WEBVTT - Why Is Europe Choosing To Replace Itself? 0:00:03.520 --> 0:00:06.360 My name is Charlie Kirk. I run the largest pro 0:00:06.400 --> 0:00:09.960 American student organization in the country, fighting for the future 0:00:10.080 --> 0:00:13.360 of our republic. My call is to fight evil and 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:16.520 to proclaim truth. If the most important thing for you 0:00:16.960 --> 0:00:19.919 is just feeling good, you're gonna end up miserable. But 0:00:20.000 --> 0:00:23.200 if the most important thing is doing good, you'll end 0:00:23.280 --> 0:00:26.400 up purposeful. College is a scam, everybody. You got to 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:28.600 stop sending your kids to college. You should get married 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:31.160 as young as possible and have as many kids as possible. 0:00:31.240 --> 0:00:33.280 Go start at turning point, you would say, college chapter. 0:00:33.479 --> 0:00:35.599 Go start aturning point, you say high school chapter. Go 0:00:35.640 --> 0:00:37.839 find out how your church can get involved. Sign up 0:00:37.880 --> 0:00:39.839 and become an activist. I gave my life to the 0:00:39.880 --> 0:00:43.159 Lord in fifth grade, most important decision I ever made 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:45.080 in my life, and I encourage you to do the same. 0:00:45.200 --> 0:00:49.720 Here I am Lord, Use me. Buckle up, everybody, Here 0:00:50.400 --> 0:00:58.800 we go. The Charlie Kirk Show is proudly sponsored by 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:02.960 Preserved Gold, leading gold and silver experts and the only 0:01:03.040 --> 0:01:07.000 precious metals company. I recommend to my family, friends and viewers. 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:14.000 I could say the only conservative professor at Cambridge University, 0:01:14.280 --> 0:01:16.759 doctor Orr, who is a contributing editor for Heritaane Culture 0:01:16.760 --> 0:01:22.319 at gb News, Doctor James or everybody here to be 0:01:22.360 --> 0:01:25.080 with you, Charlie, doctor or great to see you. First. 0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.039 I want to just you know, you sat through the presentation, 0:01:28.760 --> 0:01:32.120 You've been around all of this as a as a 0:01:32.120 --> 0:01:35.240 brit as a professor. What is your take on this 0:01:35.400 --> 0:01:37.240 whole thing we have gone on here? 0:01:37.600 --> 0:01:39.479 Well, I got to say, first off, I was saying 0:01:39.480 --> 0:01:42.200 to Andrew earlier, it's pretty overwhelming for a brit like 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:46.880 me to see the scale of your success and of 0:01:46.920 --> 0:01:50.800 your ambition, what you've achieved. There's that, you know, lots 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:54.240 of lots of students at Cambridge claim they want to 0:01:54.600 --> 0:01:57.000 change the world, that they can go into jobs that 0:01:57.040 --> 0:01:58.280 are going to change the world. And I thought to 0:01:58.320 --> 0:02:01.280 myself this morning, you really could say that you are 0:02:01.360 --> 0:02:03.680 changing the world. As America goes, so goes the world, 0:02:04.160 --> 0:02:08.040 and that's what you're doing. You're doing extraordinary things in 0:02:08.040 --> 0:02:12.840 transforming America, recalling it to its founding ideals, promoting people 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:16.639 of caliber and character and courage, particularly among the young. 0:02:16.680 --> 0:02:19.119 This is a huge problem for us on the right 0:02:19.360 --> 0:02:21.160 in Britain and we're working very hard on it. And 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:26.120 I just felt both envious but also excited because I 0:02:26.120 --> 0:02:29.200 thought we can we can bottle some courtjuice and take 0:02:29.240 --> 0:02:32.079 it over to Britain, and we need to work out 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:33.880 what the DNA is, and we need to try to 0:02:34.240 --> 0:02:36.880 replicate it as best we can. It's hard to do that, 0:02:37.080 --> 0:02:40.880 particularly if you're a movement that's focusing on national pride 0:02:40.960 --> 0:02:44.360 and national distinctiveness and sovereignty and so on. You can't 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.160 just copy and paste everything that you're doing. Of course, 0:02:47.160 --> 0:02:50.360 with a very different constitutional setup, very different electoral dynamics, 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:53.600 very different challenges in many ways. But I think philosophically 0:02:53.960 --> 0:02:56.680 we're very much there. We're very much on the same page. 0:02:56.720 --> 0:02:58.400 That is to say, we want to work out what 0:02:58.480 --> 0:03:00.600 the not so much what the politic of left and 0:03:00.680 --> 0:03:02.640 right is. I think that's the sort of the politics, 0:03:02.639 --> 0:03:04.600 the philosophy of the what I call the Long twentieth 0:03:04.680 --> 0:03:07.600 century nineteen fourteen to twenty sixteen. I think the Long 0:03:07.639 --> 0:03:10.560 twentieth century ended in twenty sixteen, and the politics of 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.120 left and right ended in twenty sixteen, and we're now 0:03:13.160 --> 0:03:17.000 talking about the politics of national preference, the politics of 0:03:17.080 --> 0:03:20.280 national interest. This is still still kind of shocking to 0:03:20.320 --> 0:03:22.720 the liberal ear, but this is the direction of travel 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:24.760 for the new Right on both sides of the Atlantic. 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.240 So what do you mean by that the long twentieth century. 0:03:27.400 --> 0:03:29.960 Well, so historians like to talk about this that you know, 0:03:30.000 --> 0:03:33.280 we periodizing in history is always very very very difficult, 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.720 and you know, it turns out that that human development 0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:41.080 doesn't always obey neat neat time periods. But of course 0:03:41.120 --> 0:03:43.520 we know what we mean by the twentieth century. But 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:45.800 I think there are these sort of history doesn't quite 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.920 obey those neat kind of neat neat even divisions. And 0:03:49.960 --> 0:03:53.120 so historians will sometimes talk about the long nineteenth century 0:03:53.120 --> 0:03:55.760 that sort of began roughly in eighteen fifteen and probably 0:03:55.960 --> 0:03:59.040 ended in nineteen fourteen, right, eighteen fifteen Congress of Vienna, 0:03:59.520 --> 0:04:02.320 and then really you've got this extraordinary period of peace 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:05.160 in Europe, and then nineteen fourteen is really the point 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:08.080 at which that piece explodes. And so I think also 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:10.720 we can talk about the long twentieth century persisting in 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.960 some ways beyond twenty to twenty sixteen as a fundamental 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:18.760 watershed moment in how we think about national flourishing, how 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.280 we think about politics, how we think about the organizing 0:04:21.360 --> 0:04:25.640 axes and horizons of national flourishing, of mutual flourish. 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:28.040 Was that Brexit plus Trump? Is that why you think 0:04:28.080 --> 0:04:31.479 twenty sixteen was the year that began the twenty first century. 0:04:31.520 --> 0:04:33.640 I think that's right. I think it's always easy to 0:04:33.680 --> 0:04:36.240 conflate the two phenomena. They had distinct phenomena in lots 0:04:36.279 --> 0:04:39.120 of ways, but there's lots of overlaps too, and I 0:04:39.160 --> 0:04:41.719 think that it really marks a moment of change in 0:04:41.760 --> 0:04:44.400 the West. And it's very convenient point. It's not just 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:47.480 Brexit and Trump, it's also the rise of pronation national 0:04:47.560 --> 0:04:50.800 conservative movements all across Europe. You're seeing it with Vaux 0:04:50.920 --> 0:04:53.080 in Spain, You're seeing it with Jager in Portugal, You're 0:04:53.080 --> 0:04:56.640 seeing with AfD in Germany. You're seeing it with the 0:04:56.680 --> 0:05:02.320 Hassean blemm Nacnale in France, the Fertlli del Italia in Australia, 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:06.000 seeing it in Italy, I'm sorry, and in Austria as well, 0:05:06.040 --> 0:05:09.160 all over Europe. For deaths in Hungary and going at 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:11.800 different speeds. And you know, one of the challenges Conservatives 0:05:11.839 --> 0:05:13.960 are always trying to conserve what is our own and 0:05:13.960 --> 0:05:16.360 so it's actually very difficult to form. What of the 0:05:16.360 --> 0:05:18.840 Communists used to have a comm Intern. It's very difficult 0:05:18.839 --> 0:05:22.000 to have a con intern because you know, Marx could 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:25.560 say workers of the World unite, the progressives can say 0:05:25.720 --> 0:05:29.760 Wokesters of the world unite. Right, it's a fundamentally transnational ideology. 0:05:29.800 --> 0:05:32.119 That's that's very very powerful. This is a movement something 0:05:32.120 --> 0:05:35.360 that moves in lockstep before conserving our own nations. It's 0:05:35.440 --> 0:05:38.240 much harder to have that sense of international solidarity. But 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:40.800 you know, I think various movements have tried to catalyze that, 0:05:40.880 --> 0:05:43.520 in the National Conservatism movement, which I'm proudly that the 0:05:43.600 --> 0:05:45.680 chair of in the UK is helping to do that, 0:05:46.240 --> 0:05:49.360 and and so yeah, that's that's a big challenge. 0:05:49.440 --> 0:05:53.040 So so what do you think led towards that national 0:05:53.040 --> 0:05:56.080 conservatism moment? And let's go a step back and also 0:05:56.200 --> 0:05:59.720 take a moment introduce yourself. You you teach the Western 0:05:59.800 --> 0:06:01.960 care at Cambridge. Correct. 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:06.440 I wouldn't say I'm not allowed to teach the Western canon, 0:06:06.520 --> 0:06:08.040 so it would be sort of too big. But to 0:06:08.040 --> 0:06:10.800 give you an example, I teach a program in moral 0:06:10.800 --> 0:06:16.680 philosophy from Plato through to Nietzsche, that includes Aristotle, that 0:06:16.720 --> 0:06:20.200 includes August and inclusive Quinas cant Hume. So as much 0:06:20.240 --> 0:06:22.720 of the kind of classic Western philosophers as I can 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:26.000 fit in and then and then I also teach an 0:06:26.080 --> 0:06:30.560 Enfild program. But probably speaking, yes, I teach Western philosophers 0:06:30.839 --> 0:06:33.680 without the but not through the prism and not through 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:35.760 the lens of kind of critical theory. I try not 0:06:35.839 --> 0:06:39.720 to politicize my teaching in any way. Of course, that 0:06:39.839 --> 0:06:44.480 itself is a political act these days. Just trying to 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.000 be neutral, trying to try to listen to these ancient, 0:06:47.560 --> 0:06:49.800 ancient thinkers on their own terms and not trying to 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:54.240 force ideological kind of masks onto them. But but yes, 0:06:54.279 --> 0:06:57.040 I see myself very much, you know, as trying to 0:06:57.080 --> 0:06:59.520 pass on what is best in the Western tradition. I 0:06:59.560 --> 0:07:03.479 think really universities have only three primary purposes. That is, 0:07:03.520 --> 0:07:08.080 to pursue the truth, to preserve the truth, and to 0:07:08.320 --> 0:07:10.480 pass on the truth. And then those are the kind 0:07:10.480 --> 0:07:12.040 of you know, there's a little bit crude, but those 0:07:12.080 --> 0:07:13.520 are the kind of the three piece. Those are the 0:07:13.520 --> 0:07:15.760 sort of three That's the way I sort of think 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:18.800 about what I'm doing. So partly it is preserving the 0:07:18.800 --> 0:07:21.560 best of what has been said and thought in the West, 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:24.320 but it's also not wanting to kind of you know, 0:07:24.920 --> 0:07:27.360 be kind of inert in that always having that sort 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:31.560 of sense of looking forward, testing, always you know, probing, 0:07:31.600 --> 0:07:34.720 searching for new things, being open to novelty, open to change, 0:07:34.880 --> 0:07:37.600 but kind of anchored, anchored in the great in the 0:07:37.600 --> 0:07:38.440 great Western tradition. 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:41.880 So with that, with that backdrop, post World War two, 0:07:42.120 --> 0:07:46.840 there was somewhat of a new world order that was established, 0:07:46.880 --> 0:07:50.480 the neoliberal world order, and it was one that was 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:55.640 based on free trade, that was based on both American 0:07:55.720 --> 0:08:02.800 dominance but also kind of NATO expansionism, international cooperation, some 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:08.440 could call it globalism, and liberalism seemed to be an inevitability. 0:08:08.600 --> 0:08:11.440 The famous book End of History by Francis Fukiyama is 0:08:11.480 --> 0:08:13.920 what lateeen eighties of that mistake ninety two, okay, nineteen 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:17.760 ninety two, where he basically said, this is it. We've 0:08:17.800 --> 0:08:21.119 reached it. Like all the ideas that have been tried 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.520 have led us to this moment. Classical liberalism, whatever you 0:08:24.560 --> 0:08:26.680 want to call it, liberalism is the best it's going 0:08:26.720 --> 0:08:32.520 to get. And congratulations, humanity. History is over. What happened 0:08:32.559 --> 0:08:36.360 from Fukiyama in nineteen ninety two to now what you 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:39.520 say twenty sixteen to now where you go from this 0:08:40.120 --> 0:08:44.600 kind of hubristic prideful, you know, kind of exaltation of 0:08:44.640 --> 0:08:47.600 liberalism to a completely different moment right now. 0:08:47.760 --> 0:08:50.720 Yeah, Well, that book The End of History by Francis 0:08:50.800 --> 0:08:54.880 Fukuyama is it's a fascinating kind of moment of sort 0:08:54.960 --> 0:08:58.040 of kind of hubris, you might say it kind of 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:00.800 misplaced optimism. But if you read the ververy end of 0:09:00.840 --> 0:09:02.840 that book, the actual full title of the book is 0:09:02.840 --> 0:09:05.800 The End of History and the Last Man. And he 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.440 has this fascinating kind of final chapter or two of 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:11.400 that book where he says, look, actually, this sort of 0:09:11.440 --> 0:09:13.920 sense of this end of history dispensation where where everything 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:16.079 is we've hit the SunNet uplands of the kind of 0:09:16.160 --> 0:09:19.400 liberal utopia and peace and prosperity for all that in 0:09:19.440 --> 0:09:23.880 the end is not going to satisfy man's instinct. And 0:09:23.960 --> 0:09:26.559 this is particularly this is what he calls the thumos. 0:09:26.920 --> 0:09:29.040 This is this is if we think of Plato's like 0:09:29.120 --> 0:09:34.040 three level three leveled soul. You've got the noose at 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:35.959 the top of the mind. Then you've got the thumos, 0:09:36.000 --> 0:09:37.760 which is courage. That's just the sort of sense of 0:09:38.360 --> 0:09:40.680 that the kind of bit the spirit that animates us. 0:09:40.760 --> 0:09:42.520 And then you've got the epithumia, which is kind of 0:09:42.520 --> 0:09:44.360 the base appetites, and Plato says you gonna have all 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:47.440 three of these in check. And what Fukuyama says is 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:49.480 that there's a real danger that with this kind of 0:09:49.480 --> 0:09:51.400 the in the sun lit uplands of the kind of 0:09:51.400 --> 0:09:55.320 globalized utopia, we're going to suppress the thumos. But that 0:09:55.360 --> 0:09:57.920 thumos is not going anyway, it's not going away. It 0:09:58.000 --> 0:10:01.680 will come back. And so he's very he's not he's 0:10:01.720 --> 0:10:04.240 not quite as naive as that, And I think what's happened, 0:10:04.440 --> 0:10:06.360 you know, that question might think of the quest for 0:10:06.400 --> 0:10:09.079 thumos as the search for identity. In fact, Fukuyama wrote 0:10:09.080 --> 0:10:12.200 a very interesting book on identity where he sort of 0:10:12.280 --> 0:10:14.720 starts to conceive that the kind of sort of Berkeley 0:10:14.720 --> 0:10:17.480 liberalism was never really going to deliver the goods. And 0:10:17.559 --> 0:10:19.839 so I think, you know, the suppression of that sense 0:10:19.880 --> 0:10:22.520 of sense of self, sense of rootedness, sense of home, 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:24.760 sense of distinctiveness and what we are and what we 0:10:24.800 --> 0:10:28.079 love that was never going to be sort of erased 0:10:28.280 --> 0:10:31.120 by the liberal doctrines of a book and of a 0:10:31.120 --> 0:10:35.360 blank slate, doctrines of human nature. We're rooted, we're rooted 0:10:35.440 --> 0:10:38.920 human beings. We're related to what's around us. We're conservative 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:41.160 about what we love most about what's closest to us, 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.480 and that's never going to go away. And we got 0:10:44.480 --> 0:10:46.480 to face up to reality as it is given to 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:47.760 us and not as we would like it to be. 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:49.920 But what went wrong with the liberal project? 0:10:50.280 --> 0:10:53.079 Well, I think the fundamental problem with the liberal project 0:10:53.120 --> 0:10:56.400 is that it's grounded on fundamentally mistaken assumptions about what 0:10:56.440 --> 0:10:59.640 it is to be human. The basic idea is that 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:04.599 human beings are born into the world with completely independent, 0:11:04.920 --> 0:11:08.319 completely blank, completely blank slate. This is lots of view 0:11:08.360 --> 0:11:10.800 of the table erasa or the white page, and we're 0:11:10.840 --> 0:11:15.520 completely free of all unchosen obligations, and there can be 0:11:15.559 --> 0:11:19.360 no obligations that we don't ourselves choose. And this is 0:11:19.440 --> 0:11:22.120 just a complete fantasy. I don't think it's an accident 0:11:22.200 --> 0:11:25.200 that the great liberal philosos like John Locke and Emmanuel 0:11:25.240 --> 0:11:29.240 Kant never had any children. Anyone who's had anyone's had 0:11:29.240 --> 0:11:32.720 a child will understand that the radical nature of dependency, 0:11:33.360 --> 0:11:35.360 that most basic bond we're born into the world with, 0:11:35.400 --> 0:11:38.599 that most literally with a physical bond we're attached to 0:11:38.600 --> 0:11:41.520 as a physical bond to our to our mothers, and 0:11:41.600 --> 0:11:44.400 so that was always going to be a problem. That 0:11:44.440 --> 0:11:48.760 we're not blank slates. We are connected. We flourish most 0:11:48.840 --> 0:11:51.559 when we're connected to what is closest to us. That 0:11:51.880 --> 0:11:54.959 and it's not natural to love what is closest to us. 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.280 I was in France. I think last month up in 0:11:58.280 --> 0:12:01.440 the mountains is beautiful shadow dressing. Some must have been 0:12:01.480 --> 0:12:06.040 fifty or sixty. I suppose conservative right wing students from 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:08.679 all across I think probably you know, twenty five different nations. 0:12:09.080 --> 0:12:10.800 And I opened. I wasn't quite sure what I was 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:12.600 going to say to them, that the organizers hadn't been 0:12:12.720 --> 0:12:16.080 very clear. So I found myself beginning the session by saying, 0:12:17.320 --> 0:12:20.400 who here has got the best mum in the world? 0:12:22.960 --> 0:12:27.400 And every hand went up, and they looked around and 0:12:27.559 --> 0:12:30.560 they started laughing at each other, and I said, notice 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.920 what you're not doing right now. You're not arguing with 0:12:33.960 --> 0:12:38.679 each other. You're not discussing what are the proper optimality 0:12:38.760 --> 0:12:44.440 criteria of being a mother. You're not there would be 0:12:45.040 --> 0:12:49.200 a crazy, you know, inhuman thing to do. It's a 0:12:49.200 --> 0:12:51.680 totally natural thing to think that your mum is the 0:12:51.679 --> 0:12:55.360 best mum in the world. And then I said, who 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:58.680 here lives in the best country in the world. And 0:12:58.760 --> 0:13:03.319 everybody's hands went up. And my point was, I don't 0:13:03.360 --> 0:13:05.920 owe you an argument for why my country is the 0:13:05.920 --> 0:13:07.480 best country in the world any more than I owe 0:13:07.520 --> 0:13:10.400 you an argument for why my mum is the best 0:13:10.640 --> 0:13:13.440 mum in the world. Somebody who asks for an argument 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:16.960 has had what the philosopher Bernard Williams calls one thought 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:20.960 too many. That the person who has one thought too 0:13:21.000 --> 0:13:22.960 many is like the guy the utilitarian. He walks up 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:25.120 to the river and he sees two women drowning, his 0:13:25.200 --> 0:13:29.600 wife and a strange woman, and stops to ask, what 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:32.280 if that strange woman might win the Nobel Prize in 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:37.280 Public economics? That person has had one thought too many. 0:13:37.800 --> 0:13:41.760 It is a totally natural disposition of every human to 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.960 love what is closest to their own. Aquinas sees this. 0:13:45.559 --> 0:13:47.160 Aristotle sees it is at the beginning one of the 0:13:47.200 --> 0:13:50.480 greatest works of politics ever written. Book one, page one 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:54.120 of Aristotle's Politics, he says, how do we think about 0:13:54.160 --> 0:13:56.280 how we get on? How do we think about the 0:13:56.320 --> 0:14:00.680 life of the police? Politica says, well, you know, we're 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:02.840 born into the world and we're dependent upon each other 0:14:03.120 --> 0:14:06.520 male female, Men and women will bond, then they will have, 0:14:06.800 --> 0:14:09.800 then they will pro create. There'll be a family, a household, 0:14:09.840 --> 0:14:12.640 and oycosts, but that won't be enough. That will be 0:14:12.720 --> 0:14:15.079 enough for daily needs, but it won't be enough for 0:14:15.240 --> 0:14:17.720 sort of you know, non date more than daily needs. 0:14:17.720 --> 0:14:19.960 So you'll have a village and the village will come together, 0:14:20.240 --> 0:14:21.960 but that won't be enough either. You will need to 0:14:22.000 --> 0:14:24.880 grow into a polus for self defense and so on, 0:14:25.360 --> 0:14:28.480 a city state as it were, a country, a nation, 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:31.960 and that Aristotle thinks, okay, that's for pretty small in 0:14:31.960 --> 0:14:35.240 the fifth fourth century BC Greece. But but that was 0:14:35.280 --> 0:14:37.800 the functioning, that was the way in which Aristotle that 0:14:37.840 --> 0:14:40.640 was that was this kind of optimal size for human 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:45.480 beings to flourish too as it worked get fulfill their 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:48.520 their their proper ends as human beings. And I think 0:14:48.560 --> 0:14:51.120 that's still the basic way of thinking about things. I 0:14:51.120 --> 0:14:53.560 think it's it's really what you see in Aquitas. I 0:14:53.600 --> 0:14:55.560 think it's what you see in the Bible as well. 0:14:55.880 --> 0:14:59.360 Wow, that's there's so much thereat out to to think about. 0:15:01.960 --> 0:15:04.640 We're honored to be partnering with Alan Jackson Ministries and 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:07.320 today I want to point you to their podcast. It's 0:15:07.360 --> 0:15:11.560 called Culture in Christianity, the Alan Jackson Podcast. What makes 0:15:11.600 --> 0:15:15.000 it unique is Pastor Allan's biblical perspective. He takes the 0:15:15.040 --> 0:15:17.520 truth from the Bible and applies it to issues we're 0:15:17.520 --> 0:15:21.520 facing today, gender confusion, abortion, immigration, Doge Trump, and the 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:24.360 White House issues in the church. He doesn't just discuss 0:15:24.440 --> 0:15:27.200 the problems in every episode, he gives practical things we 0:15:27.240 --> 0:15:28.600 can do to make a difference. 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:29.600 His guests have. 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:33.520 Incredible expertise and powerful testimonies. They've been great friends and 0:15:33.520 --> 0:15:35.400 now you can hear from Charlie in his own words. 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:37.800 Each episode will make you recognize the power of your 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:40.800 faith and how God can use your life to impact 0:15:40.840 --> 0:15:44.280 our world today. The Culture in Christianity podcast is informative 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.200 and encouraging. You could find it on YouTube, Spotify, or 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:49.920 wherever you get your podcasts. Be sure to subscribe so 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:53.080 you don't miss any episodes. Alan Jackson Ministries is working 0:15:53.080 --> 0:15:56.160 hard to bring biblical truth back into our culture. You 0:15:56.200 --> 0:15:58.880 can find out more about Pastor Allen and the ministry 0:15:59.080 --> 0:16:05.160 at Alan Jackson Forward slash Charlie. So let's go. Let's 0:16:05.240 --> 0:16:08.720 let's pull one of those threads, which is that all 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:12.840 the French young people at that chateau will raise their hand. 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:16.440 Who lives in the greatest nation? Why does Europe not 0:16:16.720 --> 0:16:21.600 vote or believe that vocally in any of their politics. 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.120 Let's now center our conversation around Continental Europe, and then 0:16:25.120 --> 0:16:27.800 we'll make our way to your home, if I may 0:16:27.800 --> 0:16:30.640 say so. Continental Europe is a husk of its former self. 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:35.440 It's an open air museum. It's sad, it's depressing. There 0:16:35.440 --> 0:16:38.760 are pockets obviously of joy and of history. But I 0:16:38.760 --> 0:16:40.440 think you would agree, doctor, or it's not what it 0:16:40.560 --> 0:16:43.600 used to be. How did that happen? World War Two? 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:47.520 The West one? Right? And now we look in twenty 0:16:47.520 --> 0:16:51.200 twenty five, Europe is an unrecognizable continent in more ways 0:16:51.280 --> 0:16:51.600 than one. 0:16:52.080 --> 0:16:54.640 Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, and we would it 0:16:54.680 --> 0:16:57.360 would take a very, very kind of long, long conversation 0:16:57.480 --> 0:16:59.400 to really get to the bottom of it. I mean, 0:16:59.440 --> 0:17:01.480 one book i'd really recommend on this is actually by 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:05.679 an American, Christopher Caldwell, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe. 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:08.000 This is actually goes way back. It's two thousand and nine, 0:17:08.040 --> 0:17:09.879 which is a long time considering what's happened in the 0:17:09.920 --> 0:17:13.479 intervening period. But I think Caldwell really sort of it's 0:17:13.520 --> 0:17:16.560 an incredibly prescient book, and he starts to see the 0:17:16.640 --> 0:17:20.320 kind of the sort of conditions of the unraveling kind 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:23.040 of kicking in. And you're right. You know, after the 0:17:23.040 --> 0:17:24.960 Second World War that the French had what they call 0:17:25.000 --> 0:17:29.480 the tont Glorias, the thirty glorious years in Germany. You have, 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:31.760 at least in West Germany, you have the vis chap under. 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:36.240 You know, this economic miracle, this extraordinary explosion of economic 0:17:36.240 --> 0:17:41.000 flourishing and national self confidence in West Germany. And I suppose, 0:17:41.480 --> 0:17:44.119 you know, nineteen eighty nine has got to feature somehow 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:47.080 in the story of Europe's decline or Europe's sort of 0:17:47.480 --> 0:17:50.240 wants that, you know, the great bugbear of the Soviet 0:17:50.320 --> 0:17:54.560 Union and that great enemy of freedom everywhere had been dissolved. 0:17:54.800 --> 0:17:57.080 Then I think there was a sense of, well, you know, 0:17:57.359 --> 0:17:59.240 before that, there was a sense of what are we for? 0:17:59.840 --> 0:18:03.760 We know what we're for. We're for freedom, and this 0:18:03.800 --> 0:18:05.919 is something that is pretty uncomplicated, and it's going to 0:18:05.920 --> 0:18:08.840 stitch us together as a kind of as the West. 0:18:09.000 --> 0:18:10.879 It was easy to think about the West, and it 0:18:10.920 --> 0:18:13.119 was easy to think about the rest. And I think 0:18:13.200 --> 0:18:16.399 after the nineteen eighty nine into the nineteen nineties before 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:18.439 the Wall that the fall of the Wall in a 0:18:18.480 --> 0:18:20.919 way sort of starts to mark the beginning of the 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:23.760 kind of questioning what are we about? What is our story? 0:18:23.800 --> 0:18:26.200 What are we for? As a fascinating moment in two 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:28.760 thousand and four, when the European Union is trying to 0:18:28.840 --> 0:18:32.400 work out a constitution. In the end it fails because 0:18:32.400 --> 0:18:35.560 it can't agree on anything really, and there's a huge 0:18:35.560 --> 0:18:38.560 debate about what goes in the preamble of the constitution. 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:40.680 Where how do we set out right at the beginning 0:18:40.680 --> 0:18:44.080 of constitution we the European Union? Who are we? What 0:18:44.160 --> 0:18:46.880 makes us we? What makes us a wei? They said, well, 0:18:47.080 --> 0:18:50.680 our Hellenic inheritance, Greece and Rome, the classical inheritance, yes, 0:18:51.280 --> 0:18:55.600 the Enlightenment inheritance as well. No mention of the Hybreic 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:58.879 or the Christian inheritance. This was seen to be something 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:02.280 that was, you know, low status, not something that wanted 0:19:02.280 --> 0:19:05.040 to be admitted. John Paul the Second is right towards 0:19:05.080 --> 0:19:07.800 the end of his life two thousand and four and 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:11.200 got involved in Italian politicians got involved. There's a huge 0:19:11.200 --> 0:19:14.000 fight about it, and in the end the decision was, no, 0:19:14.080 --> 0:19:16.440 we're not going to have any recognition of the fact 0:19:16.480 --> 0:19:18.600 that the European Union is in any way at all 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:20.679 the successor to what it really was a successor to, 0:19:21.080 --> 0:19:23.920 namely Christendom and the Holy Roman Empire, and that which 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:27.439 stitched Europe together as a sort of self conscious collective 0:19:27.560 --> 0:19:30.600 entity that was gone. And I don't want to overstate 0:19:30.640 --> 0:19:32.920 that too much, but I think that it was an indicator, 0:19:32.920 --> 0:19:37.360 an index into the way in which the Europeans were 0:19:37.400 --> 0:19:41.360 beginning to run out of a sense of who are we, 0:19:41.840 --> 0:19:46.040 what are we for, where do we come from? And then, 0:19:46.080 --> 0:19:48.400 of course, with the emergence of a kind of technocratic, 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:53.800 democratically unaccountable potent in parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg, the 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:56.800 parliament is in both places. Wait for this, for one 0:19:56.840 --> 0:20:00.600 hundred million, one hundred million years a year, the European 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:04.320 Parliament moves from Brussels to Strasbourg. I think it's every 0:20:04.320 --> 0:20:06.080 fortnight back and forth. 0:20:06.320 --> 0:20:07.480 How long is a fortnite? 0:20:07.880 --> 0:20:09.680 Sorry too, you didn't have fortnits over here? For it's 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:11.120 fourteen days, two weeks. 0:20:10.960 --> 0:20:12.399 We do, or just trying to fortnite? 0:20:12.600 --> 0:20:14.480 So two and it just just to think of that 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:17.080 they can't kind of couldn't resolve something as basic as that. 0:20:17.920 --> 0:20:19.120 But they moved back and forth. 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:21.479 They moved back and forth. Yeah, just so the Belgian's hat, 0:20:21.520 --> 0:20:24.240 you know, the kind of Franco German packed is happy. 0:20:24.280 --> 0:20:26.320 And then the sort of you know, the idea of 0:20:26.320 --> 0:20:28.679 there being a European union beyond the Franco German alliance. 0:20:28.680 --> 0:20:29.960 So that's that's what you ge. That's when you go 0:20:30.000 --> 0:20:33.520 to Brussels. So all these crazy things, crazy sort of 0:20:33.520 --> 0:20:37.000 features of the kind of European settlement, and there's a 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.280 kind of democratic deficit, you might say. I used to 0:20:40.280 --> 0:20:42.720 play this parlor game when I was I'm now at Cambridge. 0:20:42.720 --> 0:20:44.720 I was at Oxford in twenty sixteen, just ahead of 0:20:44.720 --> 0:20:46.920 the Brexit vote, and one of the parlor games I 0:20:46.920 --> 0:20:48.879 would play with my I was the only out of 0:20:48.880 --> 0:20:52.520 the closet Brexiteer as far as I know, in the 0:20:52.520 --> 0:20:54.440 whole of this college among I don't know, think about 0:20:54.480 --> 0:20:59.600