A podcast on political life, culture, and Christian political theory that seeks to revitalize the Christian West and restore the strength, dignity, and self-respect of European civilization among its remnant.
I discuss chapter 2 of my book, The Case for Christian Nationalism. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/StephenWolfe
I discuss chapter 1 of my book Case for Christian Nationalism. This chapter covered prelapsarian (pre-fall) man and whether nations would have existed had man not fallen.
I discuss the recent controversies between Christian nationalists and the men of G3.
The Christian right needs to reclaim hospitality from the left. I discuss the definition of hospitality and its application in the home, church, and civil society. I plan on writing a book on this topic, so please send me your comments. Thanks. Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/StephenWolfeEmail Ars Politica: arspoliticapodcast@gmail.com
The first episode of a series. I respond to criticisms of my book, Case for Christian Nationalism, focusing on the definition, my method, and why one should adopt the term. See my patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/StephenWolfe
Get the book here. Checkout REN's website here.Connect with REN on Twitter here.Watch Carlson's End Of Men documentary here. Use promo code ORIGINALS for a free 30 day trial.
https://twitter.com/arthurkwonlee (https://twitter.com/arthurkwonlee) https://t.co/X0FgRlgPAC (linktr.ee/arthurkwonlee)
Aeneas lands in Latium (Italy) and makes friends with everyone. But the womenfolk start a big war and Aeneas' momma asks Vulcan to forge him a great shield. Don't miss the special announcement in this episode!
Christian Winter, https://gradschool.hillsdale.edu/Profiles/Christian-Winter/ (PhD candidate at Hillsdale), joins us to discuss Nietzsche's criticism of Christianity and what importance it has for us today. Winter's writings can be found at https://providencemag.com/authors/christian-winter/ (Providence Mag) and https://americanreformer.org/author/christianwinter/ (American Reformer).
Carl Lantz of Pella, Iowa joins us to discuss fatherhood, raising a large family, and starting family business.
We finish up a review started in the previous episode.
We are joined by Timon Cline and Clifford Humphrey to review https://www.amazon.com/Religion-American-Greatness-Christian-Nationalism/dp/1514000261/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=the+religion+of+american+greatness&qid=1662258124&sr=8-1 (The Religion Of American Greatness), by Paul Miller.
Aeneas journeys to Sicily and plays games while the women burn ships and sing sea shanties. Then he goes into the underworld and Thomas tries to argue that the Greek-Roman Hades is similar to the afterlife in the bible.
Stephen and Thomas are joined by Yoram Hazony to discuss his latest book https://www.amazon.com/Conservative-Rediscovery-Yoram-Hazony/dp/1684511097/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= (Conservatism: A Rediscovery). Hazony argues that conservatism has failed to conserve much of anything and that liberalism has failed on its own terms. He contends that it is time to promote another vision: Anglo-American conservatism or “national conservatism”. What must we conserve and how should we do it? Conservative principles: “Men are born into families, tribes, and nations to which they are bound by ties of mutual loyalty. Individuals, families, tribes, and nations compete for honor, importance, and influence, until a threat or a common endeavor recalls them to the mutual loyalties that bind them to one another. Families, tribes, and nations are hierarchically structured, their members having importance and influence to the degree they are honored within the hierarchy. Language, religion, law, and the forms of government and economic activity are traditional institutions, developed by families, tribes, and nations as they seek to strengthen their material prosperity, internal integrity, and cultural inheritance and to propagate themselves through future generations. Political obligation is a consequence of membership in families, tribes, and nations. These premises are derived from experience, and may be challenged and improved upon in light of experience.” Three means of political process: Reason, Experience, Will: Reason Rationalists, revolutionaries, puritans, liberals, universalists, globalists Utopian future, jettison the past, immediate change, damn the consequences, mathematical certainty, applies to all mankind, overrides particular peoples, traditions, customs, nations Stoics Hugo Grotius John Locke Jean Jacques Rousseau Karl Marx Liberals and Conservatives Experience Anglo-American conservatives, old guard political arts Careful accumulation of wisdom spanning ages of men in a given nation, imperfection over perfection. Preserves nations, customs, and peoples with unique laws drawn from universal principles. Nationalism as a political way to overcome the small stock of wisdom and experience of our own lifetimes or eras. “…by consulting the accumulated experience of the past, we overcome the inherent weakness of individual judgment, bringing to bear the many lifetimes of observation by our forebears, who wrestled with similar questions under diverse conditions.” Pg 47 John Fortescue Richard Hooker John Selden Edmund Burke Founding Fathers Will Tyrants, emperors, usurpers, some kings, dictators Might makes right, triumph of the will, overcome the will of the masses and their life ways. James 1, Charles 1, queen Mary, Nietzsche, Thrasymachus No place for religion or God, “beyond good and evil”, atheism Some quotes: “...a conservative political theory begins with the understanding that individuals are born into families, tribes, and nations to which they are bound by mutual loyalty. This means that a conservative recognizes the nation is an ineliminable reality. Political reality, as the conservative sees it, is full of competing nations, each of which consists of a number of tribes tied to one another by bonds of mutual loyalty. Each nation and tribe is engaged in a constant competition with its neighbors, allying or warring with them as circumstances dictate. Each nation and tribe possesses a unique cultural inheritance carrying forward certain traditional institutions, which can include its language, religion, laws, and the forms of its government and economic life.” 133 "By a nation, then, we mean a number of tribes with a shared heritage, usually including a common language, law, or religious tradition, and a past history of joining together against common enemies and to pursue common...
Stephen returns as we discuss Dido, Aeneas, and Staying on Mission.
https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/straight-from-the-pit.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-34u99F3Uk
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48573831-the-coming-of-neo-feudalism (The Coming of Neo-Feudalism: A Warning to the Global Middle Class) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58782897-the-end-of-the-world-is-just-the-beginning (The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization) https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18406274-decline-and-fall (Decline and Fall: The End of Empire and the Future of Democracy in 21st Century America)
The Trojan Horse Battle and Flight Many Wanderings The Will of the Gods Vengeance And Justice Destiny and Propaganda Prophecy and Conspiracy Theorists
New series begins on the ancient Rome epic The Aeneid.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/why-is-everything-liberal?s=r
Listener Questions on Nations, End Times, Theonomy, & More
https://twitter.com/default_friend/status/1497252548532748296?s=21&fbclid=IwAR3oQ81wGdVmuZ7nsRb-Xj-EGb0YhrhPY4v4K7iM-5Q3BHG20Nl6_vGm-XQ (Fandomification Thread) https://www.vice.com/en/article/epxq3j/russia-ukraine-invasion-memes (The Meme-ification of the Ukraine Invasion) https://www.garbageday.email/p/everything-will-be-all-the-time-and?s=r (Everything will be all the time and everywhere) https://twitter.com/cjzero/status/1496880192979181573?fbclid=IwAR2ZIYTDHZmvv4je34PHKPIFOLHQQI5ryVHoAVS3C5P6znXMP0lqWPsKMoc (Commercialization of War) https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1498307068893319170?s=25&fbclid=IwAR2JyNDDPPu5ZpBmghX2o4OUrAiVlXabLnMTS7kyVONBfb2TBOUZJsHdPAY (Zelensky as Celebrity-Warrior)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PcwUN7YjZ8
"Evil is not able to create anything new, it can only distort and destroy what has been invented or made by the forces of good.” – Tolkien Amazorg's series producer: Lindsey Weber, an executive producer of the series, told Vanity Fair, which posted several first-look photos from the series on Instagram, that it was "only natural" for an adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's work to "reflect what the world actually looks like." "Tolkien is for everyone. His stories are about his fictional races doing their best work when they leave the isolation of their own cultures and come together," she said. https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2022/02/amazon-the-rings-of-power-series-first-look “Hump, well! I wonder (if we survive this war) if there will be any niche, even of sufferance, left for reactionary back numbers like me (and you). The bigger things get the smaller and duller or flatter the globe gets. It is getting to be all one blasted little provincial suburb. When they have introduced American sanitation, morale-pep, feminism, and mass production throughout the Near East, Middle East, Far East, U.S.S.R., Hither Further and Inner Mumbo-land, Gondhwanaland, Lhasa, and the villages of darkest Berkshire, how happy we shall be. At any rate it ought to cut down on travel. There will be nowhere to go. So people will (I opine) go all the faster. Collie Knox says 1/8 of the world's population speaks ‘English', and that is the biggest language group. If true, damn shame—say I. May the curse of Babel strike all their tongues till they can only say ‘baa baa'. It would mean much the same. I think I shall have to refuse to speak anything but Old Mercian.” – Tolkien, From a letter to Christopher Tolkien, 9 December 1943 “Tolkien once remarked to me that the feeling about home must have been quite different in the days when the family had fed on the produce of the same few miles of country for six generations, and that perhaps this was why they saw nymphs in the fountains and dryads in the wood – they were not mistaken for there was in a sense a real (not metaphorical) connection between them and the countryside. What had been earth and air & later corn, and later still bread, really was in them. We of course who live on a standardised international diet (you may have had Canadian flour, English meat, Scotch oatmeal, African oranges, & Australian wine to day) are really artificial beings and have no connection (save in sentiment) with any place on earth. We are synthetic men, uprooted. The strength of the hills is not ours.” – C.S. Lewis, Collected Letters, Volume 1
On slaves dying after slavery ended: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war
https://www.amazon.com/House-Tom-Bombadil-C-Wiley/dp/1954887027/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=In+The+House+Of+Tom+Bombadil&qid=1642124273&sr=8-1 (Get Wiley's book on Amazon). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhFAB-Z9Kb0
“If you have these four things—lack of social bonds, lack of sense-making, free-floating anxiety, and free-floating psychological discontent—then society is highly at risk for the emergence of mass phenomenon.” https://zero-sum.org/mass-formation-psychosis-and-the-coronavirus-narrative/?fbclid=IwAR2CR_fA_FtsEBfK_Rwdc3nlWYSXDs5LiNwvS-2wFiPTPQAopen3fOIAbf4 (https://zero-sum.org/mass-formation-psychosis-and-the-coronavirus-narrative/) https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/mass-formation-psychosis?fbclid=IwAR1t2wzSqetGHFautTMm6SKZgiUIAjYnNh51-7Znm7PZnLecZ-qd2AVIuHc (https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/mass-formation-psychosis)
“Reflect upon your present blessings — of which every man has many — not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” (A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens) More on recovering Christmas traditions: https://issuu.com/romanroadsmedia/docs/digressio_express_vol_2_-_christmas_2021/s/14301383
Chesterton: https://insightscoop.typepad.com/2004/2011/07/chesterton-defines-and-defends-patriotism.html Strand on twitter: https://twitter.com/DDFStrand
Walker's Book: https://www.amazon.com/Liberty-All-Defending-Everyones-Pluralistic/dp/1587434490 Clifford's reviews will appear in forthcoming publications at First Things and Ad Fontes. Overview of Walker's book: eschatology, anthropology, missiology, and an appendix The logic of the gospel plays out in each of these - each requires religious liberty: if Christians want to evangelize, we must accept that people might not believe, which entails that people are free not to believe. Hence, the government cannot impose upon people any beliefs. This has assumptions about baptism: we have to choose the gospel. Hence, society must be arranged in such a way that chosen baptism is possible.
Anarcho-Tyranny, A Definition: Selective enforcement of laws, for the purpose of control. The term anarcho-tyranny was introduced by Samuel T. Francis in 1992. The National Review staff summarized the term in 2011 as "anarcho-tyranny describes that stage from governmental dysfunction in which the state is anarchically hopeless at coping with large matters but ruthlessly tyrannical in the enforcement of small ones." Francis described it as "the failure of the state to enforce the laws and, at the same time, the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent”. “We refuse to control real criminals (that's the anarchy), so we control the innocent (that's the tyranny).” Samuel Francis Francis: The “criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent,” Francis expounded, is achieved in such a state through: “exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation; the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through ‘sensitivity training' and multiculturalist curricula; ‘hate crime' laws; gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally; and a vast labyrinth of other measures.” Jerry Pournelle provides his own variation on this theme: "We do not live by rule of law, because no one can possibly go a day without breaking one or another of the goofy laws that have been imposed on us over the years. No one even knows all the laws that apply to almost anything we do now. We live in a time of selective enforcement of law.” AT is where "government increasingly lets criminal and dependent elements dominate public life while directing the heavy hand of the State onto people who are basically peaceful” https://wirkman.com/2019/08/16/free-migration-is-not-on-the-table-anarcho-tyranny-is/ Decriminalization of non-European activities with the increasingly regulated or criminalization of European social activities. “The hallmark of authoritarian systems is the creation of innumerable, indecipherable laws. Such systems make everyone an un-indicted felon and allow for the exercise of arbitrary government power via selective prosecution.” Ayn Rand Examples: Certain violent groups are allowed to protest without masks during the lockdown. But poor, small business owners weren't allowed to open up to feed their family. People with particular political affiliations are allowed to destroy public property, but others are imprisoned even for speaking against the establishment. Elected officials and senators get to throw parties, but common people can't even attend funerals or religious places during COVID-19. Petty crimes of some people are punished disproportionately, but actual criminals are allowed to roam free. Invasion of personal rights through excess control or regulation. Censorship of free speech and press freedoms. Not to mention the media itself lying to people for biased propaganda. Public slander in the form of defamation, bullying, harassment or cancel culture for having a different opinion. Use of digital or tech devices to spy on people in order to collect their personal data. auto crime rises, law-abiding citizens need more insurance and must fight insurance claims, but criminals are not punished or restricted a Trump supporter was maced by Antifa protestors, who also threw rocks at his truck. The Trump supporter pulled a gun on them, and he was arrested by police, who had done nothing to prevent Antifa from attacking him. Kyle Rittenhouse defends himself from attackers. He is prosecuted. His assailants are not. He is attacked by the media, courts, politicans, state. His attackers are protected by the media, courts, politicians, state. Rittenhouse defends himself, powers that be attack him. Black nationalist guy plows car into parade of white children, media...
https://newfounding.com https://americanreformer.org/ https://joinalign.us/ https://twitter.com/NateAFischer
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/politics-confessing-evangelical/
Link to Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JeALyF3uW8-l8_pQb__pfD5LekolzF2w_GiUQrsq6a4/edit
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero http://www.jstor.org/stable/2713705 (Lincoln's Plan for Colonies) https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/about-this-collection/ (Slave Narratives) https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jun/16/slavery-starvation-civil-war (Slaves' lives after slavery)
Third Wayism Chase Davis, pastor of The Well in Boulder CO, works out to Ars Politica, drives a Taco. Definitions “Radical centrism” “Progressive center-left” (Russell Moore, Tim Keller, David French, etc) https://twitter.com/PerfInjust/status/1386095631719141383 (Wolfe on twitter): Left/Right Moral Equivalence –> Third-Wayism Andrew Walker on twitter: Third-wayism in politics is a form of political Gnosticism as it assumes that there is a platonic ideal to politics that does not require engaging the kingdoms of the world as what they fundamentally are: worldly, temporal, & creational ordinances designed for proximate justice. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/458626.stm (BBC Article): “[S]omething different and distinct from liberal capitalism with its unswerving belief in the merits of the free market and democratic socialism with its demand management and obsession with the state. The Third Way is in favour of growth, entrepreneurship, enterprise and wealth creation but it is also in favour of greater social justice and it sees the state playing a major role in bringing this about.” Origins/Causes Third-Wayism as a neo-liberal reaction to the breakdown of 20th c. Left/Right politics. Neo-libs wanted a “new kind of socialism”. Instead of hard state economic socialism that wants to eradicate capitalism and institute hard equality, they preach social justice, individual worth, and accept some capitalist features. Basically, use other means to achieve the old ends. Promote egalitarianism to distribute goods indirectly as people rise in employment, instead of hard wealth distribution. Anthony Giddens' works such as Consequences of Modernity (1990), Modernity and Self-Identity (1991), The Transformation of Intimacy (1992), Beyond Left and Right (1994) and The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1998) Repair damaged solidarities. Recognise the centrality of life politics. Accept that active trust implies generative politics. Embrace dialogic democracy. Rethink the welfare state. Confront violence. It advocates ethical socialism, reformism and gradualism that includes advocating the humanisation of capitalism, a mixed economy, political pluralism and liberal democracy. Alan Carlson's Third Ways Evangelical Examples Tim Keller https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1385951866660474886 (https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1385951866660474886) https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1317646996342177793?s=20 (https://twitter.com/timkellernyc/status/1317646996342177793?s=20) https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/christians-politics-belief.html (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/christians-politics-belief.html) Political Media Bias Graph https://photos.app.goo.gl/LN4PzvaTFKo6BnuJ6
Ars Politica - Ep33: The Odyssey, bks 5-8
https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-the-left-cant-meme/
The song mentioned: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZpt51uSLpo
We discuss egalitarianism, complementarianism, and patriarchy with guest Zach Garris, author of "https://www.amazon.com/Masculine-Christianity-Zachary-Garris/dp/1735473901/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=masculine+christianity&qid=1627342025&sr=8-1 (Masculine Christianity)".
Boniface's Article: https://bonifaceoption.substack.com/p/the-great-awokening
Trent Sill and Shane Anderson join us to discuss family worship.
Books 16-21 - Second Turning Point The Death of Patroclus Situation for the Greeks is dire. Nestor suggests that Patroclus help the Greeks by asking Achilles for his armor, to pretend that Achilles has returned, giving courage to the men. Achilles tells him not to pursue the Trojans beyond the plain back to their gates. He does anyway. Apollo comes to stop Patroclus, hits and stuns him, knocks his armor off him. A Trojan comes and stabs him, then Hector stabs him to death. Fight over Patroclus' Body Trojans fight Greeks for Patroclus' body. Hector takes the armor off of Patroclus, but the Greeks recover the body and take it back to bury it properly. Homer says that Hector took the “deathless” armor, which is ironic since a man just died in it, indicating that Hector will die soon. Achilles hears of Patroclus' death and loses his mind, all he wants to do is kill Hector now. Problem: His mother says that the Fates determined that Achilles will die right after Hector dies. Achilles recognizes that his anger has led to the death of his comrades and his best friend. Gall feeling. But he doesn't give up his anger, he turns it from Agamemnon to Hector. Achilles anger refuses healing, reconciliation. He had the opportunity to do so with Agamemnon's offer, but he turned it down because the gall and bitterness had become sweet to him. He relished in his hurt. Bitterness digs a hole in your soul. Reconciliation was offered to him but he turned it down, because healing and justice wasn't what he wanted. He wanted to kill, and now he's got the opportunity to do it. New Armor for Achilles Thetis goes to Hephaestus to make armor. The entire cosmos is shown and then two cities: one at war and one at peace, city life, farming, dancing, disputes, wedding ceremonies, the Ocean river encircling the shield. The Quarrel is Ended The issue between AG and AC is finished. Achilles Leads the Army Returns to battle in fire. AC has his aristeia. He's hunting for Hector. He piles up dead bodies of Trojans. The Fight at the River Image of the Shield of Achilles: http://www.thehistoryblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Shield-of-Achilles.jpg
Eric Conn's tweet https://twitter.com/Eric_Conn/status/1394769381503111169?s=20 Women's Suffrage: Size And Scope Of Government http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~iversen/PDFfiles/LottKenny.pdf Gender Gap in Free Speech https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-antisocial-psychologist/202104/the-gender-gap-in-censorship-support C.S. Lewis: The Four Loves https://www.amazon.com/Four-Loves-C-S-Lewis/dp/0156329301 C.R. Wiley: Man Of The House https://www.amazon.com/Man-House-Handbook-Building-Shelter/dp/1532614772 Doug Wilson: Father Hunger https://www.amazon.com/Father-Hunger-Calls-Their-Families/dp/1595554769 Shakespeare's Sonnets http://shakespeare.mit.edu/Poetry/sonnets.html Ovid's Metamorphoses: Story of King Nisus and his daughter, Scylla (In the show I said the king's name was Midas but I was incorrect.) https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/Metamorph8.php Aeneid: Scene where women destroy civil order: https://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/VirgilAeneidVII.php#anchor_Toc3086154
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