Best of the Program | Guest: John Daniel Davidson | 4/4/24

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You do not want to miss, you do not want to miss on today's podcast, Monkey Madness.

It's

there's a story.

You know, when you think of monkeys and weird, weird, I mean sick demented monkey stories, nothing comes to mind, at least in my mental Rolodex here.

I'm looking weird, demented monkey stories.

I don't have any to tell.

Stu brought one to the table, and the good news is it's an American story.

You're welcome.

You're welcome.

You don't want to miss that.

Also, we talk to Generation Zers,

if you will.

There are these videos going around with these Generation Z people that are saying, you know, I can't do

an eight-hour workday, nine to five, that's incredible.

I can't do that.

I don't want to do that.

And they're getting a really bad name because

of these Generation Z-ers that are posting on TikTok, et cetera, et cetera.

But we talk right directly to them and say more than what's being said online.

Get off my lawn.

I want to make the case to Generation Z

that I get it.

I understand what you're going through because you grew up in a different age.

But it's important that you understand

who's responsible for the things that you're going through.

That's today on the podcast.

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You're listening to

the best of the Blenbeck program.

Continue our conversation with Gen Zers that feel like it's not worth even trying to go to work because you'll never get anywhere.

You can't afford, you work full-time 40-hour a week, you still can't afford a place to live.

You're still living with your parents.

You can't afford food.

And I think they're right to feel this way.

That wasn't always the case.

But I want them to know that

I blame a lot of it on the hippies, and that may be wrong, but I hate hippies.

Hippies have been screwing things up since the 1960s, and they have been on this socialist march and they have become everything that they said they despised back in the 1960s.

They have been liars and politicians and

they have become greedy for themselves and they just won't let go.

Their time is past.

But these are the people that have come up with all of these policies that now you feel like this is the way the world is.

It doesn't have to be this way.

And I was talking about crime, looters, squatters, riots.

Somebody has to pay for that.

Actions have consequences.

Votes have consequences.

You say you can't afford health care.

I understand that.

That's crazy.

Crazy.

My own company used to provide the best health care insurance in all of New York City and New York State.

At one point after Obamacare passed, they were taxing us, you know, Cadillac taxes.

I was the only company that still carried that until the insurance company stopped carrying it.

Why?

Since Obamacare passed, health care costs have gone up 55%

for the average premium.

That's without inflation figured in.

13,000 to 21,000.

But that's just from 2013 to 2020.

That doesn't include the last three years.

Since Biden has entered office, it's up again from $21,000 to $24,000 a year.

That is an increase of 80%.

But you have to remember, politicians promised that if we pass this big government program, it would mean a savings of $2,500 per family.

I mean,

you're in school, you know, $2,500 savings is not the same as an 80%

increase.

Hospitals.

Your hospital stay is up 210%.

I understand you can't afford, I can't afford health care.

These cost you, who can afford health care?

Who can afford insurance?

You also are starting your life thousands of dollars in debt.

Your parents didn't have to have that.

They didn't.

You could take a job and work a job to pay for your college as you went.

You can't do that now.

When they took out their loans, most likely the government wasn't behind their loans.

Once that happened, Once the government said, you know what, we're going to guarantee all the loans.

Once that happened, like healthcare, the cost of going to a university skyrocketed and it hasn't stopped.

In 1965, it was Lyndon B.

Johnson who said, we're going to just guarantee.

We're going to guarantee everybody's college.

Don't worry about it.

We'll help you with the loan.

Well, once the government guaranteed it,

universities found, well, we can just charge more.

And they have been charging more and more.

In 1965,

it was $450 a year to go to college.

Now, let's change with inflation.

With inflation, that's $4,000 a year.

You're currently paying on the average $26,000 a year

as opposed to inflation-adjusted $4,000.

What happened?

What happened?

By the way, books, the cost of books, up 155%.

Gas, Gas is up.

Why?

Government regulations.

Can't afford a house?

Well, that's due to several things.

Many of them revolve around

the Fed and our debt.

Look, you have been fed lies

probably your whole life, and your parents just realized it during COVID.

Okay?

There's something called common sense, and hopefully you have it.

Hopefully it hasn't been beaten out of you in

these

indoctrination camps we call schools.

The U.S.

government has run a debt and we have been concerned about it forever, but they haven't been listening to your mom and dad and people like me.

They haven't been listening.

And a lot of people just thought, oh, well, we could get away with it.

And somehow or another, it will all work out.

And many of us have been saying no we can't pass this on to our children

and you're now seeing what we have passed on so when you say generation z that you know

this is you know the adults you created this world in some ways yeah you're right you're right

we were lied to And as many people do, they want to believe the lie because it makes them feel better.

quite honestly it's it's what's happening in your generation with

um

that's a female when it's not it's a male and he he feels like a a female he wants to be a female but it makes us feel better to go along with the lie because we don't want to hurt his feelings that's the same thing that happened except this time it was with money We wanted to believe that we could spend all this money because honestly, it would provide you, our children, with a better life.

And when anybody said, wait, we're going to have to pay this off.

This is going to cost them.

We never saw the consequence.

And it was always way out in the future.

Nobody wanted to listen to the doomsday people saying, no, it's going to come faster than you think.

And that time is right now.

Our government now is printing $1 trillion

every 100 days.

It's It's never been done.

We have more debt than any country has ever had in the history of the world.

But we're not alone.

Every country is doing this.

They're going into debt like we've never seen before.

And we're all about to pay for that.

And it's going to make your life even harder.

That's why

real true constitutional conservatives, okay?

And

you have to understand that everything

is being cut into fractions now.

There are Marxists and there are decent Democrats that still believe in the Constitution and the rule of law.

There are Republicans that still believe in spending all kinds of money, getting us involved in every war around.

And then there are constitutional

conservatives that believe that we should conserve the things that have worked, throw out the things that don't work, but we can only do those things that are allowed by our Constitution and our Bill of Rights.

You haven't really learned about those most likely, but you should, because

all of our problems are caused by government and the people supporting a government that will do things that are not in our Constitution.

But that's what this election is really all about.

And

you might say, I don't really care.

I don't really care.

I don't like either of them.

I know a lot of people don't like either of them.

But one

is going to try

to cut the size of this government down, which is causing the problems.

All of these programs, all of the things that we've said we wanted, you know, your parents can't retire now.

You know, you have the opportunity that they didn't.

They were promised, I was promised, that we could retire at 65 and we'd get Social Security and we could live off that.

There's no way you could live off that.

You, if you look at the bright side,

you're paying for Social Security now, but at least you know you're never going to get it.

I'm probably the first generation that knows we're not going to get it.

We're not.

It was a lie.

But all of the people that are older than I am,

they didn't necessarily know it was a lie.

And now they're stuck.

And I know people think about retirement, but honestly, especially for guys, if you retire, you generally die.

There is no such thing as retirement.

That doesn't mean you stay in the same job doing the same things.

But you

work.

You work.

It's something, something that drives you, maybe if you're lucky, by the time you're older.

But

man's meant to work.

We have to find a way

to keep the people who have been raping this country and our treasury for so many years

away from you.

Because if they teach you, like they taught us, that all of this stuff will work,

you're only going to see much, much more pain.

So, we have to try to protect you so you can do your things while we, my generation, stands between you and the older generation that just have raped, robbed, and pillaged through their hippie policies.

We say, stand back, enough is enough.

Enough is enough.

Let go.

My generation should not be the one that takes the power now.

Really,

the younger generation, 30, 40 years old, they're the ones because they're going to have to live with it a lot longer than I am.

And the people who created it cannot fix it.

But it can be fixed.

You just have to learn enough about

the truth about why this has happened to us.

Why did we make it for so long?

Longer.

This Constitution lasted longer than any other constitution in the world.

The average is 17 years.

This thing has lasted hundreds of years.

Why?

How?

And why is it falling apart today?

That's what you should dedicate some of the some of your time to figuring out today.

Not just complaining.

You can complain.

I complain.

Everybody complains.

But learn what caused this.

And

if you end up thinking that Marxism is the solution, more collectivism is the solution, then you haven't done enough homework in the past.

Because that always ends the same way.

And the way that starts

at the end

is exactly what we're going through right now.

All right, man.

Okay, if you're one of those people who are living with pain in your life, I'm going to help you out right now, right now, in this program.

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Now back to the podcast.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program, and we really want to thank you for listening.

All right, let me go back and play

a couple of Gen Zers that are currently online.

These are going viral.

This one came out April 2nd.

Here's a Gen Zer talking about life and how hard it is.

Working a 9 to 5 is the biggest fing scam out there.

The biggest scam.

How the f do you want to sit here and tell me that I work every day of my life, every fing day, but I still don't have enough to pay my bills.

How?

How?

And before you say, oh, get a better job,

I have had four jobs.

Four different, completely different type of jobs.

All different pays.

And how are you going to tell me none of those four jobs could pay my bills?

It's a good point by the Joker's mistress, but I don't think

necessarily.

If you happen to be watching Blaze TV, she has got, you know, candy cane hair or clown hair.

And I stand corrected.

I said last hour two inch nails.

They've got to be three to four inch nails.

Yeah.

However, that are neon green.

Perhaps one of the issues was she took a job typing and she was unable to complete the tasks.

And that's a fascinating thing to watch.

Now, one thing we should note to

our Gen Z friends is that when you talk about having four jobs, it's not necessarily quantity you're looking for.

Like

you're searching for quality, not quantity.

And, you know, you could say, well, she had four jobs, but I don't think she meant all at the same time.

No.

There are parents that work four jobs.

Oh, yeah.

My parents worked two jobs each

my whole life, really.

Okay.

They barely made it.

And they did, well, they didn't have candy corn hair.

So

I don't know.

Now, go ahead.

Say what everybody's thinking.

Suck it up, buttercup.

You know what I mean?

You got to say it.

It's got to be part of

the equation.

And I will say, I think, like is the case when you talk to

a Hispanic American and they say to you, you know what pisses me off when everyone assumes I'm for illegal immigration?

And like the people who are toughest on the border tend to be legal immigrants from Latin America who are like, hey, I did this the right way.

Screw you.

I think a lot of Gen Zers look at people like this and say, wait a minute.

Don't paint my whole generation like this.

This is insanity.

Get off my lawn, suck it up buttercup.

Get to work.

You know what?

Not every bill is going to be paid if you don't work hard.

And sometimes you'll work hard and it'll be difficult.

I know for a fact I went through a period which was a lot of like, hey.

If I have this credit card convenience check that I write to my rent this month, it should work out.

There were a lot of things that were very difficult as I came up.

I know the same is for you, even though you had success very early on in your career.

You blew it so many times, you had plenty of struggle.

But I mean, I think everybody goes through that.

And I know I went into the workforce with the idea.

This is going to suck for a while.

That was really my attitude going in.

I'm going to work a lot and not make a lot of money.

When I started in radio, I was working as a promotions guy, which I made like $6 an hour.

And I only only got paid for the, when the promotions were occurring, which was like a two-hour period.

And then all the other time that I worked with you and started my career, I made $0 an hour.

I went in there all the time and did and worked and worked and worked and worked for nothing until that changed, thankfully.

Now, if it never changed, it would have been, I would have had to change careers, but eventually it did.

But the mindset going in was this is going to suck for a while.

That, even if that's not true, that should be your mindset.

If you go in with a mindset of like, why are they not rewarding me for all of my wonders?

You're going to wind up disappointed very early in your life.

Now, may I just say that one of the reasons why people feel that way, Gen Zers, is because that's the way they've always been treated.

They've always been told you're special.

My family, there were times when they said you're special and they didn't mean it like in a positive way.

Right.

You know what I mean?

Glenn might be be special.

And, you know, we didn't get trophies for everything.

You had to earn things.

And they have been

coddled.

And I hate to say this if you're a Gen Zer, because it's going to sound different coming from me than,

you know, what your experience might have been.

But you don't understand.

I, as a parent, know.

because I saw the changes in our society.

It's always been this way for you.

And And so you may not think I wasn't coddled because

your point of view is it's always been like this.

Everybody was treated like this.

Yeah, I know.

And that's one of the problems.

We bought into a lie from all of these so-called experts that said, oh, always ask your kids how they're feeling.

You know, you're expecting too much from your kids.

Don't push your kids.

You know, be there for them when they get a bad grade.

All of that stuff.

And all of that was garbage and a lie.

And then you went to a school where most likely they taught you even more lies.

And then they told you the lie.

Your parents probably did.

Society definitely did.

And schools certainly did, that you can't make it unless you go to these very expensive colleges.

That's a lie.

That's a lie.

You don't have to go to college.

And

I know

my kids, people were like, so where are they going to go to college?

Where are they going to go to college?

I don't know.

They may not go to college.

Well, I think,

I mean, that's crazy.

Really?

I didn't.

I didn't at all.

And

turned out pretty well for me.

That was one of the most frustrating things listening to these.

these social media videos is that like they are like well i went to college and i've got all these loans and i and i can't make it and it's like well why are why are you blaming let's say society for that why aren't you blaming colleges who as you pointed out earlier what was it 200 or it was 160 percent increase in tuition over the past 20 years and what are they giving you for that this is a this is the dumb i i look

this is the dumbest thing in the world to send your kid to a place that is going to bring them back as a socialist most likely that will give them no job skills and will wind up costing them and putting them in debt $100,000, $200,000 to start their life.

Like, it's one thing when you've got a good job to take out a loan on a house and all these things to start your life with no asset in theory.

I mean, obviously you have the asset of the knowledge, whatever that brings.

And everybody has the same asset.

Yeah, that's the thing.

I mean, you know, Brian Kaplan makes this argument really convincingly in the, it's called The Case Against Education, which is a great title of a book.

But like you go through this and it's like, it's just credentialism.

Everyone's competing to get to to this same line where like, hey, we all have the same thing now.

We spent $200,000 and now we all have the same degree that doesn't really do anything for us other than clear some like auto-generated

filter process for employers.

And like that is, that's a real problem by employers, I think.

I mean, again, they're not even looking at some of the best.

applicants that they have because a lot of them are just like, oh, we'll just filter out everyone who doesn't have a degree.

So I understand understand why you'd want to go get a degree, but like it makes absolutely no sense in the real world unless you're doing very specific things.

So everything in your life, if you're a Gen Zer, has got to change.

It has to change.

And there are many of us that believe that we need to change and know what these problems are.

For instance,

you don't have hope right now, many Gen Zers, that your life is going to get better, that America is going to get better.

And you know what?

If things don't dramatically change, they won't.

But it will be your generation that will make that change.

I mean, a lot of Gen Zers and Generation X, they're starting to wake up now and seeing, wait a minute, everything I've been promised by politicians, the opposite seems to be true.

You know, we're going to have more fairness.

We're going to reimagine the cops.

Well, has that worked out for anybody except criminals?

Has it made your life cheaper, better?

Do you feel safer in your town, your neighborhood?

No.

So you know that that, the people who told you this,

that we should reimagine the cops, you know they were either wildly wrong

or they were lying to you.

Either way, you shouldn't listen to them anymore.

Same thing, and this goes for everybody.

The people who said we have to violate the free market system to save the free market system, does the free market system seem to be saved?

Because that's the lie the Federal Reserve and President Bush and everybody else said after 2008 and the banks collapsed.

By the way, if you're a Gen Zer, you grew up, I can understand why you are so calloused against this, because you grew up at a time where you saw your mom and dad maybe lose their house, lose everything they had, because of the 2008 banking crisis.

So, who bailed all of those people out?

The Federal Reserve bailed the banks out, but didn't bail mom and dad out.

So, who told you that

if we violate all of our principles that we'll make things better?

Who did that?

The Federal Reserve, the politicians, and the banks.

You shouldn't listen to those people because they either were wildly wrong or they lied to you.

I mean, you could go through this one after another.

But right now, the politicians and the banks and the

central banks, the Federal Reserve, are all telling you that we need to spend

a trillion dollars more

than what we have every 100 days.

A trillion dollars.

Remember, if you put a dollar down on the table every second for every minute, of every hour, of every day, of every week, of every year, it would take you 36,000 years

before you would have a stack of a trillion dollars.

We are printing a trillion dollars every 100 days.

Now, somebody has to pay for that.

And unfortunately, it's going to be you and me

because nobody's going to allow us to default on that debt.

It's just not going to happen.

All right.

So then how do we pay for it?

Well, they try to convince you or your parents or businesses or somebody to buy government bonds.

Why is that a problem?

The government is issuing a trillion dollars

and wanting to sell those bonds, which means somebody just, it's like a bank giving you a loan for a car.

Okay.

But in the end, you have a car.

Now, that's not a great investment because the car eventually depreciates to nothing.

But if you want to buy a new car, well, you go to a bank and they look at everything and say you're good for the money.

We'll give you that.

And you buy a new car.

Now, you buy a new house.

That's great

because a house will generally appreciate.

So you're making money on that, where with a car, you're losing money.

Now the government is selling bonds, and that means that it goes to people, you know, like you, me,

big corporations, even banks, and they say, buy a U.S.

Treasury bond, buy a savings bond.

Okay.

That's buying.

their debt.

That's giving the government the loan for their debt.

What are you getting for that loan?

For that trillion dollars, can you tell me today,

what have we purchased in the last 10 years

that we're proud of, that is appreciated, that is really, you look at it and go, wow, but yeah, but we got that.

Can you?

Because I can't.

F-35s, only 25 of them are mission capable.

25%

are mission capable.

That's it.

What have we what have we built?

You know, I keep hearing about infrastructure.

I hear about it every two to four years.

We got to have this X number of dollars for infrastructure, but I don't ever see our infrastructure really getting better.

Do you?

I don't see things where I'm like, wow.

Look at that.

I don't.

And here's the problem.

Every time for every trillion dollars that people take, because what they're doing is they're taking their money and they're giving that to the government instead of investing that in a company that actually is building something, making something,

instead of investing it in the private sector, they're giving that loan

to the government, which creates nothing.

In fact,

every $1 trillion

that we take in bonds,

that reduces our GDP, every 1 trillion, by 0.28%.

So about 30%.

So that means every trillion dollars,

we're losing almost a point off our GDP because the government isn't making something.

And we're taking this money and instead of investing in a new factory or or a new idea,

we invest it in garbage.

So we're going to issue almost $4 trillion

just this year.

That's a point off our GDP.

If we do it again next year, that's two points off our GDP.

Do you see what's happening?

We're destroying ourselves, destroying ourselves.

And we're doing it because the average person is saying and has been saying for a long time,

stop spending so much money.

But for some reason,

the only thing I can think of is that everybody's on the take.

Everybody's getting rich.

Nobody in Washington wants to stop spending money.

And those who do want to stop spending so much money, they're the ones that are called extremists.

This wouldn't work in your own home.

Why would you expect it to work here?

And the old idea that, well, we have a big economy, and so, you know, we're going to,

we can have a big debt.

Not this big.

Not this big.

If you had a big loan for your house and it was on an an adjustable mortgage, what would everyone in your family be saying right now?

Sell this damn thing because it's only going to get worse with your adjustable mortgage.

If things get worse, you're going to go bankrupt.

Well, the United States of America, because we sell bonds and they're short-term bonds, that's an adjustable mortgage.

And the house we've purchased,

it has very little value because it doesn't do anything.

We didn't actually buy anything.

Many times we're just paying for people to do what?

Create more paperwork.

So you and I have to pay for more accountants or more lawyers, which doesn't create anything to the bottom line of the GDP.

This is how you destroy a nation.

And Gen Zers, you need to get serious about your own education on economies, what works, what doesn't.

Because you're the ones that are going to have to save it.

This is the best of the Glenn Beck program.

John Daniel Davidson, Pagan America, the decline of Christianity and the dark age to come.

Let me just tell you, there's a couple of signs of hope, and I'd like John to address some of this as we go along.

First of all, here's Donald Trump two days ago cutting.

So, what the hell was Biden thinking when he declared Easter Sunday to be Trans Visibility Day?

Such total disrespect to Christians, and November 5th is going to be called something else.

You know, it's going to be called Christian Visibility Day when Christians turn out in numbers that nobody has ever seen before.

Then we also had this come out over the weekend.

Here's Richard Dawkins, very famous atheist, not proclaiming Christianity as his belief,

but listen to what he says.

I do think that we are culturally a Christian country.

I call myself a cultural Christian.

I'm not a believer, but there's a distinction between being a believing Christian and being a cultural Christian.

And so, you know, I love hymns and Christmas carols, and

I sort of feel at home in the Christian ethos.

If I had to choose between Christianity and Islam, I'd choose Christianity every single time.

I mean, it seems to me to be a fundamentally decent religion in a way that I think Islam is not.

Okay.

Forget about the Islam part.

The culture of our country is based on Christianity.

So let's bring John in about pagan America.

We are a Christian nation.

You believe that.

I believe we were.

I don't think we are now.

I think we're entering a post-Christian era for America and for the West.

So that kind of sounds bad if you listen to Richard Dawkins.

Yeah, absolutely.

Richard Dawkins should know better, right?

You can't have the culture without the cult.

You can't have Christianity as a cultural force, as a force that shapes the public square and forms the character of the people without the actual religion behind it, people who believe.

Elsewhere in that clip that you played, he said, now I understand that the number of believing Christians are going down in this country, and I think that's a good thing.

What does he think is going to happen to all the cathedrals and all the parish churches?

They're going to turn into mosques in the case of Britain or apartments or nightclubs.

So what happens to us?

We become pagan.

And part of the claim of the book is that there's really only one alternative to Christianity, which is paganism.

Now, I don't mean that we're going to have temples to Zeus and Apollo popping up in Times Square or a surge of witchcraft, although we are seeing that surge.

What I mean is that our public life, our communal life as a nation and a people, is going to be defined by the pagan ethos, not the Christian ethos.

Which the pagan ethos is what?

Nothing is true.

Everything is permitted.

A radical subjectivity about man, about God, about our natures, about what we can become and what we can do.

And so, what determines what public policy should be or what determines what is right isn't based on any universal claims about human nature or the image of

God, man being created in the image of God.

It's based on force and coercion.

And that's how pagan societies have always been.

That's why they were slave societies.

So, pagan societies in the 20th century:

Soviet Union,

Germany, post-Christian.

China.

Yes.

Yes, exactly.

Exactly.

And what were they characterized by?

Force, coercion, a rejection of human nature, a rejection of the idea of human rights.

So

you're seeing that everywhere.

And this is what led you to

the idea that we're...

we're post-Christian.

Is there any way to turn it around?

I don't think there's a way to turn it around in our lifetimes.

Let's put it that way.

So I don't think that Christianity will be defeated in the end.

I'm a Roman Catholic myself, and so I believe in the permanency of the church and of the Christian faith and victory in the end.

But this is a generational struggle.

It's been centuries now that Christianity has been declining in the West and has really accelerated since the middle of the last century.

And I don't think that it's going to be turned around in our lifetimes and maybe not even in our children's lifetimes.

But there are things that we can do to sort of preserve the flame and rebuild amid the ruins.

Like what?

Transmit the faith to our children, carve out spaces for our churches and communities.

And this is the important part.

We don't retreat into those communities.

We find and fight on ground we can win.

Now, that may mean moving out of large cities that are lost.

And it also may mean getting involved at the local level to take back your school district, take back your library, take back

your city council, you know, and bring the faith, the Christian faith, back into the public square where it was for most of our history as a country.

You know, I've been saying for a long time now, I think it's really important that, and I don't like this because

I don't want to segregate us.

I don't want, you know, two separate Americas.

But I think because of the battle that we're in right now,

I think it's important to be in like-minded communities, especially religiously speaking.

And I don't mean all of the same religion.

I mean that they are Judeo-Christian,

value-driven communities.

Because

if you're not in that community and you are not surrounded by the people with the same kind of ethics and ethos,

you could very well be into a community that goes wrong on either side, on either right or left, and goes into darkness quickly.

Do you agree with that?

You also get lulled into a sense of complacency, right?

That things are okay, it's not as bad as it seems.

Part of the

arresting title and subtitle and the cover of the book, which has a burning church on it, is to wake people up, to get people to accept that this is happening.

We're living in a post-Christian society.

Christianity is not going to be the dominant force in the public life of America moving forward, as it has been, as I said, for most of our history.

We're going to become a pagan country.

And that means that Christians are going to become a persecuted minority, as they always have been in pagan society.

Wouldn't you say that we're already really kind of there?

It's not as bad as

it probably will be, but we're already there.

Look, if you're pro-life, you're toast.

Yeah.

The number of things that you can't publicly disagree with or dispute is growing seemingly by the week, right?

You have to accept that Easter is really trans day of visibility.

You have to accept that abortion is a positive good, not just safe, legal, and rare, but it's a positive good that's necessary to vindicate the rights of women.

You can't question gay marriage anymore.

That ships sailed a long time ago.

So these are things that are part of what I call the pagan morality or the state morality of the new pagan regime.

And

there is no dissent allowed on these things because dissent, tolerance in the public square, freedom of speech, that's a Christian virtue.

That's a luxury that only a Christian society can afford.

Has there been any pagan

countries that have lasted?

I mean, I know Soviet Union 80 years, but has there been any modern pagan

that just don't eat themselves?

Aaron Powell, well, no.

And the thing that always happens to pagan societies when they encounter Christianity, going back through history, Christianity is the only thing that breaks the pagan stranglehold on a people across geography, across time, across cultures.

It was the encounter with Christianity that broke these pagan societies because it proposed a radically new way of conceiving of man and our relationship to God and one another and how we should organize society.

And as Christianity retreats, that paganism, that pagan ethos that's simmering just below the surface, is going to come back in modern forms, in modern iterations, as it did in Nazi Germany, as it did in the Soviet Union.

And those were periods where there was sort of this illusion of like of atheism and of secularism.

We're shedding that pretty quickly.

This idea that the future is going to be the secular, liberal utopia is totally wrong.

Well, I think wokeism is a religion.

I mean, it's a form of paganism.

Yeah, it has its high priests.

You can easily be excommunicated.

It has its rituals.

It has things you must do and must never do.

It's the opposite of Christianity.

There is no forgiveness.

Even the high priests can't forgive you unless

you bow down to them.

And then only maybe.

And then only maybe, depending on who you are.

I mean,

it's so clearly a religion.

Why call it paganism

instead of wokeism?

Because I think

wokeism, just like atheism or communism, is a species of paganism.

And that when you really dig into what paganism is and how it works, what we're seeing is a resurgence of paganism in a modern context.

And so part of it is a vocabulary problem, right?

We're not going to talk about the gods in the same way that ancient pre-Christian peoples talked about the gods.

But we are seeing a growing acceptance of the idea of spiritual forces, a movement away from pure materialist, secular, scientistic sort of thinking that denies all supernatural reality, that denies all spiritual reality, especially among young people, you see this right now.

This admixture of being secular on the one hand in rejecting organized religion, but being open to spiritual forces

and things like identity that are really beyond reason, or I would say a disfigurement of reason, which is another hallmark of a pagan society.

And we see that everywhere now.

So

you saying these things, it would be really easy for the left to say, ah,

you want, you're a Christian nationalist.

You want a Christian country that is run by the church.

How do you respond to Christian nationalism?

Well, it would be great if it were true.

The funny thing about the Christian nationalist debate,

as I sort of, the argument in my book kind of lays out, is that it's the opposite of the case.

We're not becoming a Christian nationalist country.

I don't even know what that means.

I think what they mean by that is that they don't want Christianity to have any influence on our national life and on the public square, as was the case for our entire history up until the middle of the last century.

But the idea that Christian nationalists are somehow ascendant or that Christians are somehow gaining power and influence in the United States is a joke.

And when you look at the demographic data and you look at the decline in church affiliation and church attendance, you look at how

on every metric across the board.

So it's a weird argument to make at a time when Christianity has never been weaker in the United States.

But

there are those that do want a I mean, they're very fringe, fringe, fringe, fringe, fringe.

But they do want a religious state.

And that, I don't think that's what you would want when you said it would be great if it were true.

I don't think it would be great if it were true.

I want the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, but I want the people

to

regulate themselves.

And, you know, as Franklin and Jefferson said,

the best way to regulate yourself is through religion, through Christianity.

Well, you had John Adams' famous line that our Constitution was meant for only a moral and religious people.

It's unfit for any other.

But, you know, it really is true that Remy Bragg, the French philosopher, said in the 1990s talking about Europe, that European civilization, you know, is a product not of calculation, but of faith.

So you need actual Christian belief, you know, contra Richard Dawkins.

You can't just have the principles.

They rely as their source of vitality on an act of faith among the people.

So if we actually had a critical mass of believing, practicing Christians in this country, we would have things like free speech, tolerance, tolerance, an open public square, human rights, and respect for everybody, the things that are disappearing right now under an ascendant and emerging pagan regime.

The name of the book is Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity in the Dark Age to Come.

You know, I hear from people all the time: well, it's never going to get that bad.

I mean, it's, you know, it's never been like that, and it's never going to get that bad.

Clearly, not true, John.

We're in a different place than we've ever been before.

So give me some hope.

What can be done?

The last chapter of the book is titled The Boniface Option, and it's a loving dig at Rod Dreer's The Benedict Option, which came out in 2016.

And one of the things that the Drear argued for was to build up your local communities, your local churches, your home schools, your family communities,

and sort of build an arc to survive the storms to come.

And one of the things I push back on a little bit is the idea that we can just build arcs and kind of hunker down and survive.

We have to push forward and we have to push Christianity out back into the public square where it was and where it belongs as a testament to the faith.

I think there is hope in this sense.

As people shed their sort of strict materialist worldview and are open to the idea of spiritual forces, there's an opportunity for Christians to proclaim their faith publicly again and proclaim it to people who maybe are more open than they were a generation ago when secular liberalism seemed

triumphant and it seemed like the future was going to be this atheist, cold, rationalistic world.

That's not the world that's emerging right now.

And so there's real...

There's real battles to fight with real spiritual forces.

And Christians need to sort of put on their armor and get ready to fight for their faith by, like I said earlier, taking back your schools, taking back your city halls, taking back your towns,

but also be prepared to proclaim the faith publicly and pay a cost for it, right?

There was a long period in this country where Christians and the state were kind of on the same side and Christians enjoyed a kind of deference and privilege that they didn't through much of our history.

That's coming to an end.

And we need to wrap our minds around that.

We need to steal our nerves and we need to take heart in the truth of our faith and the succor and the strength that it gives us.

And

that only begets stronger Christians, stronger people of faith when they really have to struggle with it.

That's our problem.

We haven't had to struggle with our faith for so long.

It's just like, yeah,

I'm sure I believe in God.

You wouldn't say it.

out loud many times, but

now that you're starting to be pushed, you're seeing more and more people talk about it openly thank you so much for being in here it's a pagan America the decline of Christianity and the dark age to come John Daniel Davidson this podcast is supported by progressive a leader in RV insurance RVs are for sharing adventures with family friends and even your pets so if you bring your cats and dogs along for the ride you'll want progressive RV insurance they protect your cats and dogs like family by offering up to $1,000 in optional coverage for vet bills in case of an RV accident making it a great companion for the responsible pet owner who loves to travel.

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