the peer

1:49

review process. And

1:52

it actually turned out to be

1:54

hilarious what you actually

1:56

did. Can you describe

1:58

what you and two others did? two other

2:00

colleagues did that actually

2:03

exposed what's going on in academia today.

2:06

Yeah, so that's called the grievance

2:08

studies affair now. We

2:11

didn't know what to call it. We called

2:13

it the project at the time while we

2:15

were doing it. But what we did was

2:17

that we became suspicious that the peer-reviewed academic

2:19

literature in subjects like gender studies and

2:21

race studies and ethnic studies and so

2:23

on was probably not

2:26

really legitimate that if you were to flatter their

2:28

biases, they'd publish some pretty crazy stuff as long

2:30

as it went in the political direction that they

2:32

like. So my

2:34

friend Peter Rogosian and I in

2:37

2016 near the end of the

2:39

year decided that we should probe these

2:41

waters and we decided to start writing

2:43

academic hoax articles and target peer-reviewed

2:46

academic journals in these fields. For

2:49

those listeners who don't know, academic journals, it's

2:51

not like getting an op-ed published in a magazine. It's

2:53

not like getting published in the Federalist or the New

2:55

York Times, like a really big one or anything. It's

2:58

a big affair. It's a two or three

3:00

per year is a kind of career. Like

3:03

you have a fast growing career if you're getting

3:05

two or three per year and the humanities published.

3:08

And so we wrote a trial balloon.

3:10

It was titled the conceptual penis as

3:12

a social construct. We

3:15

argued that penises don't really exist, but they

3:17

cause all of our problems, especially climate

3:19

change. We were extremely crude, extremely

3:21

lewd. The humor is a bit

3:24

adult. If you want to

3:26

go read it and find it, it's genuinely

3:28

hilarious. And through a

3:30

little bit of controversy, it got accepted

3:32

in what turns out to be an

3:34

extraordinarily low level or even predatory academic

3:36

journal. And so we got challenged

3:39

that we hadn't proved anything by getting a trial balloon

3:42

published. And we were told, well, if you want to prove your

3:44

point, you need more papers, you need higher ranking journals, blah, blah,

3:46

blah. So Peter and I got on the phone and said, do

3:48

you want to do that? And like, yeah, let's do that. So

3:51

we spent the next, so I guess

3:53

summer 2017 through October of 2018 next year and

3:55

a quarter or

3:58

so writing these papers. and

4:00

submitting them as fast as we could. And so

4:02

like I said, two or three per year is

4:04

like a big academic career,

4:06

a very prolific academic career. We wrote

4:09

20. And so...

4:11

20 bogus articles.

4:13

20 bogus articles.

4:15

Okay, yeah, that's right. The

4:17

high-level academic journals in the fields,

4:19

which is to say low-level academic

4:21

journals overall, but they

4:24

were quite successful. It took us a few months to get

4:26

the hang of it. Our first six that we wrote never

4:28

kind of went anywhere. But then we got

4:30

the knack of it. And out

4:33

of the 20 that we wrote, seven of

4:35

them were accepted for publication. Four of them

4:38

actually got published. One received an award for

4:40

excellence in scholarship. And what it was about

4:43

was determining whether or not

4:45

people support rape culture, a feminist

4:47

idea, by examining how

4:49

they reacted to watching dogs

4:52

do what dogs do with each other at the dog

4:54

park. And the conclusion

4:56

we drew was that by watching what

4:58

we called dog-humping incidents at

5:00

the dog park, that we could train men

5:02

the way that we train dogs to overcome

5:05

rape culture using obedience manuals and leashes and

5:07

so on. And we'd have to work on

5:10

the political feasibility of leashing men and things

5:12

like that. And so this

5:14

paper won an award for excellence

5:16

in scholarship. It's so preposterous. I

5:19

can't even do it justice. But other papers were a

5:21

little less... I mean some of them were very funny.

5:23

Some of them were a little less funny. We

5:27

took chapter 12 of Adolf Hitler's

5:29

Mein Kampf and rewrote it

5:31

as intersectional feminism and then

5:33

worked some actual journal, academic

5:35

material in, to kind of match what we

5:38

were trying to write and wove it in

5:40

there. And we submitted this and it was

5:42

accepted by a feminist social work journal. But

5:44

it was literally the chapter of Hitler's work

5:46

where he's organizing the Nazi Party. And so

5:49

we were saying we should organize it around

5:51

intersectional feminism instead of other

5:53

kinds of feminism that maybe don't care as

5:55

much about all of the forms of oppression.

5:58

And then one of our papers changed my

6:00

life, frankly, we wrote a paper about

6:02

education and we said that to overcome

6:04

privilege in the classroom, we should take

6:06

the kids and we should abuse them.

6:09

But we should do it with compassion because we're trying to be funny.

6:12

And the peer reviewers wrote us back and said, you can't

6:14

use compassion because it might recenter the needs of the privileged.

6:17

And I thought, oh my God, this ends in genocide.

6:19

Like this is not just stupid

6:21

and dangerous that it's getting into professional

6:23

things. This has a logic of

6:26

dehumanization at its heart. So I asked my wife a

6:28

couple weeks later if I could quit my job

6:30

and dedicate all of my life to studying

6:32

and exposing it. And I've done that ever

6:34

since. But like I said, seven accepted, seven

6:37

more were still under peer review. A

6:41

sociologist after the fact said either 11 or

6:43

12 of the 20 would have been accepted.

6:45

But most importantly, what it was, was after

6:47

basically Christmas of 2017, everything we wrote

6:50

was going to go in. We

6:52

cracked the code. So what were

6:54

you doing at the time? Were you on faculty

6:56

somewhere? No, I left academia in

6:58

2010. A lot of people

7:01

think this is very exciting when they find this out.

7:03

I was working as a massage therapist actually for

7:06

a number of reasons. But I

7:08

left academia and was doing massage

7:10

professionally to deal with people's chronic pain.

7:13

I had injured myself in my

7:15

20s doing I used to fight. And

7:18

so I was fighting and I hurt my back really

7:20

bad and nobody knew what to do with it. And

7:22

the doctors didn't know what to do with it. I

7:24

even got wrapped up briefly in that Vioxx scandal from

7:26

Pharma trying to deal with it. And then

7:28

the next thing you know, this guy

7:30

I know knows his massage technique is a friend of my

7:32

brother's is a chiropractor. And he showed it to me and

7:34

told me to buy this book to learn how to do

7:36

it to myself. And I fixed my own back. So

7:39

I started doing it to other people. And

7:42

my wife was like, why don't you just get a license and do it

7:44

if you don't want to be in academia anymore? I was like, good idea.

7:48

But then you got back into it

7:50

writing these articles. And

7:52

what was the reaction

7:55

from the academic community when you

7:57

expose the fact that all these

8:00

articles were just hoaxes.

8:03

Well, from academics within academia,

8:05

the response was mostly dead

8:07

silence. They mostly pretended it didn't happen.

8:09

A few of the people that were

8:12

journal editors or whatever for the journals

8:14

that we had submitted papers to wrote

8:16

very short statements that we betrayed

8:18

their trust. But there was virtually

8:20

no recognition, virtually no response whatsoever,

8:23

just complete silence pretending it didn't

8:25

happen, which was absolutely astonishing to

8:27

us that their go-to would be

8:29

just, you know, just it would be like when,

8:31

just full of religious, it'd be like when Moses

8:34

comes down with the tablets and he sees the

8:36

golden calf and then the guy's like, I don't

8:38

know, it's just this golden calf just came out

8:40

of the fire, except that's exactly what the story

8:42

in Exodus says. It was exactly like that in

8:44

a sense, except there was no burning bush or

8:46

anything behind our papers and we didn't throw our

8:48

papers on the ground and smash them in anger.

8:51

Slight difference to the story, but it really

8:53

was. They completely ignored it. They pretended it

8:56

didn't happen. Now there was a contingent of

8:58

academics, probably I would say as much

9:00

as, representing as much as a quarter of

9:02

them, maybe a third, that would reach out

9:05

very quietly. Thank gosh, you guys did this. Oh

9:07

my God, it was, it's so bad. But they

9:09

wouldn't speak up publicly or very few would because

9:11

their careers were at risk. Now that's the problem,

9:14

and some of these people have tenure and they're

9:16

still worried about their careers, why? Well,

9:18

because the amount of hounding that you'll get

9:21

is absolutely crazy. Peter didn't even have tenure

9:23

at his university, which was Portland State University.

9:25

So you know, he was gonna get it

9:27

hot and heavy. They never actually fired him.

9:30

He ended up resigning. But what they do,

9:33

even if you have tenure or not, is

9:35

they create very passive aggressive environments that make

9:37

it just miserable to be at work. They,

9:39

if like something in Peter's office, one of

9:41

the coat racks fell off, maintenance never, he

9:44

called, maintenance would not come to fix it,

9:46

and they never came to fix it. And

9:48

then he couldn't schedule meetings with other

9:50

people. And then when that

9:52

led to the fact that something that had

9:54

to be done, paperwork or whatever, didn't get

9:56

filed, he was in trouble, but they wouldn't

9:58

meet with him to do it. He was

10:00

shunned on. campus they put him through a

10:02

kangaroo court of you know diversity office trials

10:05

for accusations that were completely ludicrous

10:08

they would put vicious

10:10

articles about him in the student

10:12

newspaper at one point a rumor had gotten circulated

10:14

from the diversity office itself that he was beating

10:17

his wife and kids and people all over campus

10:19

were coming up to him and being mad at

10:21

him and accusing him of this so they were

10:23

very vicious in this kind of gross path of

10:25

aggressive way until finally he just couldn't take it

10:28

anymore and left so these academics who are staying

10:30

silent even with tenure know that they're going to

10:32

make your job miserable and

10:34

these kids will like we saw

10:36

with Brett Weinstein at Evergreen a

10:38

year or two before that back in

10:40

17 i think will possibly harass

10:43

you or protest you or carry on like

10:45

they screamed at Nicholas Christakis at Yale in

10:47

2015 saying that you

10:50

know it was he was supposed to

10:52

be turning Yale into a home for

10:54

these poor oppressed super rich kids or

10:56

whatever so the amount of bullying and

10:58

haranguing basically red guard tactics from Mao's

11:00

China that you're likely to face are

11:03

just really high and the academics know that their

11:05

career is going to be very uncomfortable

11:07

very difficult they have a cushy career and they know

11:09

it and they're going to make it awful so

11:12

this from the same people who

11:14

are all about inclusion tolerance and

11:16

diversity explain well that's for

11:18

us would you yeah it's simple inclusion doesn't

11:21

these words do not mean what you think

11:23

they mean so inclusion means in i

11:25

have to use a technical term to do this right i

11:27

have to figure out a better way to do this but

11:29

i haven't done it yet so you get this rough

11:32

uh version still there's a term

11:35

in the marxist literature called hegemony

11:37

which is not an easy word but hegemony

11:40

is like the prevailing cultural attitudes and

11:42

values and so they have

11:44

this idea called counter hegemony which is

11:46

bringing marxism or something that's diametrically opposed

11:48

to the prevailing cultural value so it

11:50

doesn't have to be marxism it could

11:52

be islam it could be something that's

11:54

just completely you know hostile indigenous it

11:56

could be anything that's completely diametrically opposed

11:58

to the existing value system

12:01

is against it, so

12:03

it's called counter-hegemonic. Inclusion

12:05

means including counter-hegemonic views.

12:08

So what that means is you

12:10

have to go out of your way to let

12:12

things that disrupt your organization in, and

12:15

you have to make sure that those people

12:17

are made to feel accommodated and included and

12:19

like they belong there. Meanwhile,

12:22

everybody who might resist them, who want

12:24

to keep the prevailing values the way

12:26

they are, has to be silenced or

12:28

get pushed out of the way. So

12:30

inclusion means including the revolution is what

12:32

it boils down to. Diversity

12:34

means including views

12:37

that are diverse to the prevailing

12:39

cultural hegemony. In other words,

12:41

including Marxists, including troublemakers, including disruptors

12:44

and revolutionaries and radicals. So diversity

12:46

of views refers to ones

12:48

that are outside of the prevailing

12:50

cultural value set. And

12:52

so when we say we're going to include those

12:55

or we're going to have a focus on diversity,

12:57

they mean we're going to bring in things that

12:59

challenge Western civilization and its values, including

13:01

Christianity, including American values and so

13:04

on. And then with tolerance, tolerance

13:06

is a whole long line back

13:08

to the 60s of analysis. It

13:10

got separated by the Marxists, particularly

13:13

Herbert Marcuse, the most famous of

13:15

the Neo-Marxists in 1965, in

13:17

a book called The Critique of Pure Tolerance, and

13:20

an essay, a very famous essay called Repressive Tolerance

13:22

is a chapter within that. And what

13:24

he lays out is that there are actually

13:26

three kinds of tolerance. There's democratic tolerance, which

13:28

is what we think we have here in

13:30

the West. And then there's repressive tolerance, where

13:32

the right wing is repressive of all of

13:34

the elements that it doesn't like, which are

13:36

those counter hegemonic elements, which is Marxism.

13:39

And then he says what we have to

13:42

do, well, first he says those two are

13:44

actually the same. We don't actually have a

13:46

true democratic tolerance because we don't have a

13:49

true democracy because there's favored views and unfavored

13:51

views. So the democratic tolerance is repressive tolerance.

13:53

But what we need to favor what they

13:55

mean by tolerance is what's called liberating tolerance.

13:58

And that's his third form. liberating tolerance,

14:00

he defines explicitly in these words

14:03

as means tolerance

14:05

for movements from the left and

14:08

withdrawal of tolerance to

14:11

movements from the right. So it means whatever

14:13

the left just want to do, you tolerate

14:15

that. Whatever anybody else wants, you do not

14:17

tolerate that. And that's their definition of tolerance.

14:19

Now you know, ladies and gentlemen,

14:21

why I was fired from Bank

14:23

of America and Cisco for writing

14:25

a book called Correct, Not Politically

14:27

Correct, How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.

14:29

And that happened in 2011, all

14:32

in the name of inclusion, tolerance, and

14:34

diversity, the way Dr.

14:36

Lindsay just described it. It

14:39

doesn't mean that we're going to include

14:41

every idea and respect every idea. No,

14:43

if you put forth an

14:45

idea that goes against the

14:47

revolution, as James just put it,

14:50

you're going to be expelled. And

14:53

that's what's going on. That's right. I mean,

14:55

that's the basic premise of it is that people need to understand,

14:57

and I think we've really woken up to this. If

15:00

I have one thing that you could say, well, what's

15:02

your career been about since you decided to

15:04

bail on massage therapy and do this full time?

15:07

It's been going around trying to tell

15:09

people the following in one way or

15:12

another, the following concept, which is that

15:14

communists share your vocabulary, but they don't

15:16

use your dictionary. They have different definitions

15:18

for all of their key words, whether

15:20

it's the ones we just mentioned, inclusion,

15:23

diversity, tolerance, whether it's democracy, they

15:25

have a different definition for that,

15:27

whether it's resilience, that's the new

15:29

buzzword they're throwing around, sustainability, that's

15:31

another one. But I started trying

15:33

to compile a list of all of these words and

15:35

to translate them for people. And I

15:37

was finding 10 new words for every one I

15:40

had the time to write down an explanation to,

15:42

and I finally had to give up on the

15:44

project as impossible and overwhelming. They have colonized thousands

15:47

of words in our everyday speech, but

15:49

you kind of can tell what the

15:51

big ones are, diversity, equity, inclusion, tolerance,

15:55

our democracy. Donald Trump is a threat to our

15:57

democracy. Joe Rogan is a threat to our democracy.

16:00

Ivermectin is a threat to our democracy.

16:02

You can tell which ones are the

16:04

kind of big ones because they can't

16:06

stop using them They use them like

16:08

a mantra But what they're actually using

16:10

them as is a signal to other

16:12

believers What they're actually doing is speaking

16:14

coded language and when my

16:16

job I got described recently as the

16:19

Rosetta stone for woke language to

16:21

be able to pull you back from the Distorted

16:23

view that they want you to have of what

16:26

they mean by their words to apply the activist

16:28

view of what they actually mean by the words

16:31

and as James has already said in the

16:33

previous podcast wokeness is sort of a Cult

16:36

a religious cult and

16:38

you notice that theological cults do the

16:41

same thing Mormons

16:43

have been described as a cult in

16:46

the in the technical sense Same

16:49

with Jehovah's Witnesses and they use

16:51

the same words But

16:54

they don't mean the same thing Jesus

16:56

in Mormonism is the spirit brother Lucifer. Okay,

16:58

he's not that not the kind of Jesus

17:00

that we know about in reality So

17:04

they use the same words But

17:06

they change the definition and that's what's

17:08

going on with wokeness, which is a

17:11

religion itself to a certain extent it

17:14

has religious cult like cult

17:17

like attributes to it and Now

17:20

James It's one thing we definitely

17:22

didn't get to in the last podcast that we

17:24

need to get to and that

17:27

is that President Biden Declared

17:29

this past Easter just a few

17:31

days ago or last week March

17:35

31st Transvisibility

17:37

Day and you have

17:39

said that Christians and conservatives must

17:42

be careful about how we react

17:44

when provoked like this Why

17:47

do we have to be careful and how should

17:49

we react? Well, you

17:51

have to be careful because the environment

17:53

that we operate in in general is

17:55

an environment of political warfare

17:58

I said I went on the Tim cast

18:01

show Tim pool podcast I don't know two

18:03

three years ago and that turns out that's

18:05

what we talked about and I tried to

18:07

the phrase the reason I bring that up

18:09

is that what I said to him was

18:11

political warfare is the most important concept you've

18:13

never heard of. And so

18:15

we live in an environment that saturated

18:17

with provocation saturated with propaganda in the

18:19

goal of political warfare is to get

18:21

your political enemies to act in the

18:24

way you desire them to so that

18:26

you can use that to your advantage.

18:28

And it has to be defined to

18:30

be political warfare as with hostile or

18:33

malicious intent behind the provocation or the

18:35

profit propaganda and so. Yes,

18:38

this is it is true that the

18:41

transgender day visibility international

18:43

transgender day of visibility goes back

18:45

on March 31 to 2009 we

18:47

call this setting up a situation

18:50

of plausible deniability. It

18:52

is true that Biden's administration has proclaimed

18:54

this every year since 21 so this

18:56

is the fourth year that he's done

18:58

it every year in his administration he's

19:00

made an official declaration it's never been

19:02

on Easter before this year. But

19:04

this year it was on Easter he announced

19:07

his proclamation on good Friday like he

19:09

couldn't have thought to do that on the Thursday

19:11

before or before holy week let's say that he

19:13

wanted to do it for whatever reason anyway. There

19:15

was no attempt whatsoever to enter

19:18

into this displaying the

19:20

sensitivity toward the conflict with Christianity

19:23

knowing that the vast majority of

19:25

this country is still Christian. The

19:28

vast majority of this country even if they're

19:30

only kind of vaguely Christian still recognizes

19:32

and supports Easter as a

19:35

holy holiday. And

19:37

then they put it full tilt

19:39

and pedal to the metal on

19:41

Easter itself of pushing this idea

19:43

and so I can't see this

19:45

as anything but a deliberate provocation

19:47

with some plausible deniability built into

19:50

it. That deliberate provocation is designed

19:52

to get Christians to get extremely

19:54

angry and to start to act

19:56

in ways that are less than

19:58

let's say judicious. It's not exactly

20:00

meeting as I phrased it. I

20:03

keep calling people, Christians in particular, of course,

20:05

to listen to the advice in a very

20:07

difficult passage of the gospel, which

20:09

is Matthew 10. And that's

20:11

famously where he gives some advice about how to

20:13

go out into the world. In Matthew 10, 14,

20:15

he's like, you know, go

20:18

out into the world and proclaim the truth when people won't

20:20

receive the truth, shake the dust from your feet. It's

20:22

very hard when you go tell your brother the truth

20:24

and he doesn't wanna hear it, to stop trying to

20:26

tell your brother the truth, but it causes a fight.

20:29

Sometimes you tell him the truth and it's time to shake

20:31

the dust from your feet and go away and reserve

20:34

other parts of the relationship, or to stop

20:36

wasting your time on those people you just

20:38

desperately want to get at who don't. You

20:40

tell 100 people, three understand, you waste time

20:42

on 97 who don't, instead

20:44

of nourishing the three who do. But then in

20:46

10, 16, he says, I send you out

20:48

and you are going out to be among ravening wolves

20:50

and you need to be as wise

20:52

as serpents and gentle as doves. And

20:55

the goal here is to get Christians,

20:58

so let me actually back up. The goal is to get

21:00

them not to act according to that. What

21:02

he, and it goes on to say

21:05

you'll be persecuted, you'll be arrested, you may be flogged,

21:07

and when you go to speak, don't worry, because if

21:09

you have faith, it will not be you who's speaking

21:11

but your father will put the

21:13

words into you for you. So

21:16

it's very good advice, and I try to get people to

21:18

listen to this, but what happened historically,

21:20

so you have this gentle, wise as

21:22

serpents, gentle as doves advice from

21:24

Jesus, or commandment from Jesus when you go out

21:26

into the world. Those

21:28

are two things that are very difficult to do.

21:30

Discernment and then this kind of,

21:32

it's not exactly winsomeness, but you've got to

21:35

have composure, right? That's the gentle as doves

21:37

part. You're not starting fights, you're not being

21:39

provocative, you're not going out as a holy

21:42

crusader beating people over the head with a

21:44

stick or a Bible or whatever, it's very

21:46

difficult. And so the communists

21:49

come along and they say, did you hear that

21:51

verse? This is how subversion works, and it's very

21:53

important your audience understands how the subversion of Christianity

21:55

works. The communists will come

21:57

along, and it's very much like the whisper

21:59

of the serpent. in Genesis 3. And

22:02

they'll say, did you hear that? Jesus

22:04

said, be gentle as doves. And

22:07

technically they're not lying. Jesus did say, be

22:09

gentle as doves. But he also said, you

22:11

have to be wise as serpents. So they've

22:13

selectively left part of it out to tell

22:15

a deceptive lie. And then

22:17

when Christians have become over the decades,

22:19

more and more winsome and gentle as

22:21

doves, but they don't have the backbone

22:24

of faith. They're not, I guess, in a

22:26

sense, going out forth, you know, in righteousness,

22:29

they're not doing the whole thing anymore.

22:32

Things start to fall apart. And so then

22:34

the provocation, the goal is to get Christians

22:36

to say the problem is being gentle as

22:38

doves. So rather than going back to what

22:40

Jesus said in Matthew 10, 16, of

22:42

being both discerning and gentle, he's

22:46

now, they've now diverted it

22:48

to where you're abandoning both principles. They

22:50

want the Christians to abandon their gentleness

22:53

command because being gentle without discernment was,

22:55

in fact, truly a mistake that they

22:57

were seduced, many, not all, were seduced

23:00

into. And so the goal is to

23:02

provoke Christians into reacting badly. The right

23:04

answer for how you do this, there's

23:07

a practical answer and there's a biblical answer.

23:09

The practical answer is very simple, which is

23:11

that when there's an operation to provoke you,

23:13

you beat the operation, you

23:15

beat a provocation by exposing the

23:18

provocation as what it is. It's

23:20

like with the little kid with the finger in

23:22

your nose, I'm not touching you, I'm not touching

23:24

you, I'm not touching you. The goal is for

23:26

you to react to them to say, mom, he

23:28

hit me. So you know that mom is the

23:30

real operative entity in this. Well, here it's the

23:32

watching public is mom. And so the goal is

23:34

that they want to provoke you, you react and

23:36

they say Christians have acted badly and

23:39

they forget about the provocation. So what you do instead is you

23:41

say they're provoking me. So if the finger's in your face with

23:43

your little brother, what you would say is, I need

23:46

you to understand. And you say it so

23:48

that mom can hear. I need you to

23:50

understand that your finger's in my face and I

23:52

don't tolerate it and you need to stop. Now

23:54

mom knows the dynamic. So practically speaking to

23:56

expose a provocation is to defang the provocation.

24:00

speaking, this is given in the advice of turn

24:02

the other cheek, which doesn't mean get trampled. It

24:05

means if you're going to publicly insult me, go ahead

24:07

and do it again and let everybody see it. And

24:10

that's very, very important for Christians to realize. So

24:12

what they need to do, and I gave this

24:14

advice on Saturday before Easter,

24:17

going into Easter about this provocation,

24:19

what Christians need to do is

24:22

first of all they need to remember their advice

24:24

to pray for their enemies. They need to pray

24:26

for the poor kids that are caught up in

24:28

this transgender thing pray

24:30

for repentance, pray for healing, pray

24:33

for community to come back together

24:35

and heal. That's all

24:37

very important. They need to, you know, you

24:39

don't need to make a big display of

24:41

it. People should know that you are offering

24:44

care, you're offering a landing pad for the

24:46

people who are troubled, that you wish the

24:48

best, and then what they need to

24:50

do is proclaim their faith in ways that

24:52

are a shining light that would draw

24:54

people to the faith, that would draw

24:56

people to repentance, that would draw people

24:59

into a feeling of true inclusion, true

25:01

acceptance, which is exactly what the gospel

25:03

offers, and that the woke ideology perverts,

25:05

turns to evil. And

25:07

by doing that you can actually achieve

25:09

the turn the other cheek in love

25:12

thy neighbor's commandment or love thy enemy's

25:14

commandment that we get from the

25:16

gospel. And the reason it's in

25:18

the gospel is because it's supposed to work. So

25:23

the most important thing though is just know

25:26

that you're being provoked. And

25:28

what I told Charlie Kirk the other day,

25:30

I went on his podcast, is don't rise

25:32

to a provocation, rise to the occasion. So

25:35

rather than doing what they want you to

25:37

do, which is the point of political warfare,

25:39

do something unexpected and good and helpful. Get

25:41

more involved in your community. Oh, you want

25:43

to do this provocation against Trans

25:45

Day of Visibility on Easter? Fine. We're

25:47

going to go devote our time and

25:49

energies to, maybe it's a

25:51

ballot initiative in California to try to

25:54

overturn this, these crooked laws that are

25:56

happening in California. Maybe it's that you're

25:58

going to start working with your legislature. and informing

26:00

them on the issue, maybe you're gonna start

26:02

studying it so that you can bring that

26:05

information to legislators or become an expert witness

26:07

in a court case that could turn the

26:09

tide on these things. We have lots of

26:11

civic mechanisms, which are to say gentle as

26:14

dove mechanisms that you can use to try

26:16

to turn the tide of this back. And

26:18

devoting your energy to that and making your

26:21

faith be a welcoming beacon of healing and

26:23

hope is a vastly more,

26:25

in my opinion, if I may be so

26:27

bold, biblical way to approach this, but in

26:29

a political warfare sense, is a vastly more

26:31

tactical way to approach a provocation than doing

26:34

exactly what your enemy wants. It's like when

26:36

I used to fight, because I mentioned the

26:38

fighting, if I throw out my left

26:40

hand, boom, boom, boom, and I get you used to, I'm

26:42

gonna do something with my left hand, you never even think

26:45

when I hit you with my right. And so I can

26:47

get you suckered in to react a certain way. Every time

26:49

I do this, you do that, and I figure out what

26:51

your thing is, then I clock you. That's

26:54

what the Biden administration's trying to do

26:56

with these provocations. They want the Christians

26:58

to come out, they want to get

27:00

them to scream something they can declare

27:02

as a rising tide of transphobia or

27:04

anti-LGBTQ hate. And then just like they're

27:06

doing to our friend Lives a TikTok,

27:08

there was that child, what

27:10

was it, Next Benedict was the name, who

27:13

committed suicide as it turns out, after

27:15

a fight in the schools, and they tried

27:17

to blame Lives a TikTok for having reported

27:19

on what was going on at the school

27:22

for this child's death. So anything

27:25

that happens, they're gonna try to blame any

27:27

Christians and they're gonna try to make a

27:29

fuss about it. So don't give them the

27:31

satisfaction, turn the other cheek. Do

27:33

something that makes your faith a light to the world.

27:36

Pray for these poor hurting kids and

27:38

their families, pray for your enemies, that

27:41

they either have a change of heart and repent

27:43

or that they stumble. I love praying that the

27:45

enemies stumble. My one Christian friend does this every

27:47

day. He says, my morning prayer every day is,

27:49

Lord, may my enemies stumble today. Okay,

27:52

I'm with that. But

27:54

these are things that you can do. And get

27:56

involved in something very practical and civic, that

27:59

can turn. these evils back. Let

28:02

the provocation be an energizer

28:05

for you to get involved in a

28:07

very productive way, in other words, rather

28:09

than a reason to go spout off

28:11

at the mouth or holler or carry

28:14

on or most importantly, don't do anything

28:16

really stupid and crazy or

28:18

violent. The rule in our

28:21

society and societies that are free societies

28:23

is whoever does violence first loses. So

28:25

nobody has the authority to do violence

28:28

first outside of the state. Yeah, they're

28:30

provoking, but provoking is a challenging

28:32

situation. So approach it with discernment

28:34

and wisdom. Do you think that

28:37

the folks that basically burned down

28:39

city after city in 2020, the

28:41

Black Lives

28:44

Matter people, do

28:47

you think long term that that

28:49

violence is going

28:51

to backfire on them? I

28:53

do think so. Yeah, I think that it's

28:56

backfired not just on them, but I think

28:58

it's also backfired politically on the people who

29:00

supported it. So I

29:02

think those are slow mechanisms. I think there

29:04

are a lot of people. But if you

29:06

look at what's happening in our cities right

29:08

now, the crime is undeniable. We know that

29:10

that's downstream from those effects and those those

29:13

initiatives and the people are changing their minds.

29:15

The crime in New York City, the crime

29:17

in San Francisco are changing

29:19

minds. You have entire the entire

29:21

Chinese community in New York City,

29:24

for example, has flipped over Gary Tan, who

29:26

is one of the executives, I think at

29:28

Y Combinator or one of these techie things

29:30

in San Francisco is running basically, I mean,

29:32

he's very wealthy man, but he's running kind

29:34

of like a one man campaign that has

29:36

now grown into quite a movement to start

29:38

changing San Francisco. And he's quite dedicated and

29:40

he's got quite the army of people around

29:42

him that are very successful. And their goal

29:44

is to start getting these people out of

29:47

the positions of power they've been abusing. So

29:49

yeah, I think it's all backfiring on them.

29:51

People use words like Portland, like it's a

29:53

joke, we joke about St. Floyd, we're

29:55

not very few people are serious about

29:57

that anymore. But It

30:00

does take a lot of time and it takes people

30:02

who are willing to come out and say the truth

30:04

at risk in order to bring

30:06

that light to the world. This is an

30:08

election year, so it goes without saying, friends,

30:10

we need to vote biblically. You need to

30:12

look at the platforms of

30:15

each party and vote biblically.

30:17

And when you're voting for president, you're

30:19

not just voting for one person, you're

30:22

voting for 5,000 people

30:24

who are going to descend on

30:26

Washington and implement a platform. It's

30:29

an entire administration you're

30:31

putting into place. So you need to

30:33

vote biblically. But beyond that, James, our

30:36

final question is, you mentioned

30:38

some things about getting involved in certain ways,

30:40

but are there, say,

30:42

three top priorities or activities

30:45

or things Americans can do

30:47

to stop the

30:49

encroaching wokeness and to advance the self-evident

30:52

truths of our founding? Yeah,

30:54

but I want to add one little thing to

30:56

what you just said about voting biblically. I want

30:58

to point out that there is a, what we

31:00

would call a mass line in communist terminology. There

31:03

is a narrative arc that has

31:05

been built out regarding voting

31:08

that the Project 2025 is

31:11

a Christian nationalist fascist project. Now, I've got

31:13

all my differences in the world with the

31:15

so-called Christian nationalist movement. That's a totally different

31:18

topic for a totally different day. But

31:20

they're trying, we know that that is a smear term

31:22

for the left. We know that they're setting it up

31:24

as a smear. So we know that they're afraid of

31:26

Project 2025. And you said you're

31:28

voting for an entire administration, which is a

31:30

president plus 5,000, basically, bureaucrats

31:34

who are going to go and implement

31:36

through the administrative apparatus. What is Project

31:38

2025? Project

31:40

2025 is a project to plan

31:42

ahead, which President Trump did not

31:44

have the advantage of in 2016

31:46

or 17 when he took office,

31:48

is to plan ahead who those

31:50

administrative apparatus bodies are going to

31:52

be. What does that list look

31:54

like? And what is the agenda going to look

31:56

like? And that the left, the Democrats in particular,

31:59

are telling you they... They are terrified of Project

32:01

2025 by trying to smear it with one

32:03

of their smear words. So the

32:05

fact is that when you vote for, if

32:08

you vote for President Trump, I should say, then

32:10

what you are also looking at is that Project 2025

32:13

thing is meant to be that administrative kind

32:16

of jumpstart to his new administration, which

32:18

is 5,000 people, that it's something that's

32:21

so scary to the leftists that they're

32:23

trying to smear it way out in

32:25

advance as a means of trying to

32:27

discredit Trump. And to

32:29

fear monger among the Democratic base. So it's

32:31

extremely important to realize that you are not

32:34

just voting for the one man, you're voting

32:36

for this huge thing. And whatever that huge

32:38

thing is, there's already good plans for it,

32:40

at least on his side, that the

32:43

left is terrified of and is trying to smear, in

32:45

fact, with the word Christian. So

32:47

it's very worth paying attention to those

32:49

facts. But the three things kind

32:51

of take away what should people do. The

32:54

first and most important of these things is

32:57

unambiguous to me, which is that you need

32:59

to protect and nourish your children. The

33:01

relationship with the book, The

33:04

Queering of the American Child, what

33:06

we learned there is that the attack

33:08

on our children is relentless, but it's

33:10

also strategic, because whoever gets the children

33:12

gets the future, they get the next

33:14

generation. They will

33:16

actually be able to implement programs that

33:19

we reject. They know this, they are

33:21

saying this. Klaus Schwab wrote about it

33:23

very specifically in The Great Narrative for a Better

33:25

Future. In 2022,

33:28

he published that, that what we can't

33:30

force, he said, through the public-private partnerships

33:32

of government and corporation, we can

33:35

get the young people to demand by molding them

33:37

to desire those values and to live by those

33:39

values. So you have to protect your kids. So

33:41

that means family dinner. That means

33:43

going to church once a week if you're

33:45

religious. And maybe if you're not, maybe considering

33:48

it, to have that ritual of once a

33:50

week, we're all going together to do a

33:52

thing, no devices, we're just going to be

33:54

in each other's presence, paying attention, and so

33:56

on. You've got to get connected

33:58

to your kids. on in their lives.

34:00

You've got to ask them questions. You don't want

34:03

to have to ask them unfortunately because of the

34:05

things they're surrounded with. You've got to have a

34:07

relationship where the second somebody tells them

34:09

something at school and then says maybe you don't

34:11

tell your parents this. That's the first thing they

34:14

tell you when they get home that

34:16

evening or in the car that afternoon. You've

34:19

got to have that relationship. So pay

34:21

be so much more intentional about your

34:23

family relationships and build it

34:25

into a church, a healthy church. Look for a healthy church

34:27

if you're going to do that. Watch out for the woke

34:30

ones. You can usually tell if they have a flag outside

34:32

of a certain kind as one

34:34

hint. But secondly

34:37

you've got to get involved which means

34:39

you've got to find your gift. Not

34:42

everybody is a leader but some people are

34:44

and maybe don't know it yet. So you

34:46

need to start asking yourself can I be

34:48

a leader in this? Can I pick up

34:50

some aspect of this and get people to

34:52

follow me somewhere? And if you are it's

34:55

time to start figuring out what you have

34:57

to offer and get involved in that capacity.

34:59

And if you are not that's fine. Not

35:01

everybody is a leader. Some people are supporters.

35:03

I don't even want to call you followers

35:05

if you're that. You can be a supporter.

35:07

Find somebody who's doing something you believe in.

35:09

It does not. I'm not asking for your

35:11

money. I don't care about your money. Find

35:13

somebody who's doing something you support and

35:16

put something behind it. Time, money,

35:19

volunteer, moral support, share

35:21

the materials. Something that gets that effort further

35:23

out. And you've got to ask yourself it

35:25

could be as simple as that you like

35:28

Moms for Liberty is an organization that started

35:30

its original campaign by making t-shirts in a

35:32

back bedroom so they could get enough money

35:34

to get off the ground. Making t-shirts and

35:36

selling them. Maybe it's cookies you're making and

35:39

selling them. Something I Talked

35:41

to a guy in Wisconsin whose job was he worked

35:43

with an organization that was doing a lot in Wisconsin.

35:45

He said I'm too stupid. He literally just said I'm

35:47

too stupid to know what any of this is about.

35:49

It's too complicated for me but I know that I

35:51

can run errands. I know that I can make copies.

35:53

I know I can pick people up from the airport.

35:55

I know I can make sure the chairs are out

35:57

at the events and make sure everything's on the ground.

36:00

The wind up. Maybe it's that you can

36:02

offer security. Maybe it's you know, babysitting for

36:04

the kids for people who are trying to

36:06

devote their evening time to do this. There's.

36:09

A lot of things, but you get a fine

36:11

what your gifts are. Alison, Do a pastor give

36:13

this talk in October Twenty Twenty said find out

36:15

your gifts of the spirit and start giving them.

36:17

And then in that vein you know, read the

36:20

pebble A Talents: If you have talents, don't send

36:22

on I'm you've got to go multiply them and

36:24

nets. And Matthew Twenty Six I think something like

36:26

that and. So. Those two piece

36:28

of advice are the biggest ones in the

36:30

third as don't act is it's it's

36:32

not as not as like action oriented but

36:35

it's don't despair. ah if he said just

36:37

a sound very biblical about it. And

36:40

my is my friend Trevor loud and says

36:42

an hour north that places people neon is.

36:44

but I know Trevor Travers, a very fun

36:46

mandleson to. Trevor has this way of saying.

36:48

I wish I could replicate it with his

36:51

accent, but he's like have you ever heard

36:53

of a single bible story worth God came

36:55

down and saved a bunch of whine and

36:57

moan and cry and wimps who wouldn't stand

36:59

up for themselves as at know you haven't

37:01

to And I think a Riley gains who

37:04

says that hurt turning point moment and I

37:06

honestly I've heard Riley speak a number of

37:08

times. It is by far. The most powerful

37:10

moment when she speaks in her speech is

37:12

very powerful. but it's the moment where she

37:14

says i stood there and I realized I

37:17

was waiting in the locker room. wins or

37:19

dad come in and one of the coaches

37:21

coming in and I realized why would somebody

37:23

else save us if we're not willing to

37:25

save ourselves? So don't despair, Don't look at

37:28

this singing and think it's so impossible. It's

37:30

so big, I'm so small. And if you

37:32

do think that, go read about David and

37:34

Goliath or something. Realize.

37:37

That you actually make a big difference, You

37:39

make a big difference, maybe to thousands or

37:41

maybe to to it doesn't It doesn't matter.

37:43

You are a light in the world. You

37:46

can make a difference and. The.

37:50

i it's funny how much bible i'm saying

37:52

right now but the best advice on this

37:54

has to go read hebrews eleven read what

37:56

it says is about faith and realized that

37:58

when you are just bearing when you

38:00

think it's all lost. When you think, oh

38:03

my God, we have to do something desperate

38:05

and crazy. We need a Franco or whatever

38:07

it is that you're the faithless. And

38:10

what Trevor says

38:12

instead is that you need to

38:14

be courageous, not foolish, because courage

38:16

is proof of faith, because courage

38:19

means that you believe in something bigger than

38:21

yourself and you're willing to sacrifice for it.

38:23

And if you read Genesis 4, where it's

38:25

Cain versus Abel, at least as Jordan Peterson

38:27

interprets this, it is the quality

38:29

of the sacrifice Abel's willing to make that

38:31

makes it so that he's getting the blessings

38:34

that Cain becomes envious of for his inferior

38:36

sacrifice, not bringing blessings to him. So you

38:38

need to be willing to make that sacrifice.

38:40

You need to be willing to be courageous.

38:42

You need to be willing to prove faith

38:44

and to live in faith, because where

38:47

faith is, things move.

38:50

Faith, the size of a mustard seed can move

38:52

mountains, they say, but how does that work? Well,

38:54

faith who that works is dead, so you have

38:56

to put your faith into action and the connection

38:59

between the two is courage. And so those don't

39:01

despair, get involved. That's

39:03

it. And here's another

39:05

thing you can do, ladies and gentlemen,

39:08

you can start listening to James Lindsay

39:10

on the new Discourses podcast. You need

39:12

to get informed on this. Now, James

39:15

has long form podcasts

39:17

and also what he calls bullet podcasts,

39:19

which may be just 10 minutes or

39:22

so. So, you

39:24

know, you could you could spend 10 minutes a day or 30

39:26

minutes a day or

39:29

every once in a while, listen to an hour or two

39:32

and get informed and tell other

39:34

people about what

39:36

he's doing on his

39:38

podcast because you can't lead

39:41

anybody further than you've

39:43

gone yourself. And if

39:45

you want to be able to lead

39:47

other people in the right direction, you

39:49

got to know where to lead them.

39:51

And that's what James is providing through

39:53

the education that he provides all of

39:55

us at new Discourses. So check out

39:57

newdiscourses.com and also So

40:00

the podcast, the YouTube

40:02

channel, we'll put some links in

40:04

the show notes here. James,

40:08

great having you on finally. And

40:10

thanks for clarifying so

40:13

much. Uh, I know many

40:15

people are confused or wondering where these

40:17

crazy ideas have come from, but you've

40:19

really helped us understand where

40:21

they've come from and what we can do about it. Well,

40:24

thanks Frank. That's very nice of you. Yeah. It's a

40:26

pleasure having you on and friends. Don't forget, uh, the

40:30

Jesus versus the culture class is

40:32

still open. The first zoom

40:34

where you can ask questions. I'll be your

40:36

instructor is the 23rd of April. So you

40:38

can join anytime before that. And

40:41

don't forget also about Dr. Steven

40:43

C. Meyer's course reasons, uh, for

40:46

faith. That's a

40:48

live zoom class. And it

40:51

begins in late April. You

40:53

don't want to miss that either. Go

40:56

to crossexamine.org click on online courses. I'll

40:59

be out in Seattle next week, the

41:01

19th and 20th at the worldview apologetics

41:03

conference and then at Antioch Bible church

41:05

on the 21st following

41:08

week, be at the culture and

41:10

Christianity conference in Murfreesboro. My friend,

41:12

Alan Jackson is the

41:14

pastor there. Uh, hope you

41:16

can be a part of that. James, did I see your name on

41:18

that list? Are you going to that as well? I

41:21

don't think so, but I'm at Alan Jackson

41:23

a few months ago and he's a wonderful

41:25

man. Yeah. He is cause he, he's at

41:27

the events that we do with Charlie, with

41:29

Charlie Kirk. Uh, I thought I

41:31

saw your name on that list. Maybe not, but it's

41:33

possible. It's possible. I had a lot of, quite a

41:35

lot of. James. And for those

41:37

who don't know, ladies and gentlemen, had 175 flights last year. So

41:41

he's out there on the road quite a bit. Uh,

41:44

and by the way, is your calendar on

41:46

your website anywhere, James? People want to see

41:48

you. No, that's, that is one of the

41:50

very small number of requests. My wife made is

41:52

not to put that on my, on those people

41:54

don't know. All right. So people don't know. You're

41:56

just going to have to guess where James

41:58

is. Okay. I'm a little bit

42:00

of a mystery in that way. But what we're

42:02

doing is we're honoring my wife's wishes. I get

42:05

it. Which I'm sure is somewhere in the... I

42:07

don't know if it's in the Ten Commandments, but it's in there somewhere.

42:11

Alright James, thanks so much friends. Lord

42:13

willing, we will see you here next week.

42:16

God bless.