Is it possible to be

a heathen after Christianity, 2,000 years of Christianity? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Is it possible to not be a liberal after 100 and 200 years of liberalism?

Well, I certainly hope so. I certainly hope so. I'm not a progressive. I mean, I am a restorationist. I want to restore sanity, essentially. I want to go back to, you know, I think anybody sort of understands the impulse to do that. Anybody who's been sick or, you know, especially has had a very serious illness, the impulse to go back, you know, there's a kind of, we've really internalized this idea that history is linear and that we can only move forward. But I don't accept that at all. In fact, I think that history is quite cyclical. And, you know, you get this in the sort of, the phrase has been so famous, it's almost a meme now, that good men make for good times, good times make for weak men, weak men make for hard times, and hard times make for good men. You know, things kind of tend to go in this cyclical order whereby, you know, it's just inescapable, essentially. So I think it's entirely possible to go back.

Well, degeneracy and the opposite of degeneracy are cyclical as a matter of just necessity in order for civilizations to flourish. They have to go through a cycle like a forest goes through a cycle or like a tree goes through a cycle where there's flowering and then there's that sunny time and then there's some sort of shedding of old ideas as they kind of no longer serve their purpose. And then what remains is that hardy thing that needs to be tested through the winter. And then there's another flowering And, you know, maybe that's not, doesn't totally map because degeneracy, one doesn't hope that a tree goes through degeneracy like a society does, but isn't that kind of independent from the discourse of ideas over time? One idea responds to another idea, responds to another idea, the accumulation of knowledge, these discourses and how they shape how we think. And then when we reset a civilization, those discourses get cemented and we take those things as the assumptions. One conversation that's going on right now kind of heatedly is a debate over the post-war consensus. We crystallize, the West crystallized this narrative following World War II, following both of those wars. And now we're going through a process of kind of not worshiping those particular ancestors anymore. But the idea, the climate that we both grew up in is indelibly stamped on us. I don't see how we can not be liberal, even as we, we strike out for something or strike back for something that is maybe older than that. But still, we come with a particular point of view. Does that, is that, does that hold water? That?

Yeah. Well, I mean, what you're basically explaining there is the concept of thrownness. So, this is Heidegger's idea that we're thrown into the world, we're handed a set of assumptions, we don't get to choose those assumptions, and that stamps who we are, and there's really not much that we can do that. And what's more, that it is actually our thrownness that is more who we are than our choices or anything else. We're kind of shaped by our environment in many ways. And now this is not a sort of radical environmentalism in the way that, you know, a lefty and I. Is that a totally blank slate, you said? Yeah, no, it's not a blank slate because we come with a set of biological dispositions. And there's a kind of dialectical interface or interplay between the biological dispositions and the circumstances that those dispositions create, which is the world that we are born into, right? There's a kind of, there's an interplay between those things. But it is really the things that we can't choose that are the most decisive. And that includes our biology, right? And this itself is a very illiberal idea. You know, blank slate-ism as in, you know, you are an individual who is radically free to make your own choices in life. You choose your tribe, you choose your identity, all of these things. This is basically sort of the liberal idea. And I think that you've hit upon something very truthful in that that's not really the case. We don't actually choose, not only do we not choose those things, but that those things are decisive in shaping our character and everything.

But once the idea of choice gets introduced into the mix, like that's part of our thrownness, having choice, having this kind of freedom to question, to rearrange, to choose, to convert even, which is an older idea. That's a Christian idea. Yeah. Yeah,

no, that definitely is, that is part of like the fabric of who we are today, right? and so we we kind of run into this paradox whereby our tradition is revolution um but the only and and that demands of us that we be revolutionaries but in that environment the only revolutionary is the traditionalist so we're kind of in this catch-22 situation where, you know, it's hard to break out of that. And basically, the way that I see the matter is that we never kind of leave behind these ideas of, like, illiberalism or pre-liberalism or what I call the archaic. We never leave those things behind. We never really actually converted away from paganism. We never really stopped being Christians after the Enlightenment. All of these things are carried with us and carried forward in the same way that, you know, as you build the edifice, as you build the building from the ground floor all the way up to, you know, the 87th floor, the ground floor, you don't throw that away. And if you try to throw that away, the whole thing's going to fall over. So, what we've tried to do, basically what liberalism does in placing the abstract individual at the heart of epistemic life, of moral life, you know, this is what the Enlightenment was all about. at the top of the epistemic or moral hierarchy and saying that each person reasoning from his own self-generated premises is the absolute and highest epistemic authority. You know, this is why when you, you know, you see the royal society that Newton belonged to, their motto was Nullius in Huerba, on the word of no one, right? The epistemic authority is the abstract individual, right? This is the basic idea of liberalism, and it is a powerful idea, and it's generated a lot of, you know, world-changing things. But essentially what it does is it makes the the governor over the father, right? Because as you mentioned, we come preloaded with a set of huge firmware of assumptions, biological imperatives, background, you know, proclivities and all of these things. And to basically say, okay, all of that stuff, we've now superseded that, we've progressed beyond that, is a very dangerous proposition indeed, because history is long and prehistory is even longer. Maybe those things are there for a reason. Maybe those things, there's a wisdom in certain things that are now completely verboten, say something like ethnocentrism. Maybe there's a wisdom there that, you know, there is no real alternative to some of these things that, you know, because liberalism as a revolutionary philosophy, as the most revolutionary philosophy in the history of the world, maybe upsetting apple carts continuously and forever with increasing velocity is not the best idea, right? This is basically the idea of the traditionalist. Yeah.

But are you not going to, well, one, well, I guess there's two, two parts to this question. One, you're going to have to adapt your word to speak to people who've internalized that. And two, you're probably going to take some of that, some of those liberal assumptions, some of those notions, at least forward, because they are useful within certain contexts. I mean, just the idea of the individual being not necessarily the sole decider of their fate and of truth, but that's based on kind of a common law or contract law notion of what the individual is responsible for. The individual sets the term of the promises that they enter into and then can be judged accordingly. So I'm sure you want to bring some of those or even dial it back before you go forward. Right. Because when we say we want to go back, where do we want to go back to? And a lot of people say you bring up ethnocentrism. Like, do we really need to do? Is it really possible for us to go back to ethnocentrism with with I keep on talking about Costco, but I'm living in America. We have this store called Costco. Everybody goes there to get their cheap things. And everybody goes there. You pay a nominal fee or yearly fee or whatever to get in the door. So it kind of screens. It kind of has this simulated tribalism in it. But it doesn't matter your ethnic background or makeup because it's just you go in there, you get your products, and you leave. And it benefits tons of people. So if you, if you unwind, or if you put ethnocentrism first, then you start to corrode that medium space where the, does it not erode the medium space where ethnicities can overlay each other without conflict. And in a world right now, with all of the advances that we have, the material advances we have, we're going to be running into each other constantly.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I think that the, you know, the example of Costco is like, it's, it's a fairly, it's an environment that relies upon a lot of things already being in place. Right. It relies upon, first of all, it relies upon, you know, the, as you mentioned, the idea of contract law. It relies upon the idea of, first of all, not the rule of law, but law and order, right? Like that if someone starts swinging, it's not going to develop, devolve into a brouhaha, or, you know, people aren't going to start pulling out knives, that somebody is going to call the police, the police are going to come, and that order is going to be restored. And that relies upon trust in the police, you know, that people believe that the police and that the justice system is going to be fair. And that depends upon a high trust society. And this high trust society is itself actually being undermined by the very preconditions that multiculturalism and liberalism and all of these things that it is a it's already unraveling, basically, like the world of where everybody can live side by side, everybody that's completely different can live in peace and harmony, that really only existed in the kind of post-war order or, yeah, really more in the post-war order because America was essentially an ethnostate before then. And not on paper, but de facto, right? Like there was a small minority of, you know, African Americans, but something like, what, 15% of the population or whatever. And not a whole lot of people beyond that. But now America is quite a different country. Now America is truly much more multicultural. And we can see the the fruits of that you know things are starting to get a lot more tribal and i think that when you see the um the the ethnic stock the founding ethnic stock or the whether it's you know europeans or whether it's whoever it is, when you see a true plurality, where there isn't just like one ethnicity that's in charge, or essentially hegemonic, that's when you're going to really see tribalism come back. So you think that the wasps,

when the wasps had reign, then they could bring in the Italians, the Jews, the different sub-ethnicities in Europe. But as long as the wasps were in charge, they kind of set the tone. And then everybody plugged themselves into that order. But now that the wasps have kind of disintegrated into this, it's still pretty waspy, but it's kind of got DEI codes and stuff and a lot of different ethnicities. But they all kind of sound the same. All the people who are in the government kind of, there is a culture there kind of almost not a biological ethnicity, but definitely a mimetic ethnicity. Like it strains and it teaches people to act in a certain way. Why can't that hold together? Why can't this, why can't this idea of a ruling elite overcome or expand beyond a very narrow, you know, Anglo-Saxon or any, like how narrow does that ethnicity need to be? And can it not just be porous as long as it's composed in a certain way or comports itself in a certain way?

Well, so there's a couple of things here. First of all, I mean, I think it's ironic that it seemed that multiculturalism worked the best when basically we had a hegemonic 80% of one ethnicity sort of like in charge, right? fine or seemed to work fine, like in the 60s and maybe into the 70s. But as the 70s rolled into the 80s and 90s, you know, we started to have more strife, but there was something at the end of history where liberalism kind of got a second wind. But in the 21st century now, and especially since the Obama era, things have really, really devolved. And we are, in fact, becoming tribal. I don't think that there's any question about that. Now, the second issue is that the elite is like the identity of the elite is essentially what you're saying, I think, if I could put it this way, is that it's propositional. So, it's not based on, you know, your ethnic background. It's not based even necessarily on your class or who you were, like the family you were born into. It's the identity of this ruling elite is essentially based on affirming beliefs. So it's the, you are what you believe you, you are not necessarily a, let's just say a, you know, Pennsylvania Dutch or a Quaker or, you know, a Hispanic or what have you, you are a liberal or you are a conservative or you are, you know, woke or an intersectionalist or something like that. It's, I think that the idea is that these identities are becoming much more propositional over time. They're about affirming beliefs. And

how does that contrast with Christendom or the Islamic world or like a religious belief structure that spans several ethnicities or even kind of plugs into and allows all these different ethnicities to have some sort of lessening of conflict and some sort of increase

in trade or the opposite of conflict? Well, I don't think ultimately, I think that's, that's a good point because ultimately I don't think it does. I think that those two are kinds of propositional identities. And this is part of the reason why I'm not one of them is that I don't think that those are actually strong identities. And what's more, I think that they paved the way for the world that we have today, which is, in my view anyway, objectively falling apart. But on the other hand, now they did last for, certainly Christianity lasted for a long time. And part of the reason why is that it, over time, became proxy for tribal identities. So, as Christianity, you know, is sort of developing in the ancient world, essentially what it does is it becomes a kind of, it's deputized by the elite in Rome in late antiquity to undermine tribalism, to undermine the

tribes, like the Germanic tribes and things like that. So, it's kind of like a last gasp of the Roman empire, like a stop gap to maintain some sort of

homogeny or at least control. Exactly. So what propositional identities do is by their very nature, they bring people together, right? They sort of, they run across tribal lines and other identitarian lines. And what they do is essentially they are excellent pieces of technology to govern empire with. This is why you see them come in at the end of civilizations or like, you know, you see them come in when empire is consolidating, these universalistic religions. That's what happened in Rome. And it was very effective for keeping Rome together for a couple of centuries, but Rome had a major structural problem, so it eventually fell over. And then after Rome falls over, Christianity adapts itself. If you look at the Christianity of the early Middle Ages, as it was proselytized to the Germanic peoples, for example, there's a book called the Hellion, which is a translation of the Gospels into Saxon, Old Saxon. And I use the word translation very loosely because it's really more like fan fiction. It actually makes the Christ and his disciples into a Germanic war band. And the scene in the Gospels where Peter gets his ear cut off or like one of the disciples... He gets a Roman seer off, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It becomes this absolutely hideous wound with blood gushing everywhere. And it's like- Just like what happened in Costco the other night. Yeah, exactly. So, they've taken the Gospels and made it into a Norse saga, essentially. And what I'm driving at here, though, is that Christianity adapts itself. It is infinitely flexible in a way that essentially conforms itself to the tribal identities of the people that it's governing. it begins as something that's consolidating and sort of flattening out ethnic identities. But as time goes on, those identities are just strong enough where it can really essentially, they can be decisive. So this is what happens in the early Middle Ages. the power of the church and the Pope grows vis-a the emperors until what happens at such time that you get the Protestant Reformation, right? Which is essentially the tribal identity of the Northwestern Europeans pushing back against the hegemony of Rome. So, once Christianity becomes universalistic enough, and that's not just Christianity, you could substitute any

universalism. I mean, it's in Christianity's the Tower of Babel saga, which sounds like what you're

kind of talking about. You could say the exact same thing has happened with Buddhism, right? With Mahayana Buddhism or Theravada Buddhism. I'm not beating up on Christianity specifically. This is what happens with all universalisms, all universal, not just religions even, but also liberalism, is that as they become more hegemonic, they devolve into these splinters, they start to splinter into de facto tribal identities. Now, they're not actually tribal, they are still ostensibly propositional identities, right? Something like, you know, the Protestant Reformation, and that continues to splinter over time. Basically, what I'm saying is that universalism of the kind that liberalism wants, a kind of universal global empire, essentially, it just by the very nature of what human beings are, it cannot exist. Creed is a proxy for blood, ultimately. Over time, that is always the direction that it seems to tend. And what liberalism wants to do is it wants to do away with all that, but in doing away with that, it kind of overlays this distortion on top of our natural identities. And that distortion can only go on for so long before the identities themselves assert themselves.

Does that distortion, is it a fair trade-off for inter-Nicene tribal conflict? Or can something else, does it have to be conflict? You just say, well, we'll take the trade and we'll have strong enough between things. Like that universalism comes in for the market or for roads or whatever, ties all these discrete tribes together into something that's a powerhouse that where everybody benefits. We still want the benefits. Yeah. But we don't want, we don't want, we want, again, we want Costco, but we don't want like that destruction of our individuality somehow. Right. maybe not. What do you, like, where does it go? Like if it can't, it stretches so far, these universalism stretch so far and then they collapse, can we stop them from collapsing into another dark age?

Well, a couple of things here. First of all uh this is like you know you think of something like the the think of the roman empire or just rome in general right rome was had did not have a universalist religion and yet it had a world empire how was that it had a kind of social technology that allowed for that while preserving tribal identities without erasing them. And that essentially was the client, the

patron-client relationship. Right? So... the lever of it or is it some sort of benefit not just a negative power sense like you you do what we say or we kill you but some sort of you

you do what we say we'll leave you alone or something like that think about the the godfather the opening scene to the godfather okay yeah so what you have is don corleone sitting down with i forget what the name of the character is but like one of the people that sort of under his, his like family or whatever, his extended family. And the gentleman comes up to him and says that his daughter has been beat up. The police won't give him justice. He asks the Don to give him justice. And what the Don says is, well, we've never really been friends. I mean, we've, you know, I've known each other for a long time. This is the first time you've ever come to me and as a friend or anything like that. You know, that's a bit of a disappointment or whatever. You can see the guy starts like starting to sweat. And he's like, but I'll tell you what, I'll give you justice. But what I'm going to do is at some time, I'm going to ask you for something. Now that day may never come. But when it does, you know, you're going to have to come calling basically. That is the patron client relationship. The patron extends to the client protection and justice

or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. and like wealth and, you know, basically like a good life. But the client owes the patron absolute loyalty, essentially. So you can see what this is kind of like a centripetal force pushing people together. That's one way that it can work. It doesn't necessarily have to work as a universalistic religion. That is a useful way for it to work, but it's not the only way that it can work.