WEBVTT - Reclaiming Western Civilization 0:00:06.120 --> 0:00:08.600 My book earlier this year is Real and Civilization, The 0:00:08.640 --> 0:00:10.639 Fate of the Jewish Nation, The Destiny of the West 0:00:11.000 --> 0:00:13.160 is a book, not, as the title would necessarily imply, 0:00:13.440 --> 0:00:15.720 just about foreign policy or anything like that. Rather, it 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:20.280 is a book about the foundations the origins of Western civilization. Well, 0:00:20.280 --> 0:00:22.799 as it turns out, there was at least one other 0:00:23.040 --> 0:00:26.480 author out there who had something of a mind melt 0:00:26.680 --> 0:00:29.840 with me, and that woman is Melanie Phillips. Melani Philips 0:00:29.880 --> 0:00:34.559 is a long standing British conservative commentator, newspaper columnist, TV presenter, 0:00:34.600 --> 0:00:36.680 and also the author of the book that I currently 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:38.839 hold in my hands, in which I recently read myself, 0:00:39.159 --> 0:00:41.600 The Builders Stone, How Jews and Christians built the West 0:00:41.640 --> 0:00:44.880 and why only they can save it now The Builderstone 0:00:44.920 --> 0:00:47.040 and my book is on civilization. There are some things 0:00:47.040 --> 0:00:48.440 that are a little different, I think Melani and I 0:00:48.520 --> 0:00:51.360 don't necessarily agree on everything. We'll see if there are 0:00:51.360 --> 0:00:54.120 any areas where we disagree over the course of our 0:00:54.160 --> 0:00:57.800 conversation here in just a few moments. But certainly broadly speaking, 0:00:57.960 --> 0:01:00.720 we agree on the big questions. And the big question 0:01:00.920 --> 0:01:04.400 is essentially as follows in the aftermath of the Hamas 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:07.080 program of October seven, twenty twenty three, And not just 0:01:07.120 --> 0:01:10.640 the pagram, but the world's reaction to the Pagram, And 0:01:10.800 --> 0:01:13.759 boy was that a horrific reaction. In the aftermath of that, 0:01:15.160 --> 0:01:19.640 can the West recover? Can the West one understand what 0:01:19.680 --> 0:01:22.200 it is that which built it, which above all is 0:01:22.240 --> 0:01:26.240 a biblical inheritance. Can the West understand that? Can it 0:01:26.280 --> 0:01:29.880 come to appreciate that? And can it come to fight 0:01:29.959 --> 0:01:33.360 for that and take a stand for that? That is 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:37.080 the most important thing, because the reaction to the program 0:01:38.680 --> 0:01:43.000 wasn't just quote unquote anti Israel or anti Semitic, it 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.720 was anti Western. When you are failing to distinguish between 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:50.600 a culture that loves life and a culture that loves death, 0:01:51.760 --> 0:01:54.040 for a culture that flourishes and a culture that seeks 0:01:54.080 --> 0:01:59.280 destruction subjugation. When you can't distinguish, when you are incapable 0:01:59.320 --> 0:02:04.400 of logical you are morally discerning between these two dichotomous, 0:02:04.680 --> 0:02:08.560 completely opposing forces, then you have lost the plot. And 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:10.679 if the West is to be saved, it must re 0:02:10.840 --> 0:02:16.840 understand the plot at its most basic, rudimentary level. Because 0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:21.720 it was the Bible that gave us Western civilization. Sure, 0:02:21.720 --> 0:02:23.600 there is absolutely a role to be played for some 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:28.760 no Biblical sources, namely ancient Greek and Roman Greco Roman thought. 0:02:29.760 --> 0:02:34.000 There's a role for that, certainly, no doubt about that, Aristotle, Cicero, 0:02:34.080 --> 0:02:36.600 any of the greats. But the West would not be 0:02:36.600 --> 0:02:40.280 the West where not for the Bible. It's not necessarily 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:45.840 just free speech or the marketplace of ideas or the 0:02:45.880 --> 0:02:48.680 economic market places in general. These things are important. There 0:02:48.680 --> 0:02:51.000 are key features of moderny is something that Melani Phillips 0:02:51.000 --> 0:02:55.000 emphasized in her book. But the core, the absolute bedrock 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.880 of that which has made us great, and that which 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:04.360 alone can actually still make us great. The core is 0:03:04.400 --> 0:03:09.480 the Bible. That is these shared inheritance of Jews and Christians. 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:12.640 That is, these shared inheritance of the original people of 0:03:12.639 --> 0:03:16.079 the book, the original folks led by Moses who stood 0:03:16.080 --> 0:03:19.000 there at the base of Mount Sinai during the Revelation, 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:22.600 the shared inheritance of the children of Issiel, the Jews 0:03:23.320 --> 0:03:27.680 and Christiendom, the great gentile offshoot that spread the message 0:03:28.040 --> 0:03:32.000 and civilized what today is known as the West. Jews 0:03:32.000 --> 0:03:35.160 and Christians should both be proud of the role that 0:03:35.240 --> 0:03:38.120 their religions have played in the development of the West. 0:03:39.160 --> 0:03:41.160 But if the West is going to stand up today 0:03:41.640 --> 0:03:48.160 against the forces that seek to subjugate it, against intersectional wokeism, Islamism, 0:03:48.240 --> 0:03:51.840 and global neoliberalism. It's going to have to regain some 0:03:51.880 --> 0:03:55.920 confidence and appreciation of what it once was and what 0:03:56.040 --> 0:04:00.200 God willing will once again be in short order. Well, 0:04:00.200 --> 0:04:02.640 it's the end of the holiday season and it's the 0:04:02.680 --> 0:04:04.440 time of the year where we are all having those 0:04:04.640 --> 0:04:07.440 deep questions as to what should we believe, should we 0:04:07.480 --> 0:04:10.000 believe in anything at all? What is the basis of 0:04:10.040 --> 0:04:12.720 our civilization? All the fun things that we discuss not 0:04:12.800 --> 0:04:14.360 just this on of the year, but oftentimes on a 0:04:14.400 --> 0:04:16.440 day day basis here on the Josh Hammer Show. And 0:04:16.480 --> 0:04:20.279 it's really a thrill to bring on a long standing writer, 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:24.039 thinker and commentator who's been saying and writing about these 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:27.400 very topics for many many years now, including most recently 0:04:27.440 --> 0:04:29.440 in the form of the book that I Hold in 0:04:29.480 --> 0:04:33.080 my hands, The Builder's Stone. Melanie Phillips is the author 0:04:33.120 --> 0:04:36.320 of The Builderstone. She's also a columnist at Times of London, 0:04:36.440 --> 0:04:39.960 long standing British conservative commentator. I recently finished this book 0:04:39.960 --> 0:04:43.400 and thoroughly enjoyed it. So Melanie Phillips, thank you for 0:04:43.440 --> 0:04:44.520 joining the Josh Hammer Show. 0:04:45.360 --> 0:04:47.200 Thank you very much, Josh, very good to be with you. 0:04:48.040 --> 0:04:51.880 Well, it's really a delight. So I did recently finish 0:04:51.880 --> 0:04:54.760 this book, as I said, and I was struck by 0:04:54.760 --> 0:04:56.920 reading it. Melanie, I think you and I had something 0:04:56.960 --> 0:05:01.640 of a mind meld for your book. In my book, 0:05:01.760 --> 0:05:04.080 Israel and civilization have a lot in common. There are 0:05:04.080 --> 0:05:06.920 some differences, to be clear that they're not exactly verbatim 0:05:06.920 --> 0:05:11.000 carbon copy, but very broadly speaking similar books written in 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:15.640 a in a post October seventh milieu in this world, 0:05:15.320 --> 0:05:17.600 the world where the world has been morally confused as 0:05:17.600 --> 0:05:19.880 as to who to side with, not just between Israel 0:05:19.920 --> 0:05:25.240 and Hamas, but more broadly speaking, between civilization and barbarism. 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:29.840 More generally speaking, Melli, I think I think one thing 0:05:29.839 --> 0:05:31.360 that I would like to kind of start in and 0:05:31.680 --> 0:05:35.920 to get our conversation started here. For a while, right 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:39.280 of center partisans such as myself, perhaps yourself as well. 0:05:39.279 --> 0:05:41.400 I'm not sure how you would self described, but conservatives, 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:45.760 I think felt pretty reassured that we were unanimously on 0:05:45.800 --> 0:05:49.039 the side of team civilization and not team barbarism. But 0:05:49.320 --> 0:05:51.480 unfortunately here in the United States there have been some 0:05:51.680 --> 0:05:54.920 signs that not everyone who thinks of him or herself 0:05:55.279 --> 0:05:58.680 as being conservative or on the right is necessarily part 0:05:59.480 --> 0:06:01.280 of teams civilization. I was told me that maybe you 0:06:01.320 --> 0:06:03.920 could kind of just dive in unpack some of these strands. Here, 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:08.400 what is Western civilization as you can see and define it? 0:06:08.720 --> 0:06:10.720 And then perhaps by extension, why do you think that 0:06:10.760 --> 0:06:12.919 some folks who think of themselves as being on the 0:06:12.960 --> 0:06:14.480 right seem to have lost the plot a little? 0:06:15.560 --> 0:06:18.479 Yes? Well, to me, western civilization is more than just 0:06:18.520 --> 0:06:24.240 a geographical area. Obviously, it consists very largely of the 0:06:24.320 --> 0:06:29.320 geographical West. But to me, it's an idea, and the 0:06:29.440 --> 0:06:34.160 idea is modernity. To me, the West became the West, 0:06:34.240 --> 0:06:36.320 as it were, in the way that we think of it, 0:06:37.000 --> 0:06:41.880 when the modern world really emerged after the eighteenth century Enlightenment, 0:06:42.279 --> 0:06:46.279 when we had the division of church and state, the 0:06:46.400 --> 0:06:50.760 arrival of toleration of minorities, the development of what became 0:06:51.640 --> 0:06:58.720 democracy and the democratic nation state, and that powered what 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:01.440 we now think of as the world, which was to 0:07:01.560 --> 0:07:07.919 be the cutting edge of technology, of science, of reason. 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:11.560 That's what I mean when I that's what I mean 0:07:11.600 --> 0:07:17.200 when I talk about the West. Now, your second question 0:07:17.560 --> 0:07:24.880 was what happened to the West and was that your question? 0:07:24.960 --> 0:07:25.760 What was your question? 0:07:26.200 --> 0:07:28.360 Well, let's let's start there. I want to get into 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:31.080 also some internest sine fights happening on the right of center. 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.360 Let's let's let's start with why did conservatives? 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:39.400 Why do conservatives lose the plot? Okay, so perhaps undlike yourself, 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:43.360 I never thought conservatives had the plot. Ever, to me, 0:07:43.880 --> 0:07:48.560 conservatives had lost the plot a long time ago. And 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:52.360 it's really the failure of conservatism, I would say, over 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:57.040 several decades, which has caused this situation to occur. Because 0:07:57.040 --> 0:08:00.560 for sure, what has driven what we are now seeing, 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:05.120 the eclipse of reason, the replacement of truth by power, 0:08:05.240 --> 0:08:09.360 ideologies based on power relations, and all those things which 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:13.200 from which I think in large measure the animus against 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:17.120 Israel has developed. It was the left that powered all 0:08:17.240 --> 0:08:25.720 that through their ideological preconceptions and obsessions. But we should 0:08:25.720 --> 0:08:29.240 have been able to rely on conservatives to conserve, to 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:33.280 understand what was at stake, what was at risk, and 0:08:33.520 --> 0:08:35.560 from where I was sitting, and I'm going back now 0:08:35.640 --> 0:08:39.680 to you may be shocked to hear this, but even 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.120 in the time of Margaret Thatcher, when I was a 0:08:43.160 --> 0:08:45.480 young journalist and I was working for The Guardian, and 0:08:45.520 --> 0:08:48.679 it was considered by everybody on the left that she was, 0:08:48.720 --> 0:08:51.920 you know, totally dreadful and so right wing and so on. 0:08:52.400 --> 0:08:55.000 And it was around that time that I began to 0:08:55.120 --> 0:08:58.199 realize something was going terribly wrong with the West, and 0:08:58.920 --> 0:09:02.960 I decide did I realized that she didn't understand what 0:09:03.200 --> 0:09:08.160 was going on at all, and that the right, the 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:11.000 forces of conservativesm And I'm really speaking from Britain because 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:13.200 from the perspective of Britain, because that's the country I 0:09:13.240 --> 0:09:16.080 know best. But I think this kind of crosses over 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.280 to a large extent to what happened in America as well. 0:09:19.280 --> 0:09:22.200 Maybe not quite the same time, but what happened was 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:26.319 that this that when the Soviet Union collapsed, when the 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:31.680 Berlin Wall fell, I remember conservatives in Britain saying, what 0:09:31.800 --> 0:09:34.840 do we do now for an encore? We've shot our fox, 0:09:35.200 --> 0:09:38.720 we don't have an enemy anymore. What banner are we 0:09:38.880 --> 0:09:42.360 now going to march behind? And I remember the answer 0:09:42.920 --> 0:09:47.160 the answer was, we will march behind the banner of liberty. 0:09:47.679 --> 0:09:51.560 And at that time, at that point, I thought, oh, no, 0:09:52.320 --> 0:09:56.720 they don't get it, because if they are adopting liberty 0:09:56.960 --> 0:10:02.160 as their light motif, they are going to occupy exactly 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.600 the same patch of ideological ground as the left. The 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:10.480 left did liberty in the social sphere, lifestyle choice. Everybody 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:13.800 makes up their own lifestyle. Nobody can tell anybody that 0:10:13.840 --> 0:10:17.160 their lifestyle or culture is better than anyone else, all 0:10:17.160 --> 0:10:20.320 that sort of stuff. It's basically to do with the self. Me, 0:10:21.040 --> 0:10:27.240 I am an individual whose own subjective perspective trumps facts 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:30.920 and evidence and reason. That was what the left was saying, 0:10:31.920 --> 0:10:36.640 and it was busily collapsing Western education as a result, 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:40.480 because it decided that the nation's state, the Western nation state, 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.520 was born in the original sins of colonialism and imperialism 0:10:44.600 --> 0:10:48.000 and exploitation and whiteness and all the rest of it. Now, 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:50.600 faced with this, the conservatives didn't really it didn't realize 0:10:50.600 --> 0:10:53.840 this because the conservatives only saw the Soviet Union. The 0:10:53.800 --> 0:10:56.200 Soviet Union disappeared, therefore there was no problem anymore. So 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:57.319 what we they're going to do? They were going to 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:01.040 have liberty as their load star. So they adopted liberty. 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:04.640 From the point of view of economics. They decided that 0:11:04.679 --> 0:11:07.640 the free market was the solution to everything that was 0:11:07.640 --> 0:11:11.000 wrong in the world. I remember missus Thatcher thinking saying, 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:13.920 in fact that if everything in Britain was run like 0:11:14.000 --> 0:11:18.400 Marks and Spencer iconic store, which was at that time 0:11:18.720 --> 0:11:21.760 very well run, then everything will be fine. And I 0:11:21.760 --> 0:11:25.559 remember thinking, none of these conservatives understands that what has 0:11:25.640 --> 0:11:31.440 gone wrong is a denial of the world springs of 0:11:31.559 --> 0:11:36.800 Western culture and Western civilization, which is rooted in biblical values, 0:11:37.080 --> 0:11:41.120 which consists of upholding a set of traditions rooted in 0:11:41.320 --> 0:11:43.960 history going back, in the case of Britain and the West, 0:11:44.200 --> 0:11:47.000 many hundreds of years. And if you get rid of that, 0:11:47.040 --> 0:11:49.680 if you get rid of that scuffolding, the society and 0:11:49.720 --> 0:11:53.560 the culture will implode. It will just disintegrate. It will 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:56.200 no longer know what it is, it will no longer 0:11:57.040 --> 0:11:59.600 love what it is, it will no longer want to 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:04.560 defend itself. And that's exactly what happened. Scroll on down 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:08.600 all these decades and we arrive at now, and there 0:12:08.640 --> 0:12:11.560 are elements on the on on, on what's called the right, 0:12:11.920 --> 0:12:16.120 which do understand this. They understand that in order for 0:12:16.320 --> 0:12:20.160 the Wester survive, it has to reconnect to its core 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:25.480 values rooted in its historic traditions, in its religion. It's 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:29.520 it's its religious basis, uh, and in the institutions that 0:12:29.559 --> 0:12:36.199 have kept it going, but they understand that. But at 0:12:36.240 --> 0:12:40.680 the same time, in America we have seen this faction 0:12:40.840 --> 0:12:44.480 or this this this, this this element in in conservatism 0:12:45.400 --> 0:12:49.520 which kind of got that I think correctly, has itself 0:12:49.559 --> 0:12:53.160 now splintered, and we've seen the emergence of I think 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:57.760 you were alluding to this the Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentez, 0:12:57.800 --> 0:13:02.720 canda own tendency, which has gone down a conspiracy theory 0:13:02.800 --> 0:13:06.880 rabbit hole, which is deeply, deeply anti Semitic and has 0:13:06.920 --> 0:13:11.640 an entirely false idea of what America is and what 0:13:11.679 --> 0:13:14.840 the West is and how they should behave And so 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.560 America is in a state of confusion. Britain is not 0:13:17.679 --> 0:13:20.280 in that state of confusion yet he doesn't have an 0:13:20.280 --> 0:13:24.880 equivalent to Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. It has a 0:13:24.920 --> 0:13:29.160 few fringe actors on the extreme white supremacist right, but 0:13:29.200 --> 0:13:34.040 they really are tiny. But Britain has a different trajectory 0:13:34.880 --> 0:13:39.800 that Britain has. Kind of if you can imagine America 0:13:39.920 --> 0:13:43.640 as being I see it in a sort of pictorial form. 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.520 America is kind of divided down the middle. You have 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:50.480 the people who want to preserve America and Western civilization 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:52.720 on one side, you have the people who want to 0:13:52.760 --> 0:13:54.960 destroy it and replace it by something else. On the 0:13:55.000 --> 0:13:58.560 other among the people who want to preserve it, they 0:13:58.600 --> 0:14:02.880 have shaded off into this lunatic tendency. But basically it's 0:14:02.880 --> 0:14:07.640 a line down the middle Republicans Democrats. In Britain, we 0:14:07.679 --> 0:14:10.959 don't have that line. It's not a line down the middle. 0:14:11.080 --> 0:14:15.840 It's more a kind of diagonal line. The entire system 0:14:16.120 --> 0:14:21.920 has slid, nobody has got it, and so we see 0:14:21.960 --> 0:14:27.200 the arrival the emergence of a populist party reform led 0:14:27.240 --> 0:14:34.040 by a extremely charismatic politician called Nigel Farage, who at 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:36.280 the moment is leading the polls amazingly in a two 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.400 party a very very strong two party system. According to 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.000 the polls, he become Prime minister. There's an election today. 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:44.600 I don't think that's going to happen, But anyway, that's 0:14:44.640 --> 0:14:46.240 not the point. The point is that he's come from 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.680 nowhere because basically the British public has lost faith in 0:14:49.760 --> 0:14:53.560 the entire political system. Now in America, I don't think 0:14:53.560 --> 0:14:55.520 you have that. I think you have a division, a 0:14:55.840 --> 0:14:58.560 very sharp division. So it's a different kind of situation. 0:14:58.680 --> 0:15:02.240 But basically, can servatism has lost the plot for many, 0:15:02.280 --> 0:15:04.640 many years, and that's why we are where we are. 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:09.400 The Pen Dragon Cycle Rise to the Merlin is the 0:15:09.440 --> 0:15:13.080 newest original series from The Daily Wire, an epic seven 0:15:13.120 --> 0:15:17.600 part adaptation of Stephen R. Lawhead's acclaimed novels. I've watched 0:15:17.600 --> 0:15:19.960 the trailers and they are truly breathtaking. This isn't just 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:24.120 another fantasy show. It's a sweeping story of belief, redemption, 0:15:24.320 --> 0:15:27.560 and the origins of Western civilization, told through a bold 0:15:27.600 --> 0:15:31.360 retelling of the Arthurian legend. The Pen Dragon Cycle Rise 0:15:31.400 --> 0:15:34.800 to the Merlin premieres January twenty second, exclusively on Daily 0:15:34.840 --> 0:15:38.040 Wire Plus, watch the new trailer and out at Pendragon 0:15:38.120 --> 0:15:43.720 Series dot com. Well, I really appreciate the deeply false manser. 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:46.320 And again, folks, Melani Phillips, you fought Melanie on X 0:15:46.400 --> 0:15:49.280 at Melanie Latest. She also has a substack crent new 0:15:49.280 --> 0:15:51.600 book which I hold in my hand, The Builder Stone, 0:15:51.640 --> 0:15:53.720 How Jews and Christians built the West and why only 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:56.080 they can save it. I very strongly do recommend it. 0:15:56.120 --> 0:15:59.800 I spend the number of Shabots Jewish shabbitz reading it myself. 0:16:00.240 --> 0:16:02.720 So Melanie, I there's lots of compact there. To be clear, 0:16:02.720 --> 0:16:03.840 I'm not sure we have time for all of it. 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:06.160 But one thing that you said that deeply resonate with 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:10.840 me was this quip about Margaret Thatcher during the nineteen eighties, 0:16:10.880 --> 0:16:13.200 talking about this well run department store and how that 0:16:13.320 --> 0:16:16.440 could or could not solve solve all of our problems. 0:16:16.480 --> 0:16:18.400 And this is something that I've been very critical of 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:19.920 on this side of the pond as well in my 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:24.800 own capacity. Is this notion that that conservatism is really 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:28.800 just interchangeable with classical liberalism, and that that that that 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:31.000 free markets could solve each and every one of our 0:16:31.000 --> 0:16:33.040 problems the world over, that there is no solution for 0:16:33.040 --> 0:16:38.600 which simply deregulating and cutting taxes is not merely necessary, 0:16:38.640 --> 0:16:42.000 but is actually sufficient. I've been extraordinarily critical of of 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:44.560 this myself because it seems to me and I don't 0:16:44.560 --> 0:16:46.720 need to I certainly don't need to describe this to 0:16:46.760 --> 0:16:49.640 a well known British conservative commentator. But going back to 0:16:49.640 --> 0:16:52.840 to and Burk himself in so many great conservative statesmen, 0:16:52.880 --> 0:16:54.840 oftentimes from your side the pond, it seems to be 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:57.880 that the that the that the essence of conservatism is 0:16:57.880 --> 0:17:00.400 this notion that we exist to conserve, as its name 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.720 would imply, and to therefore culturally preserve, as Burke would 0:17:03.720 --> 0:17:06.320 have described it, in this social compact between the dead, 0:17:06.359 --> 0:17:08.760 the living, and the yet unborn. And that raises then 0:17:08.760 --> 0:17:11.479 the obvious question as to what exactly are we conserving there. 0:17:11.480 --> 0:17:12.919 And there's a lot of ways to answer this question, 0:17:13.000 --> 0:17:15.520 but I think you and I would both agree that 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:19.879 it really does ultimately start with the Bible. And this 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:22.760 is itself something of a contentious point, because you do 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:24.680 have some folks here, at least on this side of 0:17:24.680 --> 0:17:26.399 the pond. Do you name some of them, folks like 0:17:26.440 --> 0:17:29.120 Tucker Carlson and so forth, who are trying to essentially 0:17:29.200 --> 0:17:32.040 write the original people of the book, that is to say, 0:17:32.080 --> 0:17:35.000 the Jewish people out of the story, out of the 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:37.880 story of the United States of America, and by extension, 0:17:37.960 --> 0:17:41.440 out of the story of Western civilization. There's essentially an 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.840 attempt in information operation to get rid of the Judeo 0:17:44.960 --> 0:17:48.199 from the Judeo Christian in the popular term has been 0:17:48.280 --> 0:17:51.520 used in the United States for many decades now. Now 0:17:51.560 --> 0:17:53.640 you and I both push back on this very strongly 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:56.280 in our in our respective books. There I'm wondering if 0:17:56.320 --> 0:17:59.760 if you could just present that argument in very forthright 0:17:59.800 --> 0:18:04.439 Fams what is the unique contribute To be clear, we 0:18:04.440 --> 0:18:06.800 could speak for hours about this, but perhaps in more 0:18:06.840 --> 0:18:10.560 succinct fashion, what is the most forthright to the point 0:18:10.680 --> 0:18:14.280 case for the unique contributions of the original people of 0:18:14.280 --> 0:18:16.840 the book, the break tradition where generally the Torah and 0:18:16.880 --> 0:18:18.160 all that that entails. 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:22.399 Indeed, it's a tremendously important point, not least because so 0:18:22.480 --> 0:18:25.000 few people really understand it, even people who are sympathetic 0:18:25.040 --> 0:18:29.080 to the Jewish people really don't understand it. The point 0:18:29.160 --> 0:18:37.040 being the absolutely key importance and significance of Judaism to 0:18:37.160 --> 0:18:39.760 the development of the West and to the values that 0:18:39.840 --> 0:18:43.480 everybody holds deer or people who are civilized hold deer. 0:18:43.880 --> 0:18:45.480 I mean, it's such a thing in the West that 0:18:45.560 --> 0:18:49.240 you know, in one compartment is religion, and that stands 0:18:49.240 --> 0:18:52.280 for all bad things, you know, people who don't have education, 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:57.399 people who are irrational, they're superstitious, authoritarian, And in the 0:18:57.440 --> 0:18:59.840 other box is all good things. And that is set. 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:04.840 It's rationality, it's reason, it's science, its progress. And this 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:09.040 couldn't be more wrong because it wasn't the Greeks and 0:19:09.080 --> 0:19:13.040 it wasn't imprinted in our DNA as universal values, the 0:19:13.119 --> 0:19:17.160 values that everybody who is civilized in the West holds dear, 0:19:17.240 --> 0:19:22.400 whether they're secular or religious, are Jewish values. Okay, Christianity 0:19:22.520 --> 0:19:27.280 is the foundational creed of the West, but Christianity doesn't 0:19:27.320 --> 0:19:30.720 come from nowhere, and the principles that animate the West, 0:19:30.720 --> 0:19:35.400 which were brought into the West through Christian Church, are 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.760 basically Jewish values. What do I mean by that? They're 0:19:37.800 --> 0:19:41.120 moral values. They are the values that people take for granted. 0:19:41.560 --> 0:19:44.879 The idea that we all have should have respect for 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.960 every human life. Well, that's only because we believe, or 0:19:49.160 --> 0:19:52.560 the Bible tells us that every human being was made 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:54.760 in the image of God. If you don't believe that, 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.960 you don't respect every human being. The idea of personal 0:19:59.000 --> 0:20:03.440 freedom and political freedom, this is something that's not fully understood. 0:20:03.480 --> 0:20:06.239 I mean people understand if they think about it, that 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:09.160 you know, from the Mosaic Code in the Hebrew Bible, 0:20:09.520 --> 0:20:14.480 mediated through Christianity, we have things like compassion and putting 0:20:14.520 --> 0:20:20.240 other people first and stuff like that, and moral taking, 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:23.439 moral responsibility. These are vital to the West. Without that, 0:20:23.480 --> 0:20:26.720 the West wouldn't have been the moral and therefore the 0:20:27.280 --> 0:20:31.240 civilizational force that it became. But what people don't fully 0:20:31.320 --> 0:20:34.000 understand is that there was something else that was terribly important, 0:20:34.400 --> 0:20:38.919 which was that the principles of that animated the people 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:45.240 in the eighteenth century Christian evangelicals, the Puritans, who were 0:20:45.280 --> 0:20:49.280 the people who are political thinkers in Britain, and they 0:20:49.600 --> 0:20:53.080 basically laid down the template for what became in due 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:58.320 course Britain's constitutional monarchy. It was where the power of 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:02.399 the monarch and the church were constrained by the democratic 0:21:02.400 --> 0:21:08.400 institution of parliament. Now that arose in Britain because those thinkers, 0:21:08.440 --> 0:21:13.800 those eighteenth century evangelicals, drew explicitly on the Hebrew Bible 0:21:14.119 --> 0:21:18.200 and on the example of the Davidic monarchy in ancient Israel, 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:21.960 which had certain key principles, of which perhaps the most 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:25.000 important were two. First of all was the idea that 0:21:25.240 --> 0:21:29.200 law which governs everybody was not something to be handed 0:21:29.240 --> 0:21:33.480 down by a ruler and imposed against everyone's will to 0:21:33.600 --> 0:21:38.200 make everyone do what the ruler wanted. Law. In the 0:21:38.240 --> 0:21:43.000 example of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Kingdom of Israel, 0:21:43.560 --> 0:21:46.600 law was founded in the consent of the people. Going 0:21:46.680 --> 0:21:49.280 back right to the point where Moses came down the 0:21:49.320 --> 0:21:53.320 mountain and said to the people, here's the law. What 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:56.000 do you think, will you do it? And they said, 0:21:56.880 --> 0:22:03.680 we will do and we will hear. And this idea 0:22:04.119 --> 0:22:07.280 that law had to have the consent of all the 0:22:07.320 --> 0:22:13.399 people is absolutely fundamental to modern democratic representative democracy, and 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:16.000 it was revolutionary at the time it was given to 0:22:16.040 --> 0:22:18.400 the West by the Jews. That was the first really 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:22.240 important point. The second equally important point was the idea 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:26.560 of limited government. Okay, there were plenty of monarchs kings 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:30.520 in ancient Israel who were dreadful tyrants and you know, ghastly, 0:22:31.040 --> 0:22:35.520 but the template was limited government that the kings of 0:22:35.560 --> 0:22:39.920 ancient Israel understood, or should have understood, that above them 0:22:40.240 --> 0:22:43.080 was the Almighty. They were not the supreme ruler. I mean, 0:22:43.280 --> 0:22:47.840 in ancient civilizations, the ruler was supreme. Nobody was above 0:22:47.880 --> 0:22:51.680 the ruler. The ancient kings of Israel believed that above 0:22:51.720 --> 0:22:55.160 them was the Almighty, and they were in turn surrounded 0:22:55.720 --> 0:22:59.200 at their level by people who constrained their power, people 0:22:59.240 --> 0:23:03.840 called prophets, people called judges, and people call priests. Now 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:08.800 that principle also was understood by the framers of British 0:23:08.840 --> 0:23:13.280 parliamentary democracy. This idea of limited government, and the idea 0:23:13.520 --> 0:23:18.280 that again in the King David did this. You basically 0:23:18.520 --> 0:23:24.440 unite what would otherwise be warring tribes into a united kingdom. 0:23:24.880 --> 0:23:30.000 These were revolutionary concepts, and those people in Britain who 0:23:30.760 --> 0:23:34.640 produced the template for what became Britain's parliamentary democracy went 0:23:34.720 --> 0:23:40.080 to America, founded America and founded your constitution. And you know, 0:23:40.280 --> 0:23:47.320 American constitutional documents are absolutely studied with the explicit references 0:23:47.359 --> 0:23:51.280 to the Hebrew Bible. So the importance of Judaism to 0:23:51.359 --> 0:23:54.560 the development of America and the development of the West 0:23:54.800 --> 0:23:59.480 cannot be overestimated. That's ancient Israel and ancient Judaism or 0:23:59.560 --> 0:24:01.320 Judaism from ancient. 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:06.000 Times extraordinarily, Will argued again. Melanie Phillips is the author, 0:24:06.040 --> 0:24:07.760 most recently of the book that I hold in my hand, 0:24:07.800 --> 0:24:10.080 The Builderstone, How Jews and Christians built the West and 0:24:10.080 --> 0:24:14.719 why only they can save it availble everywhere books are purchased. Melanie, 0:24:14.720 --> 0:24:17.119 I'm gonna play Devil's advocate for just a moment's here, 0:24:17.119 --> 0:24:20.280 and then perhaps we'll move on to more contemporary political issues, 0:24:20.280 --> 0:24:22.240 of which I would love your opinion on some of 0:24:22.280 --> 0:24:24.240 them as well. And the Devil's Adam. The question is 0:24:24.320 --> 0:24:30.920 essentially this, Let's say hypothetically that I am sympathetic to 0:24:31.160 --> 0:24:33.760 Tucker Carlson's arguments here. And one of the reasons that 0:24:33.800 --> 0:24:37.200 I'm sympathetic is because, although, let's conceive the sake of 0:24:37.320 --> 0:24:40.880 argument that Genesis one twenty seven, Deuteronomy seventeen, which you're 0:24:40.920 --> 0:24:43.440