Henry V by Shakespeare — Legitimate Authority and the Leader Who Rebuilds (w/Zac Stucki)

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1. Hello, my

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name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is

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the Leadership Lessons from the Great Books Podcast, episode

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number

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199.

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Yes, I’ve done 199 of these. I know, right? Who

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does 199 of anything? And following this episode

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will be our big 200th episode.

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And there’s going to be a lot of folks that are going to be on

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that show. You’re going to want to tune in

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and watch it. It’s going to be, it’s going to be a little bit of

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a, it’s going to be a little bit of a Donniebrook. Or if it’s not

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going to be a Donniebrook, it’ll be one until a Donniebrook shows up.

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I’m going to go open, as I usually do, from our play today because we

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are closing out our month of Shakespeare

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with some lines from one of his more titular

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plays. And I quote from The Bishop of Canterbury,

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Act 1, Scene 2. God and his angels

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guard your sacred throne and make you long become it.

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King Henry. Sure, we thank you. My learned lord, we pray you to proceed and

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justly and religiously unfold by the law. Wait, wait, wait. I’m going to cut

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you off here just a second, Jesan. Do you want me to be Canterbury and

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you can be Henry, or do you want to do vice versa? This is Shakespeare.

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We got to act it, dude. Sure, we can go ahead and do that.

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Let’s go ahead. Yeah. All right. Sure. You go ahead. You’re Bishop of Canterbury. I’ll

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be Henry. Go ahead. All right. God, God and his

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angels guard your sacred throne and make you long become it.

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Sure, we thank you, my learned lord. We pray you to

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proceed and justly and religiously unfold why the law Salic that they have in France,

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or should or should not, bar us in our claim.

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And God forbid, my dear and faithful lord, that you should fashion, wrest, or bow

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your reading, or nicely charge your understanding soul with opening

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titles miscreate, whose right suits not

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in native colors with the truth. For God doth know how

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many now in health shall drop their blood in approbation of what your

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reverence shall incite us to. Therefore, take

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heed how you impawn our person, how you awake our sleeping sword of

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war. We charge you in the name of God, take heed, for never

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two such kingdoms did contend without much fall of blood, whose

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guiltless drops are every one a woe, a sore complaint against

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him whose wrongs gives edge unto the

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swords that make such a waste in brief

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mortality. Under this conjuration, speak, my

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lord, for we will hear, note, and believe in heart

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that which you speak is in your conscience washed as

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pure as sin with baptism.

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Then hear me, gracious sovereign, and you peers that owe

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yourselves, your lives, and services to this imperial throne.

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There is no bar to make against Your Highness’s claim to France but

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this which they produce from Pharamond: interum

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salicum mulieres ne

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succedent. No woman shall succeed in

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Salic land, which Salic land the French

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unjustly glose to be the realm of France and Pharamond, the founder of

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this law and female bar. Yet their own authors faithfully

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affirm that the Salic land is in

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Germany between the floods of Sala and Elbe,

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where Charles the Great, having subdued the Saxons, there left

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behind and settled certain French who holding in

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disdain the German women for some dishonest manners of their life,

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established then this law, to wit,

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no female should be inheritrix in Salic

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land, which Salic, as I said, twixt Elbe and Saale,

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is at this day in Germany called Meissen.

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Then doth it well appear the Salic Law was not

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devised for the realm of France, nor did the French

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possess the Salic land until 401 and

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20 years after defunct King Pharamond,

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idly supposed the founder of this law, who died within the year of

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our redemption 426. And Charles the

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Great subdued the Saxons, and did seat the French beyond the River

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Sala in the year 805. Besides, their

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writers say King Pepin, which deposed Childeric,

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did, as heir general, being descended of Blithild,

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which was daughter to King Chlothar, Make claim and title to the

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crown of France. Hugh Capet also, who

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usurped the crown of Charles, the Duke of Lorraine, sole heir

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male of the true line and stock of Charles the Great,

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to find his title with some shows of truth, though in pure

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truth it was corrupt and naught, conveyed himself as there

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to the Lady Lingère, daughter to Charlemagne, who was the

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son to Louis the Emperor and Louis of Charles the Great.

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Also King Louis X, who was sole heir to the

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usurper Capet, could not keep quiet in his

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conscience, wearing the crown of France, till satisfied

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that fair Queen Isabel his grandmother was lineal of the

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Lady Ermengarde, daughter to Charles the

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foresaid Duke of Lorraine, by the which marriage the line

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of Charles the Great was reunited to the crown

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of France, so that as clear as is the summer’s sun,

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King Pepin’s title and Hugh Capet’s claim,

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King Louis has satisfaction, all appear to hold in right and

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title of the female. So do the kings of France

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unto this day. Howbeit they would hold up this

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Salic law to bar your highness claiming from the female,

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and rather choose to hide them in a net That amply to

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embar their crooked titles usurped from you and your

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progenitors. May I,

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with right and conscience, make this claim?

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The sin upon my head, dread sovereign, for in the Book of Numbers it

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is writ, when the man dies, let the inheritance

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descend unto the daughter. Gracious Lord, stand

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for your own. Unwind your bloody flag. Look

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back into your mighty ancestors. Go, dread lord, to your

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great-grandsire’s tomb, from whom you claim. Invoke his

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warlike spirit, and your great-uncle’s, Edward the Black Prince, who on the

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French ground played tragedy, making defeat on the

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full power of France, while his most mighty father on a hill

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stood smiling to behold his lion’s whelp

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forage in blood of French nobility. O

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noble English, that could entertain with their half— with half their

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forces the pride of France, and let another half

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stand laughing by, all out of work and cold

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for action. We’ll pause

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right there. Our

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guest today is right. You got to read

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Shakespeare. You got to, you got to play the play. The

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play is the thing.

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In our country today, however, We have leaders and

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politicians who, much like the Bishop of Canterbury there,

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and even King Henry himself, sound very convincing

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when they make the case for engaging in warfare and

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conflict. The problem, however, with their,

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with many of their remonstrations to battle is twofold.

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One, less than 0.5% of the available male

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population in the United States of America Has even placed themselves into a

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situation through voluntary military service where a bullet would fly past their

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head in the last 40 years. And 2,

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the number of people who have experienced life outside the school to elite

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job in politics pipeline has become very,

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very thin.

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For older leaders, like the Bishop of

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Canterbury and Bishop of Eli and on the French side, Exeter,

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in this play. This is a real problem from the mentorship and succession

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perspectives. This is, this is a real challenge, this lack of life experience.

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But for younger leaders, it is the same problem, but from a different, and dare

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I say, an even younger angle. It is a problem most notably

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defined by the King of Israel, who came after the great King Solomon

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and then proceeded to listen to the advice of his younger advisors rather than the

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older men who had Faithfully advised his father.

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King Rehoboam is who I’m talking about, and King Rehoboam’s problem is the same

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problem that the king in our play has today: how to

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lead when you don’t know enough to know what questions to ask,

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or really, in some cases, what to do in the first

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place. Our play today, as you’ve

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already heard and seen if you’re watching the video,

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features some of the most famous speeches in the Western literary canon and tradition.

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Yet the flowery nature of the language employed by our author

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elides a deeper truth. Leading people

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in real meaningful ways through real meaningful

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sacrifice requires men— and yes, I am saying

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men here— men to be grave and not double-tongued,

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not given too much to wine, and not greedy of filthy lucre, as

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well as being found blameless and being the husbands of one wife,

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ruling their children and their own houses well.

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And the fact of the matter is, we’ve actually forgotten that

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at this stage in the Republic,

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much to our dismay. But I

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believe it can be recovered if we actually read and

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understand plays like the play we are reading and trying to understand

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today. So today on the show,

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We are going to be covering the Folger Shakespeare

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Library’s edition of The Life of Henry V

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by William Shakespeare.

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Leaders, at the end of the day, you as a

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leader are responsible for every action that happens under your purview

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and under your leadership. And you

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are accountable for addressing every outcome Even for the

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decisions you didn’t make. And by the way,

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that’s a good thing.

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And back to discuss probably the most famous play in all the Western

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literary tradition, person who jumped in and helped us out here,

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who is going to stand in the role of the Bishop of Canterbury and probably

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a couple of other roles as we read through this play, our sections here today,

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is our co-host back from episode number 150,

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where we discussed Sun Tzu’s The Art of War. Hello. Zach

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Stuckey. How you doing, Zach?

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You know, I’m doing great. I got to listen to Henry V like 3

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or 4 times. I got to watch Tom Hiddleston play it.

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It was awesome.

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So I’m going to start off with that, the Tom Hiddleston version. So

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one of the things that you can tell, we’ve talked a lot about this

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in our covering of our Shakespeare plays this This

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year on the podcast, right? So we’ve covered Macbeth. Those of you

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who haven’t listened to that episode should go check that out in

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episode number 197. And then we covered the

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tragedy of Coriolanus with, with John Hill, my good friend

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John Hill. You should go check that out. That’s episode 198. And now we’re covering

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the life, the life, not the tragedy, the life of Henry V, which I find

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interesting here in episode number 199.

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One of the things that we’ve noted in all of those is that

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those plays have all been updated

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film-wise, right, within the last

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few years. So I watched a version of Macbeth that

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had— that co-starred—

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well, what’s his name? Oh, I’m gonna pull it up here. Hold

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on. I always forget his name.

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Here we go.

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It wasn’t Patrick Stewart, was it? It was not Patrick Stewart. It was

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another English actor. He was in— oh

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gosh, it’ll come to me in a minute. I always forget his name. But

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Marion Cotillard was Mrs.

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Macbeth, Queen Macbeth in that version.

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Oh, Michael Fassbender. I always forget. So Michael Fassbender

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played Macbeth. And then Marion Cotillard

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played Mrs. Macbeth, played Queen Macbeth. And then in The

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Tragedy of Coriolanus, I watched the version that was directed by Ralph

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Fiennes and co-starred Vanessa Redgrave, who

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just chewed up scenery, and an actor who never

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mails it in. I always have to say that, Brian Cox. Oh,

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yeah. Brian Cox always brings it. He never He never

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halfway does anything. He, he was great. But

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the, one of the things I noted with reading Henry

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V and then going and looking for a film version of Henry V was

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that, and I did note the Tom Hiddleston version, but I

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noticed that, that, but that’s a, that has been not, that wasn’t a movie. That

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was a BBC play that was filmed. It, it

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was a 2-parter in a TV series that— It was a 2-parter on TV.

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That’s even, see, to me, that’s even worse because The last

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genuine film of Henry V that I could find, and maybe you can correct

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me if I’m wrong, was the one that was directed by Kenneth Branagh in

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1989. Yes. So, so there,

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Henry V is very interesting to me because it

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comes up culturally at different periods in English

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history, and it seems like they bring it back. Like, I don’t know if you

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ever read Red Storm Rising by Tom Clancy, but he talks

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about how they bring up Alexander Novaleski

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or something like that, and his Russian defeat of the Poles.

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And whenever they’re getting ready to do something patriotic, the Soviets—

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like some expansionist thing— the Soviets would show that on their TV.

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It feels very similar to me with Henry V, where you’ve

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got the heart of World War II, you’ve got Laurence Olivier

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in 1944 doing Henry V. ’44.

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Yep. And then you’ve got BBC doing a full

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televised play in the late ’60s, early ’70s,

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right? This is right in the heat of the Cold War. And then you’ve

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got 1989, which is right around the Falklands War.

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And then you’ve got they’re doing it today. And each one has its

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own unique mood. Each one has its own unique things that they decide to cut

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out. The only one that, that is the full text

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is the 1960s BBC one, which is interesting to me.

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But, but the Olivier one, the

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00:16:06,121 –> 00:16:09,760
Kenneth Branagh one, and the Tom Hiddleston one all

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have different things that they’ve chosen to cut and different things that they’ve chosen to

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feature. And it’s very interesting, the messages

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that that sends about what the culture feels like

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it’s facing in that moment. So one of the

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challenges that I think is available to us right now,

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and we’ll, we’ll get into sort of the more— not esoteric, but the more practical

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areas of this. of this play in a minute. But one

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of the more interesting factors to me is the

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current— currently British culture is

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struggling to define what

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it means to be British. Yes.

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And in doing this in the midst of

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If not the dissolution, the defense,

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the defenestration of NATO in the face of, in the face of

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Russian aggression, if we’re going to frame it that way.

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So you have the defenestration of NATO. You have

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the French, interestingly enough, doing French things.

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French people, the French government doing French things, you know, being sneaky

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and conniving and going around and doing the things that the French typically

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do, um, because they’ve determined that they’re the only near-peer power they

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have. They’ve already determined internally that they’re the only near-peer power that’s going to run

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the continent in the next 100 years. They’re the ones.

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And then you have the Germans who’ve basically been defanged and are done.

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Yeah. And so the British are having an

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external identity crisis in the face of old enemies,

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uh, enemies that Shakespeare would have recognized. Yes.

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While at the same time having an internal identity crisis because of

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immigration and because, uh, yeah, mass

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migration, not immigration, but mass migration into their culture

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while also trying to figure out how to keep the lid on,

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for lack of a better term, nativist English folks in the

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countryside who actually do know what it means to be British and actually do

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believe in Britain as a nation state and as a culture.

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And so it doesn’t surprise me that there would be things cut out.

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What surprises me is that no one—

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and this is why I, I sort of pin— I put a pin in the

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Kenneth Branagh version. That was probably the most

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00:18:41,461 –> 00:18:43,419
full-throated version

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of Henry V,

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and I don’t know that you could do a full-throated version of Henry V today.

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Am I incorrect in my thinking on this? I think

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that I would say yes, but with a

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caveat. And that is, is that you see Henry

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V as a placeholder for England

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in these productions. And so at that time where

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you’ve got the Falklands War, you’ve got— shoot,

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00:19:16,615 –> 00:19:20,017
why am I blanking on her name? Iron Lady. Oh, Margaret Thatcher.

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Yes, you have Margaret Thatcher who’s in, in Downing Street.

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People know what it means to be British. Like, they’re, they’re not afraid of that.

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And so, like, you’re in the midst of this war. And I don’t know that

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Kenneth Branagh would like that we’re saying this, but you know what?

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He can deal with it. I’m still a huge fan, but he can deal with

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it. The fact of the matter

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is that

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00:19:46,826 –> 00:19:50,326
because the English knew what it meant to be English and the British knew what

301
00:19:50,358 –> 00:19:53,923
it meant to be British, they could be that

302
00:19:54,051 –> 00:19:57,776
full-throated. Henry could be that full-throated. But

303
00:19:57,969 –> 00:20:01,806
what you see in the Tom Hiddleston version that’s very interesting is

304
00:20:01,903 –> 00:20:05,564
he’s very much looking elsewhere

305
00:20:06,094 –> 00:20:09,305
for guidance. Mm-hmm. And the way that he plays the

306
00:20:09,305 –> 00:20:13,027
performance is I need to learn

307
00:20:13,531 –> 00:20:17,026
how to become a king. That’s how he’s playing the

308
00:20:17,026 –> 00:20:19,666
performance. I, I, but, but,

309
00:20:21,186 –> 00:20:22,754
you know, listening to some of this

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00:20:25,244 –> 00:20:28,747
lecture and analysis of the text, it’s very interesting because there,

311
00:20:29,422 –> 00:20:32,893
a lot of the scholars are saying, no, Henry comes into this play knowing what

312
00:20:32,893 –> 00:20:36,556
it means to be a king. Yeah. And so it’s, it’s interesting

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00:20:36,669 –> 00:20:40,516
to see, to your point, that I don’t think that given the current

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00:20:40,596 –> 00:20:44,428
political climate, they could make a Henry who knows exactly who

315
00:20:44,428 –> 00:20:47,619
he is and who is, who is

316
00:20:47,972 –> 00:20:51,515
coming in as a king doing king things.

317
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And that’s why I think it’s particularly salient to the conversation now,

318
00:20:55,908 –> 00:20:59,628
because a lot of young adults, a lot of young leaders are

319
00:20:59,820 –> 00:21:03,171
learning what it means to be a leader because frankly,

320
00:21:03,684 –> 00:21:06,923
the older generation just hasn’t done a very good job of teaching us.

321
00:21:07,757 –> 00:21:10,786
Yeah, and we’re going to get to, we’re going to get to the dynamics between,

322
00:21:10,963 –> 00:21:14,553
which I haven’t really sort of done a full-throated addressing of that, of that, those

323
00:21:14,586 –> 00:21:18,160
dynamics on this show, but the dynamics of the sort of

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00:21:18,192 –> 00:21:22,040
OK boomer, the very online OK boomer

325
00:21:22,040 –> 00:21:25,855
sort of, and I’ve been watching this coming around for like the last 10, 5

326
00:21:25,887 –> 00:21:29,398
to 10 years, like just growing and growing and growing and growing. And now it’s

327
00:21:29,398 –> 00:21:32,844
starting to spill over into, I was talking with somebody on another project that I’m

328
00:21:32,844 –> 00:21:36,578
involved in. Now it’s starting to spill over into researched

329
00:21:36,578 –> 00:21:40,028
books, which means it’s about to next spill over into public policy,

330
00:21:40,642 –> 00:21:43,840
which means after that it will spill over into law. And that is the

331
00:21:43,840 –> 00:21:47,569
progression of things, of moods out of culture

332
00:21:48,019 –> 00:21:51,842
that then wind up creating laws that bind us

333
00:21:51,842 –> 00:21:55,610
in ways that we would not have asked

334
00:21:55,610 –> 00:21:59,447
for and are unpredictable to us

335
00:21:59,741 –> 00:22:02,715
and to our nature because The thing is,

336
00:22:04,274 –> 00:22:07,682
and I, as a Gen Xer, I say this with all

337
00:22:08,036 –> 00:22:11,139
love to my brethren generation, a couple generations below me.

338
00:22:12,186 –> 00:22:15,504
I hate to be the bearer of bad news. You’re all going to get old.

339
00:22:19,216 –> 00:22:22,462
I hate to be the bearer of bad news. Like, I hate to, I hate

340
00:22:22,462 –> 00:22:26,275
to be that. And eventually you too will be part of a

341
00:22:26,275 –> 00:22:29,929
generation who will be crapped on by people who come

342
00:22:29,962 –> 00:22:33,381
after you. So maybe a little humility on your part

343
00:22:34,120 –> 00:22:37,267
might be a good idea, but we’ll get into that in a second. We’re gonna,

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00:22:37,507 –> 00:22:40,365
we’re gonna, we’re gonna get to that in a second. I want to just add

345
00:22:40,397 –> 00:22:44,090
to what you’re saying. I would argue that we’re already seeing it enacted

346
00:22:44,090 –> 00:22:47,654
into laws now, but okay. Yeah,

347
00:22:47,702 –> 00:22:51,395
we’ll have that discussion later. Yeah, we’ll dive into that because I think,

348
00:22:51,636 –> 00:22:55,422
I think the life of Henry V Particularly in the, in the first setup

349
00:22:55,470 –> 00:22:58,532
that we read here, you know, Bishop of Canterbury, the bishops that he had surrounded

350
00:22:58,532 –> 00:23:02,252
himself by, these advisors, these were older men. And these were

351
00:23:02,284 –> 00:23:05,667
older men advising him on the, as I said before, the

352
00:23:05,667 –> 00:23:09,515
casus belli, the reason to go to war. That’s why I picked that section to

353
00:23:09,515 –> 00:23:13,283
read. And the Bishop of Canterbury later on, of course, reveals, you know,

354
00:23:13,443 –> 00:23:16,650
he wants to really sort of figure out how to get money and how to,

355
00:23:16,891 –> 00:23:20,450
you know, sort of, in essence, manipulate tithes and keep money flowing into

356
00:23:20,498 –> 00:23:23,746
coffers. And he’s leveraging war

357
00:23:24,544 –> 00:23:26,401
in order to do that.

358
00:23:29,846 –> 00:23:32,296
There’s another dynamic in here that I find interesting.

359
00:23:33,940 –> 00:23:37,508
So one of the interesting things about The Life of Henry

360
00:23:37,670 –> 00:23:41,460
V as a play is that it

361
00:23:41,460 –> 00:23:44,810
is a play that covers warfare and

362
00:23:44,810 –> 00:23:47,644
politics and the civil authority and how they all interact.

363
00:23:48,693 –> 00:23:52,237
And of course Shakespeare is writing this in the 17th

364
00:23:52,269 –> 00:23:55,230
century, or, well, the late 16th, early

365
00:23:55,263 –> 00:23:58,612
17th century, during a time when

366
00:23:59,874 –> 00:24:03,078
the printing press had only been around for about 200 years.

367
00:24:04,772 –> 00:24:07,966
The religious wars of Europe were grinding on.

368
00:24:09,289 –> 00:24:13,095
England and France were mortal enemies locked in mutual

369
00:24:13,095 –> 00:24:16,849
embrace, and also the North American continent had begun to

370
00:24:16,929 –> 00:24:20,705
open up. So Queen Elizabeth had sent out folks, you

371
00:24:20,705 –> 00:24:24,369
know, the first colony was going to be established

372
00:24:24,803 –> 00:24:28,627
at either Jamestown or Roanoke was going to happen well within— well, not within,

373
00:24:28,659 –> 00:24:32,275
but just a little bit outside of Shakespeare’s lifetime, but they were really amping and

374
00:24:32,275 –> 00:24:35,987
ramping up for this. Yeah. And so a new world

375
00:24:36,035 –> 00:24:39,425
was opening up, new vistas, new horizons. There was going to be wars over

376
00:24:39,827 –> 00:24:43,569
who was going to who’s going to have a right to own these

377
00:24:43,682 –> 00:24:46,797
new lands, right? Who was going to— who’s going to be able to engage with

378
00:24:46,797 –> 00:24:49,590
that? And at the same time,

379
00:24:51,052 –> 00:24:54,407
you have the conception of

380
00:24:54,985 –> 00:24:58,534
the king versus the—

381
00:24:59,722 –> 00:25:02,837
well, no, not really versus, but you have a concept of a king

382
00:25:03,656 –> 00:25:07,211
who operates not as a theocrat, But operates with

383
00:25:07,211 –> 00:25:10,511
theocratic tendencies because the king is a representative of the church. He’s also the representative

384
00:25:10,511 –> 00:25:13,488
of the government. He’s representative of a lot of things on earth. Now, England was

385
00:25:13,585 –> 00:25:17,200
the first place where this started to break in really interesting ways

386
00:25:17,941 –> 00:25:20,082
in the 16th and 17th century. But

387
00:25:21,901 –> 00:25:25,475
the fact is that when we read this as Americans, and this is where I’m

388
00:25:25,507 –> 00:25:28,732
going to come to this now, as Americans, I think

389
00:25:28,732 –> 00:25:32,425
Americans have always struggled after you get past the rousing

390
00:25:32,473 –> 00:25:35,908
speeches. that are in Act 4 and Act 5 that Henry gives to his

391
00:25:35,940 –> 00:25:39,790
troops. After you get past the rousing speeches, I think most

392
00:25:39,790 –> 00:25:42,224
Americans step off the boat with Henry V

393
00:25:44,149 –> 00:25:47,790
because there’s so much, it’s so English and

394
00:25:47,887 –> 00:25:51,328
we’re on the other side of a lot of those arguments. Yes. And so the

395
00:25:51,328 –> 00:25:54,761
appeal to us as Americans is, yes, we’re having rousing

396
00:25:54,793 –> 00:25:58,259
speeches, rousing leadership speeches, you know, band of

397
00:25:58,259 –> 00:26:01,903
brothers and, you know, forward into the breaches once again,

398
00:26:01,953 –> 00:26:05,599
dear friends. You know, we have these, well, we had anyway, Up until

399
00:26:05,599 –> 00:26:08,935
about 30 or 40 years ago, we had these phrases that were in the common

400
00:26:08,951 –> 00:26:12,240
lexicon because I remember my grandmother,

401
00:26:13,363 –> 00:26:16,860
you know, having me memorize one of the speeches in Henry V because it was

402
00:26:16,892 –> 00:26:20,180
just a good diction thing and Laurence Olivier did it. And so I could be

403
00:26:20,180 –> 00:26:21,560
able to, I should be able to do it. And there were a lot of

404
00:26:21,560 –> 00:26:24,913
guys in my generation, my grandmothers who sort of, you know, forced them to do

405
00:26:24,913 –> 00:26:28,249
this. Right. Um, but there’s no emotional

406
00:26:28,281 –> 00:26:31,939
connection to it. Um, like I’ll be, I will be honest. Yes.

407
00:26:32,597 –> 00:26:35,661
I, I don’t think I’ve ever admitted this on the show so, so

408
00:26:35,661 –> 00:26:39,271
forthrightly, but I will say this. I don’t care much for

409
00:26:39,271 –> 00:26:42,929
royalty. I find royalty to be a, to

410
00:26:42,945 –> 00:26:46,330
be kind of an anachronism, not kind of, an absolute anachronism,

411
00:26:46,796 –> 00:26:50,069
particularly in light of what America has proven.

412
00:26:50,662 –> 00:26:54,240
Now, if it were, if it were 1775,

413
00:26:54,994 –> 00:26:58,155
if this were 1775, we’re doing this podcast in

414
00:26:58,604 –> 00:27:00,931
1775. Number one, it would be a miracle. But number two, if we were doing

415
00:27:00,931 –> 00:27:04,780
this podcast in 1775, I would have a different opinion for sure, because the

416
00:27:04,845 –> 00:27:08,470
cultural things on the ground would just be different.

417
00:27:09,753 –> 00:27:13,587
And I can understand royalists and I can understand, you know,

418
00:27:13,667 –> 00:27:17,468
Americans who are, who would be considered to be rebels, who

419
00:27:17,468 –> 00:27:21,270
we would call patriots now in our time. I can see the distinction,

420
00:27:21,463 –> 00:27:25,200
right? And I would probably have been a royalist. I probably would have

421
00:27:25,232 –> 00:27:28,825
been. In the year of our Lord 2026, though,

422
00:27:29,563 –> 00:27:32,898
I gotta be blunt. I don’t have much use for King Charles.

423
00:27:33,635 –> 00:27:37,178
I think he’s a shoddy, shabby old man. And I think the royal— I think,

424
00:27:37,483 –> 00:27:40,770
I think all of the royals should go away. They’re just rich twit people that

425
00:27:40,770 –> 00:27:44,393
don’t produce anything. Meghan Markle being like one of the big examples of

426
00:27:44,393 –> 00:27:48,129
marrying a rich twit, marrying into other rich twits. Why do I care about these

427
00:27:48,225 –> 00:27:51,848
people? It drives me absolutely crazy that we spend any amount of time

428
00:27:51,848 –> 00:27:55,456
talking about them. And this is not just— the English are the biggest ones to

429
00:27:55,456 –> 00:27:58,951
like target to hit. But like, I don’t even care what like Like, I know,

430
00:27:58,983 –> 00:28:02,572
I think Sweden or Denmark or one of those Northern European countries still has a

431
00:28:02,572 –> 00:28:06,402
queen, a king, something. I don’t care about any

432
00:28:06,498 –> 00:28:09,687
of you. You produce— both of them do. Okay. You produce nothing.

433
00:28:10,360 –> 00:28:14,158
You have no use. And I know I’ve heard the arguments from Jordan Peterson about

434
00:28:14,206 –> 00:28:17,956
like the embodiment of God on earth can’t be in the

435
00:28:17,956 –> 00:28:20,937
president because it’s too much to hold into one body and we need to have

436
00:28:20,937 –> 00:28:24,318
all— I love you, Jordan, but I don’t buy any of that. I

437
00:28:24,318 –> 00:28:27,540
don’t buy any of that. I don’t buy any of that. You agree. But I

438
00:28:27,588 –> 00:28:31,115
will say this. Now, I said my— I’ve been blunt in my critique,

439
00:28:31,500 –> 00:28:34,385
and I have deep reasons that are logical as well. It’s not just an emotional

440
00:28:34,385 –> 00:28:38,040
reason, but I do have a visceral opposition to them

441
00:28:38,713 –> 00:28:41,887
because I don’t see them producing anything. I don’t see them making the world a

442
00:28:41,935 –> 00:28:45,622
better place in real material ways for real material

443
00:28:45,622 –> 00:28:49,373
people. Now, with that being said, I will give this caveat. Yes,

444
00:28:49,389 –> 00:28:52,996
Princess Diana walked around and held the heads of babies in

445
00:28:52,996 –> 00:28:56,535
Africa that had flies in their eyes and made a better world for those babies.

446
00:28:58,308 –> 00:29:01,705
And I think she was an outlier in that

447
00:29:01,705 –> 00:29:05,101
family. Queen Elizabeth. Oh yeah. For all of her

448
00:29:05,182 –> 00:29:08,307
awesomeness at being a little old lady who just like held up

449
00:29:08,355 –> 00:29:11,357
standards. And she was, she was a little old lady who held up a standard.

450
00:29:11,438 –> 00:29:15,079
She really did. I admire her for that. But quite frankly, and I

451
00:29:15,079 –> 00:29:18,347
even think she probably suspected this, she had outlived her

452
00:29:18,363 –> 00:29:22,162
usefulness. I think she probably suspected this. And this is why she

453
00:29:22,211 –> 00:29:25,834
held on for so long because she looked at the sons she had. not just

454
00:29:25,834 –> 00:29:29,628
Charles, his brother Andrew too, who’s on the Epstein

455
00:29:29,628 –> 00:29:33,428
Island list, and went and looked at all that and

456
00:29:33,460 –> 00:29:37,247
went, oh crap, I can never die. I

457
00:29:37,263 –> 00:29:41,036
have to hold a standard. And unfortunately,

458
00:29:41,800 –> 00:29:44,467
from the Pope in Rome all the way down to the homeless man in the

459
00:29:44,467 –> 00:29:47,448
street, death comes for us all. And death came

460
00:29:47,561 –> 00:29:51,383
for the Queen. I think she is the passing of— she was

461
00:29:51,447 –> 00:29:55,097
the— her passing was the passing of a standard. And now we’re into a different—

462
00:29:55,113 –> 00:29:58,940
we’re into a post-standard era. And that’s a whole different kind of— that’s

463
00:29:58,940 –> 00:30:02,581
a whole different kind of conversation. But my larger beef with

464
00:30:02,581 –> 00:30:05,541
them is just the idea of a king, just the idea of a king, the

465
00:30:05,557 –> 00:30:08,952
idea of a queen, the idea of these people that, again, you’re not going out

466
00:30:08,952 –> 00:30:09,805
in the front of a military.

467
00:30:12,760 –> 00:30:16,598
King Charles isn’t going to jump off a boat and go like, go get

468
00:30:16,598 –> 00:30:20,397
like a drug dealer. He’s going to hire people to do that. He’s not going

469
00:30:20,397 –> 00:30:23,683
to go to Africa and hold babies’ heads. He’s not going to do any of

470
00:30:23,683 –> 00:30:26,952
these things. So what, what value do you actually have?

471
00:30:27,786 –> 00:30:31,440
What, what do you, why do you, why does your position exist anymore? And

472
00:30:31,472 –> 00:30:35,174
this is, this, no, this is, I think this is interesting and this ties into

473
00:30:35,238 –> 00:30:39,037
what we’re talking about in terms of leadership and what we’re talking about in terms

474
00:30:39,085 –> 00:30:42,851
of Henry V, right? Because Henry V is the embodiment

475
00:30:42,851 –> 00:30:46,393
of what it means to be English. And I guarantee that we’ll

476
00:30:46,393 –> 00:30:49,919
see probably in the next 10 years, another

477
00:30:50,063 –> 00:30:53,188
production of Henry V that will talk about,

478
00:30:54,630 –> 00:30:58,202
you know, the current problems that England is facing then, or it will

479
00:30:58,315 –> 00:31:02,160
be that we’ve triumphantly overcome these problems, and it will be either a

480
00:31:02,160 –> 00:31:05,877
complete repudiation of Henry as a weak leader, or

481
00:31:06,085 –> 00:31:09,546
it will be a full-throated, you know, I’m Henry and I’m awesome.

482
00:31:10,251 –> 00:31:13,728
But I think that the royal family,

483
00:31:13,920 –> 00:31:17,172
bringing it back to what you’re talking about, the royal family’s

484
00:31:17,205 –> 00:31:20,393
purpose in an industrialized world. And I think that Queen

485
00:31:20,425 –> 00:31:24,254
Victoria really struggled with this because, to be

486
00:31:24,254 –> 00:31:27,602
quite honest, the monarchy probably could have ended under Queen

487
00:31:27,715 –> 00:31:31,111
Victoria and, and the world would not

488
00:31:31,480 –> 00:31:35,229
demonstrably change. Right? Right. You still have World War I,

489
00:31:35,389 –> 00:31:38,898
you still have World War II. Like, the world doesn’t demonstrably

490
00:31:38,930 –> 00:31:42,663
change. What Queen Victoria established is the

491
00:31:42,679 –> 00:31:46,460
role of the monarchy now is to uphold what it means to

492
00:31:46,460 –> 00:31:48,987
be a British person. And now

493
00:31:50,597 –> 00:31:54,349
the Queen held that standard to what you were talking about. Queen Elizabeth II

494
00:31:54,365 –> 00:31:57,746
held that standard. But then when she died, King Charles is

495
00:31:57,762 –> 00:32:01,587
repudiating all of that now because the monarch is

496
00:32:01,619 –> 00:32:05,443
supposed to be the defender of the faith and the head of the Anglican Church.

497
00:32:06,038 –> 00:32:09,881
But I was in London last March and, you know, I

498
00:32:09,994 –> 00:32:13,746
went to Westminster Abbey, loved it, toured a

499
00:32:13,795 –> 00:32:17,270
couple of cathedrals. But the thing that was interesting to me was that this was

500
00:32:17,270 –> 00:32:21,101
after King Charles came to the throne, that

501
00:32:21,487 –> 00:32:25,337
there was a complete lack of,

502
00:32:26,220 –> 00:32:29,991
this is Christ’s church on the earth. Even the,

503
00:32:30,135 –> 00:32:33,793
even the clergy were like, yeah, it’s all

504
00:32:33,841 –> 00:32:37,211
just kind of relative. And like, I get it, when you have a church that’s

505
00:32:37,211 –> 00:32:41,030
established by King Henry VIII for the exclusive right to be able

506
00:32:41,062 –> 00:32:44,624
to divorce and behead your wife because she won’t give you a male heir, then

507
00:32:44,833 –> 00:32:48,666
yeah, you’re gonna have some relativistic tendencies. That’s a good observation. You’re gonna have

508
00:32:48,666 –> 00:32:49,966
some problems. You’re gonna have some challenges.

509
00:32:52,530 –> 00:32:56,032
But, but my point is that, that, that

510
00:32:56,177 –> 00:33:00,000
lack of King Charles upholding this is what it means to

511
00:33:00,032 –> 00:33:03,698
be British bleeds into the rest of society,

512
00:33:04,278 –> 00:33:07,933
and it creates all of these cultural problems that are now

513
00:33:08,077 –> 00:33:11,861
being discussed. And now you have parties like, what is it,

514
00:33:14,913 –> 00:33:18,608
Reform UK. I can’t remember,

515
00:33:18,689 –> 00:33:22,125
but there’s another party. It’s like Reform and Restore

516
00:33:22,254 –> 00:33:25,870
UK that are going back and forth against each other. One’s Rupert Murdoch, the other

517
00:33:25,870 –> 00:33:29,696
one’s Nigel Farage, and they’re

518
00:33:30,148 –> 00:33:33,855
at odds. And they’re both sort of this conservative

519
00:33:33,887 –> 00:33:37,574
wing of the party that’s like trying to define what it means to be

520
00:33:37,574 –> 00:33:41,225
British in the face of what a lot of English

521
00:33:41,225 –> 00:33:43,686
people feel is an invasion and a repudiation of

522
00:33:45,440 –> 00:33:48,991
their English identity. And

523
00:33:49,833 –> 00:33:53,507
I think that for leaders, this is an important lesson because

524
00:33:54,122 –> 00:33:57,360
we have a responsibility to set the standards for the people that we lead.

525
00:33:58,713 –> 00:34:01,862
And that gets back to my point about Queen Elizabeth II. You know, I admired

526
00:34:01,862 –> 00:34:05,657
her because she held— she figured out, to your point about Queen

527
00:34:05,657 –> 00:34:09,155
Victoria, and I hadn’t really sort of clicked it together that way.

528
00:34:10,031 –> 00:34:12,495
So that’s useful for me. Thank you for that framing.

529
00:34:14,255 –> 00:34:17,655
And to your point, she saw what Queen Victoria

530
00:34:18,122 –> 00:34:21,345
had done because she was a student of history. And of course, she was educated

531
00:34:21,345 –> 00:34:25,121
in the old ways. She, she came to

532
00:34:25,187 –> 00:34:28,753
the throne as a young woman. Young

533
00:34:28,850 –> 00:34:31,934
leaders, this is something to pay attention to. She came to the throne as a

534
00:34:31,934 –> 00:34:35,777
young woman who understood

535
00:34:35,955 –> 00:34:39,794
what the one or two things were that she actually had to do.

536
00:34:42,038 –> 00:34:45,886
And then everything else was sort of negotiable, right? And one of those

537
00:34:45,983 –> 00:34:49,168
things, and it is a heavy thing, is to, to your point, uphold a

538
00:34:49,168 –> 00:34:52,786
standard. Because for,

539
00:34:53,238 –> 00:34:57,000
for a lot, and this is another, another challenge I have with parliamentary systems

540
00:34:57,032 –> 00:35:00,708
just in general. In parliamentary systems, the prime

541
00:35:00,708 –> 00:35:04,414
minister basically can’t tell you, no,

542
00:35:04,495 –> 00:35:08,125
not basically, can’t tell you. And I’m looking at you, Keir

543
00:35:08,125 –> 00:35:11,301
Starmer, can’t tell you what it means

544
00:35:11,800 –> 00:35:14,122
to be culturally

545
00:35:14,170 –> 00:35:17,916
nationalistic. They can’t, they

546
00:35:17,965 –> 00:35:21,332
can’t define a national culture in a particular way because

547
00:35:22,174 –> 00:35:25,574
that power or that ability has been taken away from them and has been

548
00:35:25,574 –> 00:35:29,308
imbued into the monarch. Okay. And

549
00:35:29,308 –> 00:35:32,730
this is back to Jordan Peterson’s idea of the monarch being

550
00:35:33,257 –> 00:35:37,041
you know, the, the figurehead for, to your point about the church,

551
00:35:37,154 –> 00:35:40,695
yes, the church, but also all this national identity stuff. That way it doesn’t

552
00:35:40,711 –> 00:35:44,292
land in a prime minister. The reason I think

553
00:35:44,454 –> 00:35:48,050
Henry V doesn’t land for

554
00:35:48,050 –> 00:35:51,809
many Americans or lands for us as an

555
00:35:51,809 –> 00:35:55,497
anachronism is because we think we’ve

556
00:35:55,513 –> 00:35:59,113
already solved that problem because the

557
00:35:59,195 –> 00:36:02,580
Constitution And we did our month on the

558
00:36:02,580 –> 00:36:05,592
Constitution, so y’all can go back and listen to those episodes and hear what I’m

559
00:36:05,592 –> 00:36:08,640
thinking about the Constitution now. But, you know,

560
00:36:09,289 –> 00:36:12,277
we’re in our 250th year right now, this year.

561
00:36:13,187 –> 00:36:16,825
And in 250 years, we’ve basically

562
00:36:17,003 –> 00:36:20,782
laid everything. We’ve laid the weight of what it means to be

563
00:36:20,815 –> 00:36:24,591
an American, what it means to be a member of the United States of

564
00:36:24,591 –> 00:36:28,045
America, a citizen of this country. We’ve laid that weight on documents.

565
00:36:29,258 –> 00:36:33,017
And the documents outlast the human being, which

566
00:36:33,114 –> 00:36:36,873
is why George Washington, even though he was offered the opportunity

567
00:36:37,708 –> 00:36:41,210
to rule for life, very wisely,

568
00:36:42,045 –> 00:36:45,740
and probably for selfish reasons that were just due to him,

569
00:36:45,820 –> 00:36:48,696
because he was just like, I just, I just want to go back to Virginia.

570
00:36:48,776 –> 00:36:52,134
Just, I just want to be left alone. Like, really? Yeah. You know, you’ll just

571
00:36:52,150 –> 00:36:54,897
leave. I got to get out of here. Don’t ask me to do anything more.

572
00:36:55,362 –> 00:36:59,051
You’ve asked me to do enough. Um, but like Cincinnatus,

573
00:36:59,327 –> 00:37:02,813
right? Like the Greek Cincinnatus, you know, he put down the

574
00:37:02,813 –> 00:37:06,542
rulership. If he hadn’t done that,

575
00:37:06,768 –> 00:37:10,195
we would be in the same, we would be in the same problem where the

576
00:37:10,195 –> 00:37:13,460
man is now higher than the documents.

577
00:37:13,751 –> 00:37:16,893
And now you got to re— you got to rejigger out the man. You got

578
00:37:16,893 –> 00:37:20,419
to recycle the man every single time. Whereas in America, we flipped

579
00:37:20,419 –> 00:37:24,010
that and we don’t even think about, think about the implications of flipping

580
00:37:24,042 –> 00:37:26,048
that or the implications for leadership in flipping that. And don’t get me wrong.

581
00:37:28,172 –> 00:37:31,768
We’re running into problems now, particularly with the legislature, with the Congress and the

582
00:37:31,768 –> 00:37:35,461
Senate and how all that works. Or sorry, not the Congress, sorry, the House of

583
00:37:35,461 –> 00:37:39,057
Representatives and the Senate and how all that works and where power is actually imbued.

584
00:37:39,490 –> 00:37:43,215
We’re running into major problems with that. And I’ve mentioned that on this show before,

585
00:37:43,825 –> 00:37:47,373
on major issues with, you know, the,

586
00:37:47,742 –> 00:37:51,001
not just the Senate, but also increasing, well, increasingly the Senate, but

587
00:37:51,451 –> 00:37:55,270
already the House of Representatives being, you know, basically

588
00:37:55,286 –> 00:37:58,812
a platform for 585— well, no, 415 or

589
00:37:58,812 –> 00:38:02,562
485 people, however many it is, um, now to basically

590
00:38:02,594 –> 00:38:06,407
just dunk on each other on Instagram. Like, come on, you’re supposed

591
00:38:06,440 –> 00:38:09,196
to be ruling, you’re supposed to be making law, you’re supposed to— or if you’re

592
00:38:09,196 –> 00:38:12,801
not doing that, get the hell out of town and go home, right? Like,

593
00:38:12,913 –> 00:38:15,974
what are you doing? Like, we don’t need more of you dunking on Instagram.

594
00:38:16,695 –> 00:38:20,301
Like, I’m looking at you, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’m looking at you, Jasmine

595
00:38:20,301 –> 00:38:23,896
Crockett. I’m looking at both of you. You’re both a part of the problem.

596
00:38:24,233 –> 00:38:28,038
Yes. But so we’ve gotten into problems with that,

597
00:38:28,391 –> 00:38:31,810
where you rest the power of the nation or the identity of the nation state

598
00:38:32,003 –> 00:38:35,808
on the documents, not on the human beings. So I’m not saying there’s a perfect

599
00:38:35,808 –> 00:38:39,099
solution. I’m just saying America has pursued a different route.

600
00:38:39,725 –> 00:38:43,546
And that route comes with certain assumptions that then when we come

601
00:38:43,642 –> 00:38:47,190
to the life of Henry V as a

602
00:38:47,190 –> 00:38:50,558
play, We bring those assumptions with us and they’re just unstated.

603
00:38:51,385 –> 00:38:54,693
And we go, why am I reading this? Like, who’s this English guy? Why do

604
00:38:54,709 –> 00:38:58,522
I care? And I think we should care. Don’t worry. I mean, I absolutely

605
00:38:58,522 –> 00:39:01,229
think we do. We should care because I’m bringing it to us. I think we

606
00:39:01,229 –> 00:39:03,581
should care. I think there are things in here we need to pay attention to,

607
00:39:04,051 –> 00:39:06,595
but I think the lessons are a little bit different for Americans. Go. I’m sorry.

608
00:39:07,271 –> 00:39:10,975
Well, and I think that, that for older

609
00:39:10,975 –> 00:39:14,667
generations, that is the case. But I will tell you that for my generation,

610
00:39:14,782 –> 00:39:17,618
we have a complete wasteland in terms of civics education.

611
00:39:20,553 –> 00:39:23,983
Like, but I will tell you that in high school, we were

612
00:39:23,983 –> 00:39:27,797
required to take a US civics course. Do you want to

613
00:39:27,845 –> 00:39:31,050
know what that consisted of? It consisted of a

614
00:39:31,050 –> 00:39:34,624
presidential factoid of the day and watching

615
00:39:34,736 –> 00:39:38,054
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. That was all I

616
00:39:38,182 –> 00:39:41,820
remember about that civics course. And so I

617
00:39:41,932 –> 00:39:45,522
had to teach myself how the Constitution functions,

618
00:39:46,099 –> 00:39:49,865
right? So for like being an American for a millennial and

619
00:39:49,865 –> 00:39:53,342
younger, has no meaning, right? Mm-hmm. And so now

620
00:39:54,368 –> 00:39:58,022
the younger generations are doing exactly what you’re talking about. We’re looking

621
00:39:58,214 –> 00:40:02,028
for paternalistic figures and maternalistic figures to

622
00:40:02,044 –> 00:40:05,714
take on that role. The king traditionally

623
00:40:05,746 –> 00:40:07,973
took on that role for people,

624
00:40:09,335 –> 00:40:12,941
particularly at the time of the Revolution, because if you look at the

625
00:40:12,957 –> 00:40:16,659
arguments against and for the breaking

626
00:40:16,723 –> 00:40:20,523
of ties. It was, you know, we’re going to be

627
00:40:20,555 –> 00:40:24,307
left without someone to come and get our back if the, if the French

628
00:40:24,339 –> 00:40:27,978
come and decide to do that. Yeah. It was all this sort of paternalistic fear

629
00:40:28,090 –> 00:40:31,377
stuff, like we need a big brother, we need a daddy to come and take

630
00:40:31,377 –> 00:40:35,161
care of us. And the founders were functionally saying, no, that’s not the

631
00:40:35,161 –> 00:40:38,399
case. So while I agree with your argument that, that

632
00:40:39,089 –> 00:40:42,616
being an American really means almost like joining the

633
00:40:42,680 –> 00:40:46,496
Church of America with your, your scripture is The Declaration

634
00:40:46,528 –> 00:40:49,913
of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. Like,

635
00:40:50,459 –> 00:40:54,053
and if we agree on, on those fundamental principles as

636
00:40:54,101 –> 00:40:57,855
enshrined in those documents, then yes, you’re an American. I think that

637
00:40:57,855 –> 00:41:01,384
my generation hasn’t been taught that, my generation and younger.

638
00:41:01,849 –> 00:41:05,010
And so we don’t know what it means. And so I think that what you

639
00:41:05,058 –> 00:41:08,892
would find is that for a younger generation listening to and watching

640
00:41:09,085 –> 00:41:12,619
and interacting with this play would

641
00:41:12,619 –> 00:41:16,307
resonate differently than, you know, your generation and

642
00:41:16,387 –> 00:41:19,624
older who has a more robust understanding of civics.

643
00:41:23,884 –> 00:41:26,834
Back to the book or back to the play. Back to

644
00:41:27,753 –> 00:41:30,977
The Life of Henry V

645
00:41:32,347 –> 00:41:36,004
by William Shakespeare. By the way, part of the Henriad

646
00:41:36,296 –> 00:41:39,939
of, of plays. that Shakespeare wrote.

647
00:41:40,709 –> 00:41:44,318
So he wrote plays about Henry V, which of course we’re reading today,

648
00:41:44,623 –> 00:41:48,248
Henry IV. I believe he wrote like

649
00:41:48,248 –> 00:41:52,083
3 plays about Henry IV, if I remember correctly, and then a play about

650
00:41:52,083 –> 00:41:55,852
Henry VI. And so there’s, there’s a lot of different,

651
00:41:56,446 –> 00:41:59,751
different, different ways in which leadership can sort of be pulled

652
00:41:59,799 –> 00:42:03,633
apart as we look at these plays and as we look at these, as

653
00:42:03,633 –> 00:42:07,207
you look at these writings. Of course, we’re focusing on Henry V today. In future

654
00:42:07,207 –> 00:42:10,158
episodes, in future years, we will get into Henry IV,

655
00:42:10,921 –> 00:42:14,021
and we will get into, like I said, Henry VI, and of

656
00:42:14,166 –> 00:42:17,446
course Richard III, which

657
00:42:18,206 –> 00:42:21,632
is another famous Shakespeare play

658
00:42:23,524 –> 00:42:27,081
that ties into interesting elements about tyranny and

659
00:42:27,162 –> 00:42:30,681
what that actually looks like when the person that you’ve

660
00:42:30,681 –> 00:42:34,475
picked The man you’ve picked turns out

661
00:42:34,475 –> 00:42:38,277
to have feet of clay, as men always

662
00:42:38,629 –> 00:42:42,366
turn out to have feet of

663
00:42:42,399 –> 00:42:46,071
clay. All right, so let’s go to— let’s

664
00:42:46,071 –> 00:42:49,841
see, let’s go to Act 3. So Scene

665
00:42:49,841 –> 00:42:53,433
1. So when we— as the play goes

666
00:42:53,529 –> 00:42:57,074
through, and I’ll kind of do a brief sort of summary here for folks—

667
00:42:58,261 –> 00:43:02,010
As the play progresses, We actually wind up going

668
00:43:02,124 –> 00:43:05,888
back and forth and looking at sort of what the French think about what’s about

669
00:43:05,921 –> 00:43:09,401
to happen to them. And of course, the English setting up their, their

670
00:43:09,450 –> 00:43:13,034
casus belli for invading France and for, for taking

671
00:43:13,130 –> 00:43:16,780
over and for having a battle, for removing folks from the throne and

672
00:43:17,087 –> 00:43:20,530
for, for Henry V advancing his

673
00:43:20,563 –> 00:43:24,346
cause, right? We see the conversations that the Bishop

674
00:43:24,346 –> 00:43:27,046
of Canterbury and the Bishop Eli are having in the English court. But then we

675
00:43:27,062 –> 00:43:30,371
also see the conversations that the French are having, uh, the

676
00:43:30,388 –> 00:43:33,958
Dauphin and Exeter, right? And they’re sort

677
00:43:33,958 –> 00:43:37,605
of— Well, and we’re going to talk about the

678
00:43:37,605 –> 00:43:39,944
French here in a little bit because

679
00:43:40,444 –> 00:43:43,910
Shakespeare doesn’t

680
00:43:43,910 –> 00:43:47,102
create straw men. He doesn’t

681
00:43:47,377 –> 00:43:51,198
create fake characters here. He

682
00:43:51,198 –> 00:43:54,539
does something that a lot of a lot of modern or

683
00:43:54,539 –> 00:43:58,199
postmodern analysis sort of elides or goes

684
00:43:58,311 –> 00:44:02,052
past. He sets up the French as fully fleshed-out human

685
00:44:02,148 –> 00:44:05,231
beings. And yeah, they may not be taking the,

686
00:44:06,322 –> 00:44:09,902
the threat from the English that seriously, but they are

687
00:44:10,095 –> 00:44:13,241
also not just flippant

688
00:44:13,241 –> 00:44:16,950
caricatures, right? They’re not, they’re not straw men or cardboard

689
00:44:16,950 –> 00:44:20,610
stand-ins. These are people who who are thinking, who are

690
00:44:20,610 –> 00:44:24,416
feeling, who have certain opinions about what is happening to them and

691
00:44:24,416 –> 00:44:27,580
about the blood that’s going to be shed in this battle that they’re— with these

692
00:44:27,612 –> 00:44:31,161
battles that they’re about to fight, and also have their own

693
00:44:31,225 –> 00:44:34,549
motives that are mixed just like the English.

694
00:44:35,144 –> 00:44:38,933
And so in this play, if you’re going to read it, what you’re

695
00:44:38,933 –> 00:44:42,274
going to see is real human beings engaged in real—

696
00:44:42,482 –> 00:44:45,983
engaged in real human ways, trying to figure out what

697
00:44:45,983 –> 00:44:49,308
happens When the battles begin.

698
00:44:50,889 –> 00:44:54,436
Speaking of the battle beginning, so again, we’re gonna go to, uh, we’re gonna go

699
00:44:54,436 –> 00:44:58,283
to Scene 1, okay, of, uh, of Act 3.

700
00:44:58,398 –> 00:45:01,911
We’re going to start off with, well, as I said, one of those, one of

701
00:45:01,911 –> 00:45:05,568
those famous, uh, those

702
00:45:05,600 –> 00:45:08,922
famous speeches. All right,

703
00:45:09,541 –> 00:45:12,292
The Life of Henry V, Act 3, Scene 1.

704
00:45:14,167 –> 00:45:17,498
Enter King of England, Exeter, Bedford, and Gloucester.

705
00:45:18,031 –> 00:45:21,539
Alarum. Enter soldiers with scaling ladders at

706
00:45:21,539 –> 00:45:22,024
harfleur.

707
00:45:25,155 –> 00:45:28,915
Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, or

708
00:45:28,932 –> 00:45:32,579
close the wall up with our English dead. In peace there’s

709
00:45:32,579 –> 00:45:35,967
nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and

710
00:45:35,967 –> 00:45:39,388
humility, but when the blast of war blows in our

711
00:45:39,517 –> 00:45:42,817
ears, then imitate the action of the tiger. Stiffen the

712
00:45:42,817 –> 00:45:46,488
sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with

713
00:45:46,680 –> 00:45:50,479
hard-favored rage, then lend the eye a terrible aspect. Let it

714
00:45:50,527 –> 00:45:53,941
pry through the portage of the head like the brass cannon.

715
00:45:54,534 –> 00:45:57,915
Let the brow overwhelm it as fearfully as doth a galled rock

716
00:45:58,220 –> 00:46:01,906
o’erhang and jutty his confounded base, swilled with the

717
00:46:01,906 –> 00:46:05,416
wild and wasteful ocean. Now set the teeth and

718
00:46:05,416 –> 00:46:09,119
stretch the nostril wide. Hold hard the breath and bend up every

719
00:46:09,119 –> 00:46:12,789
spirit to his full height. On, on, you noblest

720
00:46:12,789 –> 00:46:16,619
English, whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof, fathers

721
00:46:16,651 –> 00:46:20,224
that, like so many Alexanders have in these parts, from

722
00:46:20,320 –> 00:46:23,845
morn till even fought and sheathed their swords for lack of

723
00:46:23,845 –> 00:46:27,339
argument. Dishonor not your mothers. Now

724
00:46:27,387 –> 00:46:30,912
attest that those whom you called fathers did beget you.

725
00:46:31,617 –> 00:46:35,239
Be copy now to men of grosser blood and teach them how to war.

726
00:46:35,880 –> 00:46:39,664
And you, good yeomen, Whose limbs were made in England, show

727
00:46:39,664 –> 00:46:43,193
us here the mettle of your pasture. Let us swear that you are

728
00:46:43,322 –> 00:46:47,028
worth your breeding, which I doubt not, for there is none of you so

729
00:46:47,044 –> 00:46:50,124
mean and base that hath not noble lustre in your eyes.

730
00:46:50,958 –> 00:46:54,616
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, straining

731
00:46:54,664 –> 00:46:58,017
upon the start. The game’s afoot. Follow your

732
00:46:58,017 –> 00:47:01,257
spirit, and upon this charge cry,

733
00:47:02,508 –> 00:47:05,452
God for Harry! England and St. George.

734
00:47:07,096 –> 00:47:10,336
Alarm in the chambers go off and they exit.

735
00:47:13,555 –> 00:47:17,380
That is one of the most famous

736
00:47:19,116 –> 00:47:22,673
speeches in all of Western literature

737
00:47:22,804 –> 00:47:25,395
delivered by a king who,

738
00:47:27,671 –> 00:47:30,872
if we were probably to actually look at his age, Probably wasn’t

739
00:47:31,531 –> 00:47:34,762
much older than 22,

740
00:47:35,469 –> 00:47:39,300
maybe, maybe 23, might even only been 18.

741
00:47:41,660 –> 00:47:45,395
And Henry in this play, let’s

742
00:47:45,395 –> 00:47:47,950
talk a little about him as a, as a, just as a character, just as

743
00:47:47,950 –> 00:47:51,751
a person. Henry is young and impetuous and

744
00:47:51,929 –> 00:47:55,650
ego-driven and status-conscious. He’s

745
00:47:55,731 –> 00:47:59,086
also aware, and you could tell by this speech, that war has a

746
00:47:59,134 –> 00:48:02,279
cost and that other people will pay,

747
00:48:03,052 –> 00:48:06,787
not necessarily him and not necessarily him directly, but other people will pay

748
00:48:06,787 –> 00:48:10,587
this cost. And so he has to, he understands that he

749
00:48:10,587 –> 00:48:14,286
has an obligation, he has a responsibility, has an accountability to these folks,

750
00:48:15,949 –> 00:48:18,967
and not just an accountability to get them to move forward into

751
00:48:19,241 –> 00:48:22,743
cannon’s breach, as it were. But, uh, he

752
00:48:23,083 –> 00:48:26,417
has a responsibility to give them a reason to even

753
00:48:27,761 –> 00:48:31,484
get up in the morning, to even engage. Now,

754
00:48:31,516 –> 00:48:35,321
Henry’s advisors, uh, from the Bishop of Canterbury on down, are

755
00:48:35,321 –> 00:48:38,787
scheming and conniving, and they are looking for easy answers to hard

756
00:48:38,787 –> 00:48:42,348
problems. And of course, they discover, as do all such

757
00:48:42,365 –> 00:48:45,667
people, when the shells start flying,

758
00:48:46,428 –> 00:48:48,419
that the shortcut is usually the long way around.

759
00:48:51,704 –> 00:48:55,480
To Zach’s point about not understanding or not, not,

760
00:48:56,187 –> 00:49:00,027
not under— it’s not not understanding, not being given the appropriate education around civics until

761
00:49:00,059 –> 00:49:01,917
he independently pursued it later on.

762
00:49:04,450 –> 00:49:08,072
To his point about that, only those who have never sacrificed can mock or

763
00:49:08,121 –> 00:49:11,840
dismiss or look for motives that aren’t there in the

764
00:49:11,840 –> 00:49:15,597
strength that they don’t understand and can’t identify with. That Henry

765
00:49:16,435 –> 00:49:19,868
begins to show the first glimmers of

766
00:49:20,609 –> 00:49:24,254
in this speech. In the life

767
00:49:24,513 –> 00:49:25,499
of Henry V.

768
00:49:27,148 –> 00:49:30,803
So here’s a question

769
00:49:30,981 –> 00:49:34,706
for us to really think about. Once more into the breach, dear friends. That

770
00:49:34,706 –> 00:49:37,581
used to be the rallying cry to courage. And now,

771
00:49:39,579 –> 00:49:43,066
actually, I would say now, I wrote, when I wrote this question, Zach, I said,

772
00:49:43,082 –> 00:49:46,678
now it’s a marketing message. But in thinking about it, I don’t

773
00:49:46,678 –> 00:49:50,372
think I’ve heard this even as a marketing message in the

774
00:49:50,388 –> 00:49:54,177
last 30 years. I think probably the last time I

775
00:49:54,305 –> 00:49:58,063
heard it as a marketing message was when I was in high school, which

776
00:49:58,095 –> 00:50:01,627
was all, which was 30 years ago. Yeah. Like,

777
00:50:02,896 –> 00:50:06,221
yeah, as of this year, it would have been 30 years ago. Oh, wow.

778
00:50:06,591 –> 00:50:10,068
Okay. Um, and so

779
00:50:11,904 –> 00:50:15,285
how do we bring this back? This is the challenge of our time, I guess,

780
00:50:15,365 –> 00:50:19,102
that we’re talking about here today. And not just for Americans, I guess, for

781
00:50:19,102 –> 00:50:22,839
globally, but let’s specifically keep it to just our own backyard.

782
00:50:23,372 –> 00:50:24,926
How do we bring this back? How do we,

783
00:50:27,928 –> 00:50:31,592
how do we reinstall courage? the

784
00:50:31,640 –> 00:50:35,216
kind of manly grit, right? And no, I’m not saying that

785
00:50:35,216 –> 00:50:38,743
manly grit can only be identified, can only be identified with men. I’m not saying

786
00:50:38,759 –> 00:50:42,453
that. But manly grit, not but, and manly grit. How do

787
00:50:42,453 –> 00:50:45,787
we restore that to people who

788
00:50:46,012 –> 00:50:49,563
don’t, who haven’t been given it in the first place? How do we, how

789
00:50:49,988 –> 00:50:52,256
do we put that grit in the, how do we put that grit in the

790
00:50:52,321 –> 00:50:56,085
gears? How do we do that? I, you

791
00:50:56,085 –> 00:50:58,338
know, I think this is a really intriguing question to me.

792
00:51:00,565 –> 00:51:04,222
Because I think this is actually a question that Shakespeare himself is

793
00:51:04,433 –> 00:51:08,283
asking with this play, right? There is a

794
00:51:08,736 –> 00:51:12,072
great BBC sitcom called Upstart Crow

795
00:51:12,707 –> 00:51:16,375
that is— you know the guys who did

796
00:51:16,391 –> 00:51:20,152
the Are We the Baddies sketch where it’s like these

797
00:51:20,184 –> 00:51:23,509
2 SS officers and they’re like, are we the baddies? We see

798
00:51:23,509 –> 00:51:27,288
skulls everywhere. Yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

799
00:51:27,432 –> 00:51:31,121
Yes. I’ve seen memes of that, but yeah, I’m aware of what it is. Yeah.

800
00:51:31,714 –> 00:51:35,467
So, so the guy who’s asking, are we the baddies? He plays William

801
00:51:35,467 –> 00:51:39,091
Shakespeare in this, in this show. And it’s

802
00:51:39,139 –> 00:51:42,186
well-researched, but it’s a sitcom. So, you know, you take it with a grain of

803
00:51:42,186 –> 00:51:45,779
salt. But one of the things that society is dealing

804
00:51:45,891 –> 00:51:49,066
with at this time that they do a really great job of bringing out in

805
00:51:49,162 –> 00:51:52,632
this Upstart Crow sitcom is the

806
00:51:52,632 –> 00:51:55,448
Puritans, and they jokingly call them the Purititties.

807
00:51:56,970 –> 00:51:59,511
You know, pardon my language, but that’s what they call them.

808
00:52:00,304 –> 00:52:03,833
Yeah. And the Puritans are

809
00:52:03,898 –> 00:52:05,903
sort of this, you know,

810
00:52:06,370 –> 00:52:10,058
anti-iconoclastic group that is focused

811
00:52:10,090 –> 00:52:13,939
primarily on, we just want to read the scriptures and worship

812
00:52:13,955 –> 00:52:16,973
God. We don’t want any distractions. And it gets taken

813
00:52:17,674 –> 00:52:21,305
way too far. Enter the English Civil War that’s going to

814
00:52:21,369 –> 00:52:24,084
happen, you know, about 80 years after Shakespeare’s dead.

815
00:52:25,450 –> 00:52:29,209
But the thing that— the reason I bring that up is

816
00:52:29,627 –> 00:52:33,386
I was listening to a lecture about this play, actually. And

817
00:52:33,419 –> 00:52:36,632
one of the things that the lecturer brought up was—

818
00:52:36,776 –> 00:52:40,391
and I glossed over it at first

819
00:52:40,407 –> 00:52:43,717
because the author, the lecturer

820
00:52:46,469 –> 00:52:50,166
Um, I could tell that the guy wasn’t Christian just based on what he was

821
00:52:50,198 –> 00:52:53,975
saying, and he was lecturing about these Christian morals. And it was like, well,

822
00:52:54,103 –> 00:52:57,565
you know, for a Christian, the ultimate sin is

823
00:52:58,148 –> 00:53:01,808
this sin of pride. And I think that,

824
00:53:02,294 –> 00:53:06,018
that there is some truth to that. I

825
00:53:06,018 –> 00:53:09,435
think that he’s, he’s kind of wrong, but I, I think it’s because he does

826
00:53:09,435 –> 00:53:12,584
not know how to define pride because he’s not Christian.

827
00:53:13,307 –> 00:53:17,096
Okay. And I think that, that what we are doing now

828
00:53:17,546 –> 00:53:20,645
is kind of the same problem. Just getting back to my point,

829
00:53:22,026 –> 00:53:25,863
it’s that we live in a society where pride

830
00:53:26,040 –> 00:53:28,513
is the ultimate sin

831
00:53:29,508 –> 00:53:33,057
unless it’s the right kind of pride. Okay.

832
00:53:33,859 –> 00:53:37,582
So, so, and I’m going to potentially

833
00:53:37,614 –> 00:53:41,460
get, get canceled for this. But the,

834
00:53:41,764 –> 00:53:45,611
the kind of pride that is okay is pride based off of

835
00:53:45,611 –> 00:53:49,361
your sexuality or your gender identity. Oh, yeah. The kind of

836
00:53:49,457 –> 00:53:53,078
pride that is not okay is based off of your race. It’s

837
00:53:53,078 –> 00:53:56,396
based off of your ethnicity, and it’s based off of your

838
00:53:56,428 –> 00:54:00,178
nationality, unless you’re specific types of, of

839
00:54:00,835 –> 00:54:04,296
races, ethnicities, and nationalities. And so

840
00:54:04,537 –> 00:54:08,160
the only way, directly answering your question, The

841
00:54:08,368 –> 00:54:12,206
only way that we’re going to be able to return once more into the breach,

842
00:54:12,254 –> 00:54:16,060
dear friends, into a rallying cry, is

843
00:54:16,156 –> 00:54:19,158
if we understand what it means to be

844
00:54:19,769 –> 00:54:23,574
proud of where we come from without that being a

845
00:54:23,574 –> 00:54:26,577
sin of pride. And

846
00:54:26,850 –> 00:54:29,868
that’s, that’s where the problem is.

847
00:54:33,550 –> 00:54:37,314
Cultural confidence. I’ve been saying this

848
00:54:37,314 –> 00:54:41,142
for a while now. The biggest

849
00:54:41,158 –> 00:54:43,763
challenge I think that

850
00:54:44,953 –> 00:54:48,747
America in general, and we talked, we started with, with England on

851
00:54:48,780 –> 00:54:52,411
this. I’m sorry, Britain on this. Hey,

852
00:54:52,507 –> 00:54:56,267
we’re the cultural inheritors of Shakespeare. Go for it, man. Yeah. Yeah. Well,

853
00:54:56,283 –> 00:54:58,099
let me, let me go back to the root. Let me start with the British.

854
00:54:59,669 –> 00:55:02,939
From, from Britain to France,

855
00:55:03,570 –> 00:55:06,970
who I also mentioned, to Canada,

856
00:55:08,344 –> 00:55:12,102
uh, the United States of America. And even I would

857
00:55:12,200 –> 00:55:15,966
argue Japan, although Japan gets the tail end, Japan and South Korea get

858
00:55:15,966 –> 00:55:18,045
the tail end of this. They get the, they get the backwash.

859
00:55:19,672 –> 00:55:23,083
Yes. The biggest challenge the current

860
00:55:23,148 –> 00:55:26,817
inheritors of the Western tradition have, of which Shakespeare is a part,

861
00:55:27,946 –> 00:55:31,432
Citizen Kane is a part. The Bible is a

862
00:55:31,480 –> 00:55:34,131
part. The Greek myths are a part.

863
00:55:35,336 –> 00:55:39,031
Plato is a part. And yes, if we’re going to go all negative, sure,

864
00:55:39,529 –> 00:55:43,192
slavery is a part. Ecological destruction is a

865
00:55:43,192 –> 00:55:46,887
part. Nuclear weapons are a part. And yes, not treating other

866
00:55:46,887 –> 00:55:50,358
people nicely is a part. Colonialization. Sure, it’s all a part.

867
00:55:50,759 –> 00:55:53,699
It’s all in there. That’s all part of the Western tradition.

868
00:55:54,914 –> 00:55:58,214
And all of the inheritors of the Western tradition inherit parts of that.

869
00:55:59,245 –> 00:56:01,611
And in some cases, like I would argue in the case of the United States

870
00:56:01,611 –> 00:56:04,754
of America, all of it. The biggest challenge we have

871
00:56:06,871 –> 00:56:09,785
is cultural, is a lack, an alarming

872
00:56:10,623 –> 00:56:13,426
lack of cultural confidence.

873
00:56:14,796 –> 00:56:18,562
And I will bring up 2 counterexamples. Number one, or I’ll

874
00:56:18,611 –> 00:56:22,222
bring up examples that prove my point. Number one, Zach, you’ve been to

875
00:56:22,222 –> 00:56:25,415
China as a missionary, so you’re going to resonate with what I’m about to say.

876
00:56:26,620 –> 00:56:30,279
The Chinese do not— and I’ve never been to China, by the way. I’ve interacted

877
00:56:30,279 –> 00:56:33,387
with people from China, but I’ve never actually been to China. I don’t know what’s

878
00:56:33,387 –> 00:56:36,709
going on in Beijing. I have no idea. I know what I see. I know

879
00:56:36,709 –> 00:56:39,477
what I hear from other people I’ve talked to. But you know what I can

880
00:56:39,477 –> 00:56:42,975
sense from what I see? A sense of

881
00:56:43,333 –> 00:56:43,902
cultural confidence.

882
00:56:49,068 –> 00:56:52,850
Interesting. I’ve interacted with folks from India. Some, some good friends of mine, this

883
00:56:52,850 –> 00:56:55,796
is always the phrase you say, good friends of mine are from— yes, well, they

884
00:56:55,812 –> 00:56:59,349
actually are. Good friends of mine are from India. Yeah. Second

885
00:56:59,365 –> 00:57:03,103
generation raising their kids here. Immigrated

886
00:57:03,119 –> 00:57:06,905
here back in the, back in the ’80s, landed in LA. They have a

887
00:57:06,905 –> 00:57:10,067
whole story, great people. When they talk,

888
00:57:14,108 –> 00:57:17,444
They have cultural confidence.

889
00:57:17,802 –> 00:57:19,868
I’ll bring up one more example.

890
00:57:23,880 –> 00:57:27,608
When I see Vladimir Putin talk to Tucker

891
00:57:27,608 –> 00:57:31,225
Carlson, the most alarming thing isn’t that

892
00:57:31,225 –> 00:57:33,978
Vladimir Putin has been a

893
00:57:34,533 –> 00:57:37,964
dictator, demagogue, whatever you want to phrase him as. in the

894
00:57:37,964 –> 00:57:40,752
appropriate, correct way, whatever that may mean,

895
00:57:41,832 –> 00:57:45,667
for the last, like, you know, let’s say nigh on 40 years in

896
00:57:45,699 –> 00:57:49,148
Russia, because he’s been running things for a while there. That’s not the biggest problem

897
00:57:49,148 –> 00:57:52,382
I’ve got with the man. Russians culturally can deal with that.

898
00:57:53,982 –> 00:57:57,231
The biggest problem I have with the man is not that he can’t somehow figure

899
00:57:57,296 –> 00:58:01,080
out how to convince Russian women to have more babies, although that is a problem,

900
00:58:01,193 –> 00:58:03,796
but he can’t figure that out. He can’t crack that. He can’t crack that egg.

901
00:58:04,834 –> 00:58:07,963
By the way, nobody across the world can crack that egg. There’s legitimate reasons why,

902
00:58:08,525 –> 00:58:11,382
which we don’t have to get into on this podcast. That’s way too far afield

903
00:58:11,414 –> 00:58:15,121
for us, but it’s one of the big problems. Yeah. Yeah.

904
00:58:15,971 –> 00:58:19,742
But even in spite of that problem, when I see and

905
00:58:19,742 –> 00:58:23,192
hear Vladimir Putin talk, do you know what I hear from him? Cultural

906
00:58:24,075 –> 00:58:27,381
confidence. He believes in Russia.

907
00:58:28,327 –> 00:58:30,927
The Chinese believe in China.

908
00:58:31,859 –> 00:58:34,532
Indians believe in India.

909
00:58:37,980 –> 00:58:41,630
Now, someone’s going to cancel me for this, and it’s

910
00:58:41,792 –> 00:58:45,443
fine. I don’t think Make America

911
00:58:45,443 –> 00:58:49,047
Great Again would be necessary

912
00:58:49,258 –> 00:58:51,974
if we already had cultural confidence.

913
00:58:53,106 –> 00:58:56,360
And it especially wouldn’t be necessary if our

914
00:58:56,457 –> 00:58:59,586
elites who we imbue with power on the global

915
00:58:59,619 –> 00:59:03,195
stage had cultural confidence, but

916
00:59:03,389 –> 00:59:06,728
they don’t. They don’t have cultural confidence. They

917
00:59:07,034 –> 00:59:10,614
don’t believe in America. Case in point,

918
00:59:12,470 –> 00:59:15,880
the current, not the current administration, the

919
00:59:15,960 –> 00:59:19,613
last 3 administrations before the current administration, not including the

920
00:59:19,613 –> 00:59:23,164
first Trump administration, the last 3 administrations before the Trump administration

921
00:59:23,743 –> 00:59:26,949
all were filled with people. Bush, Obama. Bush, Obama, Biden.

922
00:59:27,950 –> 00:59:30,988
Were filled to the brim with people who

923
00:59:31,036 –> 00:59:34,252
consistently lectured Americans about how much we suck.

924
00:59:36,462 –> 00:59:39,479
And then would give the little caveat at the end that, yeah, but we’re still

925
00:59:39,512 –> 00:59:42,110
the greatest country in the world. God bless America. But you could tell they didn’t

926
00:59:42,110 –> 00:59:45,418
believe it because for the first 45 minutes they’ve been yelling at us about how

927
00:59:45,418 –> 00:59:49,252
terrible we are. This is now filtered down into the mayors of

928
00:59:49,252 –> 00:59:51,967
our major cities. Yes, I’m looking at you, Mom Dami.

929
00:59:53,278 –> 00:59:56,730
And I’m looking at you in Chicago and I’m looking at you, Karen Bass in

930
00:59:56,730 –> 01:00:00,439
LA. Yeah. So we have mayors in major cities that don’t

931
01:00:00,439 –> 01:00:03,473
believe in America. If you believed in America, you would clean up the homeless. If

932
01:00:03,473 –> 01:00:07,263
you believed in America, you wouldn’t be yelling about affordability. Instead, you’d be— and rent

933
01:00:07,263 –> 01:00:11,068
control. You wouldn’t be doing those things. You would be caring for your fellow man.

934
01:00:11,277 –> 01:00:14,633
You’d be caring for your— you have cultural confidence, but you don’t even believe in

935
01:00:14,633 –> 01:00:17,780
the culture because you have no confidence in it.

936
01:00:18,887 –> 01:00:22,559
This is the thing. And by the way, the only thing, the thin red line,

937
01:00:22,976 –> 01:00:25,751
and I do use the word red on purpose, the thin red line in America

938
01:00:25,799 –> 01:00:29,183
today is the people who are,

939
01:00:30,273 –> 01:00:33,914
like in the place where I live in Texas, the farmers, the truck

940
01:00:33,978 –> 01:00:37,634
drivers, the electricians, the plumbers, the carpenters,

941
01:00:38,212 –> 01:00:41,980
the veterans, the nurses, the teachers. And I’m

942
01:00:41,980 –> 01:00:45,460
not talking about the teachers in the big districts. I’m talking about, not even administrators.

943
01:00:45,621 –> 01:00:48,475
I’m talking about the teachers in the schools, the charter schools that you’ve never heard

944
01:00:48,475 –> 01:00:52,022
of. The moms and dads in the homes, particularly the ones who are

945
01:00:52,022 –> 01:00:55,586
homeschooling their kids, the Boy Scout

946
01:00:55,714 –> 01:00:59,390
leaders, the church folks, that’s the thin red line of cultural

947
01:00:59,390 –> 01:01:03,146
confidence in America. And that line is

948
01:01:03,259 –> 01:01:06,790
consistently pressured by the media, by

949
01:01:06,790 –> 01:01:10,498
politicians, by academics who have zero cultural

950
01:01:10,498 –> 01:01:13,275
confidence in America and yet

951
01:01:14,013 –> 01:01:17,854
wouldn’t bust a grape in a food fight to challenge the

952
01:01:17,854 –> 01:01:21,527
Chinese on their cultural

953
01:01:21,559 –> 01:01:25,152
confidence. I don’t think China should be culturally confident. And do you know why?

954
01:01:25,746 –> 01:01:28,988
You’re communists. Yep.

955
01:01:30,263 –> 01:01:33,941
You just are. You killed 60 million people. You killed 60 million. Mao killed

956
01:01:33,974 –> 01:01:37,697
60 million people. Until you could come to grips with that, you don’t

957
01:01:37,697 –> 01:01:40,998
have— you don’t deserve to be culturally confident. Russia,

958
01:01:41,401 –> 01:01:44,925
you’re being led by a guy who said, and I quote, The

959
01:01:44,925 –> 01:01:48,320
greatest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century was the

960
01:01:48,320 –> 01:01:51,713
collapse of the Soviet Union. Close quote.

961
01:01:52,847 –> 01:01:56,473
Every single time he shows up to talk to somebody in the

962
01:01:56,505 –> 01:02:00,313
West, they should just confront him with that quote. He should be explaining

963
01:02:00,409 –> 01:02:04,201
that for the rest of his life. But no, that’s not what we

964
01:02:04,201 –> 01:02:07,575
confront him with. Instead, we confront him with, well, aren’t you really— isn’t it really

965
01:02:07,575 –> 01:02:08,909
terrible that you invaded the Ukraine?

966
01:02:13,422 –> 01:02:16,762
Yeah. Cultural confidence is the thing that we are lacking

967
01:02:17,420 –> 01:02:21,208
in as inheritors to the great

968
01:02:21,208 –> 01:02:24,804
things of the West. Hell, we have prime ministers in Canada,

969
01:02:25,527 –> 01:02:28,930
Justin Trudeau, who say that countries aren’t even countries

970
01:02:28,978 –> 01:02:32,445
anymore. They have no national identity. They’re just

971
01:02:32,510 –> 01:02:36,106
places where, like, migrants come across. This is why mass migration is a thing

972
01:02:36,154 –> 01:02:39,750
across the West now. Because if you don’t have cultural confidence,

973
01:02:40,071 –> 01:02:43,587
then you have nothing to defend. But the people who have cultural

974
01:02:43,587 –> 01:02:47,392
confidence are the ones you’re going to lock up. And yes, I did name them

975
01:02:47,617 –> 01:02:51,230
the truckers, the farmers, the

976
01:02:51,230 –> 01:02:54,826
farmers. Tommy Robinson in England. Tommy Robinson in England, from Tommy

977
01:02:54,842 –> 01:02:57,941
Robinson in England to the protesting farmers in France.

978
01:02:58,760 –> 01:03:02,469
Yeah, those are the people with cultural confidence and the elites do

979
01:03:02,469 –> 01:03:05,985
not have it. who we have chosen to allow to

980
01:03:06,002 –> 01:03:09,766
lead us. And this is where I— this is where I

981
01:03:09,879 –> 01:03:13,570
have a challenge. Well, I agree with you. I would push it even

982
01:03:13,602 –> 01:03:17,009
further and say it’s not just that they do not have it. It is that

983
01:03:17,122 –> 01:03:19,677
they are actively prosecuting it as a sin.

984
01:03:21,713 –> 01:03:25,437
There you go. It is the sin of pride in their mind. It

985
01:03:25,437 –> 01:03:29,128
is the sin of pride. They are our generation’s version

986
01:03:29,322 –> 01:03:33,051
of the Puritans. Well, I don’t want to hear— I don’t want to hear about

987
01:03:33,196 –> 01:03:36,950
sin from people who haven’t— who the last time they opened a

988
01:03:37,014 –> 01:03:40,800
Bible was when they were like 4. Well,

989
01:03:40,865 –> 01:03:44,378
but, but here’s the thing is that their worldview, right, is

990
01:03:44,506 –> 01:03:48,277
not a fundamentally Christian worldview. No, it’s their worldview.

991
01:03:48,742 –> 01:03:52,448
So, so what the Bible defines as sin is irrelevant. Right,

992
01:03:52,496 –> 01:03:54,999
right. Their worldview is defined by

993
01:03:56,347 –> 01:04:00,018
I’m the god now. I get to make the rules,

994
01:04:00,275 –> 01:04:03,962
and anything that would lessen my power or make

995
01:04:03,978 –> 01:04:07,810
me feel bad about myself is the sin. And if it’s a sin

996
01:04:07,970 –> 01:04:11,257
for me, then it sure as hell has to be a sin for you. And

997
01:04:11,353 –> 01:04:14,576
so they’re prosecuting this stuff because their

998
01:04:14,785 –> 01:04:18,488
worldview, particularly on the left, is fundamentally a worldview

999
01:04:18,488 –> 01:04:21,935
of oppressor and oppressed. And if you look at the

1000
01:04:21,999 –> 01:04:25,512
world in this dichotomy of oppressor and oppressed, then

1001
01:04:25,608 –> 01:04:29,368
yeah, you know, the West, because of our— what we have

1002
01:04:29,384 –> 01:04:33,224
done, we’ve, we’ve been an oppressor sometimes. We have to own

1003
01:04:33,256 –> 01:04:36,451
that, right? We’ve been an oppressor sometimes. Chattel slavery,

1004
01:04:37,050 –> 01:04:40,773
not great. Imperialism, not great. I don’t

1005
01:04:40,773 –> 01:04:44,543
care if you have imperialist apologists out there now. Still not great.

1006
01:04:45,148 –> 01:04:48,889
Not, not a good look. But the

1007
01:04:48,889 –> 01:04:52,235
point is, back to your cultural confidence, You

1008
01:04:52,364 –> 01:04:55,864
cannot do what Harry is doing in this speech

1009
01:04:56,378 –> 01:04:59,637
unless you have that cultural confidence. He’s saying,

1010
01:05:00,215 –> 01:05:03,539
look at this, look at this, whose blood is fed from

1011
01:05:03,684 –> 01:05:07,216
fathers of war proof. Your dads were

1012
01:05:07,216 –> 01:05:10,957
proven by war. Now it’s your turn. Let’s see you have

1013
01:05:10,989 –> 01:05:14,763
some confidence. If we were doing this, we would be running ads of,

1014
01:05:14,923 –> 01:05:18,567
of the storming of the beaches on D-Day. The Marines

1015
01:05:18,664 –> 01:05:22,351
putting up the flag on Mount Suribachi, like, we would be doing

1016
01:05:22,769 –> 01:05:25,857
all of that stuff. So

1017
01:05:26,681 –> 01:05:30,233
this, this, this, there’s 2 things that sort of come around to me on this.

1018
01:05:30,394 –> 01:05:33,349
And I think it’s important for leaders to think about because we have to, we

1019
01:05:33,349 –> 01:05:36,036
have to place this in the correct context. Yes, of the history of the play

1020
01:05:36,036 –> 01:05:39,274
itself, which I’ve said before on this show when we’re looking at Shakespeare.

1021
01:05:40,595 –> 01:05:44,142
And we can’t help it but bring it forward to our own. Our own

1022
01:05:44,142 –> 01:05:44,511
time.

1023
01:05:50,144 –> 01:05:52,954
The cultural confidence

1024
01:05:54,221 –> 01:05:57,890
that Shakespeare is rallying people to,

1025
01:05:58,760 –> 01:06:02,160
rallying his viewers of this play to,

1026
01:06:03,659 –> 01:06:07,141
as the actors strut about the stage of the Globe Theatre,

1027
01:06:09,102 –> 01:06:12,690
the thing that he’s rallying them to is the cultural

1028
01:06:12,690 –> 01:06:16,055
confidence to go off and face the French, to continue to face the French in

1029
01:06:16,055 –> 01:06:19,484
100 Years’ War, in 100 Years’ Religious War, right?

1030
01:06:20,862 –> 01:06:24,644
And look, this was, this was written in a

1031
01:06:24,644 –> 01:06:28,009
space where, and I’ve heard some

1032
01:06:28,009 –> 01:06:31,758
analysis on this, and I don’t necessarily agree with it, but this is some analysis,

1033
01:06:31,838 –> 01:06:35,251
this is a perspective, that Shakespeare was writing to an

1034
01:06:35,444 –> 01:06:39,258
audience that was for their time more

1035
01:06:39,370 –> 01:06:42,463
secular than the religious folks that were,

1036
01:06:43,152 –> 01:06:46,983
that maybe were surrounding or were in more of the general public. So

1037
01:06:46,983 –> 01:06:50,749
that there’s always been this, and I won’t tell you who the person was that

1038
01:06:50,749 –> 01:06:53,330
I read this analysis from. It doesn’t really matter. That was the kind of the

1039
01:06:53,330 –> 01:06:56,519
thing that stuck out to me because I don’t think of Shakespeare as a secular

1040
01:06:56,519 –> 01:07:00,302
writer. Now, that could be, you know, that could be an ill understanding on my

1041
01:07:00,302 –> 01:07:04,084
part. I will own that. So perhaps maybe that person

1042
01:07:04,084 –> 01:07:06,119
had something correct there in their analysis.

1043
01:07:07,709 –> 01:07:10,626
But I would say, or I would assert that 2026,

1044
01:07:15,100 –> 01:07:18,792
400, 300, 400 years later, we’ve

1045
01:07:18,792 –> 01:07:22,223
gone so far beyond what Shakespeare thought of as secularism

1046
01:07:22,658 –> 01:07:25,106
that we are now as far away from that

1047
01:07:25,943 –> 01:07:29,617
as Jupiter is from Alpha Centauri. Like, you

1048
01:07:29,617 –> 01:07:33,107
just, you can’t get there from here, right? And

1049
01:07:33,107 –> 01:07:36,809
so to my question of how do we

1050
01:07:36,809 –> 01:07:39,993
put the grit back in the gears? How do we regain cultural confidence?

1051
01:07:41,070 –> 01:07:44,797
You mentioned we show the, the, the storming of

1052
01:07:44,797 –> 01:07:48,428
Mount Suribachi, the putting up of the flag at Iwo Jima, you know, Mount

1053
01:07:48,428 –> 01:07:52,125
Suribachi at Iwo Jima. We show the storming of Normandy. And this is what clicked

1054
01:07:52,125 –> 01:07:55,428
over in my brain. Most of our

1055
01:07:55,558 –> 01:07:59,059
references to that kind of courage come from

1056
01:07:59,189 –> 01:08:01,545
80 years ago. Yeah.

1057
01:08:03,901 –> 01:08:05,595
No one is going to show pictures

1058
01:08:07,817 –> 01:08:08,879
of the

1059
01:08:11,560 –> 01:08:12,624
Battle of Fallujah

1060
01:08:15,205 –> 01:08:18,786
or the holding of a hill, a

1061
01:08:18,786 –> 01:08:22,221
no-name hill in Afghanistan. So one of the books that we read

1062
01:08:22,882 –> 01:08:26,120
was the book War by Sebastian Junger. Read that book last year

1063
01:08:26,652 –> 01:08:29,632
on the show. And it is the story of

1064
01:08:30,796 –> 01:08:34,076
an army battalion that held a pass in Afghanistan

1065
01:08:34,658 –> 01:08:38,167
for 2, 3 years that basically the British,

1066
01:08:38,474 –> 01:08:42,147
the Russians, and even Afghanis, native Afghanis, wouldn’t go into and hold.

1067
01:08:42,681 –> 01:08:45,319
And we held it for 2 years. Yeah. And then, you know what we did?

1068
01:08:45,740 –> 01:08:49,473
Because Americans are fickle now with war, the American

1069
01:08:49,473 –> 01:08:52,531
public anyway is, we just left.

1070
01:08:53,703 –> 01:08:56,573
We didn’t lose. We were killing Taliban fighters by the

1071
01:08:57,294 –> 01:09:00,901
boxful every day. We had superior

1072
01:09:00,901 –> 01:09:04,605
firepower. We had superior training with 18 and 19-year-old

1073
01:09:04,605 –> 01:09:08,083
guys being led by 22-year-old

1074
01:09:08,131 –> 01:09:11,947
guys. We had that thing in Afghanistan in

1075
01:09:12,043 –> 01:09:15,378
2007 or whatever it was, 2004,

1076
01:09:15,506 –> 01:09:18,119
2007. We held that pass for 3 years.

1077
01:09:20,029 –> 01:09:23,863
No one’s showing videos of that. No one’s showing videos of the retaking of

1078
01:09:23,895 –> 01:09:27,713
Fallujah. No one’s. Instead, what we would see, what we would

1079
01:09:27,713 –> 01:09:31,224
see is the

1080
01:09:31,256 –> 01:09:31,997
glorious

1081
01:09:34,622 –> 01:09:37,460
retreat from Afghanistan under the Biden administration,

1082
01:09:39,237 –> 01:09:42,940
which, of course, references back to the fall of Saigon in the

1083
01:09:42,940 –> 01:09:45,193
Vietnam War, which is why it would be shown.

1084
01:09:47,543 –> 01:09:51,253
The people who are in control of the narrative around cultural confidence

1085
01:09:51,334 –> 01:09:54,144
don’t believe in the cultural confidence of the country

1086
01:09:54,144 –> 01:09:57,646
themselves. And I’m not talking even now about the elites. I’m

1087
01:09:57,694 –> 01:10:01,389
talking about folks all the way down in the pile. So

1088
01:10:01,935 –> 01:10:05,774
when the people who run your advertising agencies, and

1089
01:10:05,806 –> 01:10:08,922
this is not even a political statement, lean more progressively,

1090
01:10:11,318 –> 01:10:13,810
They don’t even understand Once More Into the Breach, dear friends.

1091
01:10:16,430 –> 01:10:20,183
I agree with that. And I think that you can see that spill over into

1092
01:10:20,200 –> 01:10:23,588
pop culture. Like, compare— this is very interesting—

1093
01:10:23,701 –> 01:10:27,171
compare the prequel trilogy of Star Wars with the original

1094
01:10:27,171 –> 01:10:30,669
trilogy of Star Wars with the sequel trilogy of Star Wars. Oh my, yes.

1095
01:10:31,281 –> 01:10:34,322
Okay, so you’ve got the original trilogy, and you have to do it in not

1096
01:10:34,403 –> 01:10:38,028
in story order, but chronological order. when they were released,

1097
01:10:38,044 –> 01:10:41,793
release order. Because you have the, the

1098
01:10:41,889 –> 01:10:45,222
good guys going up against this evil empire, right?

1099
01:10:45,735 –> 01:10:49,404
And it’s this thematic of the rebellion is on the rise. And

1100
01:10:49,485 –> 01:10:52,850
that coincides with what? Morning in America,

1101
01:10:53,346 –> 01:10:57,192
right? It’s morning in America again. And then you have the prequel trilogy

1102
01:10:57,192 –> 01:10:59,035
that comes out ’97 to

1103
01:10:59,035 –> 01:11:02,720
2005-ish. Hmm. And you see

1104
01:11:02,720 –> 01:11:06,490
this Republic in its waning days. You

1105
01:11:06,490 –> 01:11:09,976
know, no one is— everyone’s corrupt. No one has faith in the

1106
01:11:09,976 –> 01:11:13,687
institution anymore. And the institution is overtaken by an evil empire.

1107
01:11:14,397 –> 01:11:18,091
And then what do we have is the sequel trilogy, which

1108
01:11:18,188 –> 01:11:21,684
comes out, you know, 20— what, ’16 to

1109
01:11:22,168 –> 01:11:25,863
2020-ish? Mm-hmm. And you have essentially

1110
01:11:28,170 –> 01:11:31,690
a non- functioning state

1111
01:11:32,241 –> 01:11:35,610
in the New Republic that is overtaken by

1112
01:11:36,145 –> 01:11:38,878
what is essentially, you know, Space Nazis

1113
01:11:38,878 –> 01:11:42,156
2.0. And

1114
01:11:42,814 –> 01:11:46,638
it’s this same sort of thing that you’re talking about, like this lack of

1115
01:11:46,687 –> 01:11:50,351
cultural confidence, this lack of functioning governance.

1116
01:11:51,814 –> 01:11:54,852
And it’s imbued in our cultural mythos.

1117
01:11:55,430 –> 01:11:58,573
Star Wars was our cultural mythos

1118
01:11:59,246 –> 01:12:03,012
for a while. It’s, it’s, it’s— Disney has so screwed it up

1119
01:12:03,012 –> 01:12:06,649
that it’s no longer the case anymore. And you’ll find more, more

1120
01:12:07,018 –> 01:12:10,463
fans of Star Wars reading what’s called the EU, which is the, the

1121
01:12:10,623 –> 01:12:14,261
books that were written from like 1993 until about

1122
01:12:14,389 –> 01:12:18,107
2016 when Disney bought Star Wars, than you will find

1123
01:12:18,155 –> 01:12:21,745
people actually watching the sequel trilogy and all the content that they put

1124
01:12:21,745 –> 01:12:25,228
together. Because we fundamentally long for

1125
01:12:26,166 –> 01:12:29,889
a cultural confidence. I think we really do

1126
01:12:29,889 –> 01:12:33,255
fundamentally want that. And it’s going to have to

1127
01:12:33,272 –> 01:12:36,962
require people from the ground up saying, no, I

1128
01:12:37,075 –> 01:12:40,182
know that America did bad things. I’m well aware

1129
01:12:40,716 –> 01:12:44,372
of, you know, the Trail of Tears and,

1130
01:12:45,165 –> 01:12:48,870
you know, how awful we treated the

1131
01:12:48,870 –> 01:12:52,493
Native Americans. My brother-in-law is Navajo. Like, I

1132
01:12:52,542 –> 01:12:55,609
know how bad we treated the, the

1133
01:12:55,867 –> 01:12:57,837
indigenous peoples of the United States.

1134
01:12:59,994 –> 01:13:03,506
I’m a student of history. I understand how awful that stuff is.

1135
01:13:04,167 –> 01:13:07,857
But also, we did good things.

1136
01:13:08,920 –> 01:13:12,559
You know, allowing women and girls in Afghanistan to

1137
01:13:12,640 –> 01:13:16,102
actually go to school, to learn to read, to learn music.

1138
01:13:16,746 –> 01:13:20,479
That was not a sin. And that’s okay. And I

1139
01:13:20,479 –> 01:13:24,164
think that part of this is that we’ve We’ve become the

1140
01:13:24,229 –> 01:13:27,441
cultural inheritors, or we’re experiencing what,

1141
01:13:27,827 –> 01:13:31,344
what Europe experienced after World War I, which was

1142
01:13:31,457 –> 01:13:35,215
there’s no such thing as valor anymore. You know,

1143
01:13:35,296 –> 01:13:39,135
World War I, people went into it expecting, oh, we’ll have these glorious cavalry

1144
01:13:39,167 –> 01:13:42,620
charges across the field and we’ll take the trenches and blah, blah, blah.

1145
01:13:43,247 –> 01:13:46,861
We had learned from the Civil War and trench warfare

1146
01:13:47,118 –> 01:13:50,876
that doesn’t work. And so we weren’t doing that, but they were

1147
01:13:50,892 –> 01:13:54,346
learning that. And so you have literally

1148
01:13:54,506 –> 01:13:58,120
millions of men slaughtered in the mud for

1149
01:13:58,120 –> 01:14:01,734
no reason to gain an inch, maybe a mile of

1150
01:14:01,734 –> 01:14:05,059
land. And so this loss of a

1151
01:14:05,107 –> 01:14:08,770
belief in valor, in honor, in glory, in—

1152
01:14:09,364 –> 01:14:12,930
it goes away. And so we, we have even stripped this

1153
01:14:13,042 –> 01:14:16,720
idea of a just war out of our mythos as

1154
01:14:16,816 –> 01:14:20,606
well. And so now there is no way for us to sort

1155
01:14:20,606 –> 01:14:24,284
of recoup that. And I think that that’s why we go to these

1156
01:14:24,284 –> 01:14:27,961
examples from 80 years ago, because you have these

1157
01:14:28,058 –> 01:14:31,896
stories of, of the Korean War. That’s the forgotten war. It was kind of

1158
01:14:31,912 –> 01:14:35,670
useless in the end, because the lines stabilized around exactly

1159
01:14:35,702 –> 01:14:39,476
where they were before. Then you have the Vietnam War, which

1160
01:14:39,540 –> 01:14:43,266
was a travesty. You have, uh, you

1161
01:14:43,266 –> 01:14:47,073
know, Grenada. You have PG-1, which was,

1162
01:14:47,651 –> 01:14:50,607
you know, that didn’t really end up doing anything. We have

1163
01:14:50,639 –> 01:14:54,381
PG-2. We have, uh, Afghanistan,

1164
01:14:54,895 –> 01:14:58,638
right? And now we have the Iran War. And it all culminates in

1165
01:14:58,686 –> 01:15:02,332
sort of this idea of the futility of war. And

1166
01:15:02,830 –> 01:15:05,994
unless you believe that at some point

1167
01:15:06,042 –> 01:15:09,704
fundamentally war is justified, that you are

1168
01:15:10,057 –> 01:15:13,814
able to take up arms in protection of your liberties, in

1169
01:15:13,910 –> 01:15:17,475
protection of, of, of what you believe to be morally

1170
01:15:17,603 –> 01:15:21,393
just, then you will never get to a place where this sort of

1171
01:15:21,393 –> 01:15:25,054
speech feels rousing and brings a tear to your eye because

1172
01:15:25,150 –> 01:15:28,105
you, you functionally cannot relate to it.

1173
01:15:29,341 –> 01:15:32,087
So I was having a conversation with somebody the other day.

1174
01:15:35,213 –> 01:15:37,910
Um, I’m not going to go into specifics about who the person was

1175
01:15:37,910 –> 01:15:40,785
because that actually really doesn’t matter.

1176
01:15:41,980 –> 01:15:45,688
But the point that the person was making is that, or was

1177
01:15:45,720 –> 01:15:49,337
that, they were morally

1178
01:15:49,839 –> 01:15:52,158
outraged by

1179
01:15:53,487 –> 01:15:56,939
what they were consuming and the

1180
01:15:56,971 –> 01:15:58,835
messages they were consuming via social media.

1181
01:16:00,668 –> 01:16:04,498
around what Israel was

1182
01:16:04,610 –> 01:16:08,280
either doing or not doing in the

1183
01:16:08,280 –> 01:16:12,109
response to October 7th and in the Palestine, in

1184
01:16:12,141 –> 01:16:15,779
the Palestine war or in their war

1185
01:16:15,827 –> 01:16:19,400
against Palestine. And this person was expressing

1186
01:16:19,577 –> 01:16:22,477
to me anti-Israeli sentiments.

1187
01:16:25,990 –> 01:16:29,123
And accusing the Israelis of war crimes,

1188
01:16:29,802 –> 01:16:33,565
right? In the course of that war, again, based on

1189
01:16:33,597 –> 01:16:36,793
what they were seeing in their social media feeds,

1190
01:16:38,150 –> 01:16:41,726
and then claiming very robustly in the conversation with me

1191
01:16:43,199 –> 01:16:46,953
that they had already done their research, and that anybody who

1192
01:16:47,067 –> 01:16:50,675
opposed or had an opposite view of

1193
01:16:51,638 –> 01:16:55,335
of Israel’s actions was just a quote unquote, and I’m going to

1194
01:16:55,351 –> 01:16:59,144
use the term they used, was just a quote unquote Trumpist who

1195
01:16:59,160 –> 01:17:02,277
was just believing quote unquote propaganda. Okay. Mm-hmm.

1196
01:17:03,988 –> 01:17:07,299
This is the dynamic you’ve got. And so I, what I did was I went

1197
01:17:07,299 –> 01:17:10,573
to just war theory. I went exactly to that. And by the way, I absolutely

1198
01:17:10,573 –> 01:17:14,237
confused the person by referring to that. I

1199
01:17:14,269 –> 01:17:17,853
said, well, I understand that you are morally

1200
01:17:17,885 –> 01:17:21,639
outraged by what you see. I think

1201
01:17:21,655 –> 01:17:25,228
one of the challenges that we have in our society, I said to this person,

1202
01:17:25,981 –> 01:17:29,731
is that we have confused morals and ethics. We

1203
01:17:29,731 –> 01:17:33,480
actually don’t know how to separate those 2 anymore. And because

1204
01:17:33,512 –> 01:17:37,342
we don’t know how to separate those 2, we actually don’t know what just

1205
01:17:37,342 –> 01:17:40,675
war looks like. We don’t know what box to put warfare in.

1206
01:17:41,364 –> 01:17:44,953
So all warfare becomes this unethical, immoral

1207
01:17:45,033 –> 01:17:48,463
act all of the time. Even when it is

1208
01:17:48,895 –> 01:17:52,501
an act done in self-defense or to

1209
01:17:52,501 –> 01:17:56,283
clean up a problem or to solve a— to do anything. Like,

1210
01:17:56,347 –> 01:17:59,840
we, we, but we don’t have the correct categories. We’re making category

1211
01:17:59,953 –> 01:18:03,526
errors all over the place in our thinking. And when we make those

1212
01:18:03,574 –> 01:18:06,154
category errors, then we can become more

1213
01:18:07,388 –> 01:18:11,106
susceptible to the messages that we are receiving in our

1214
01:18:11,154 –> 01:18:14,040
social media feeds. And when I said this to this person,

1215
01:18:17,800 –> 01:18:21,048
and this is a very highly educated, wealthy person, they’re not,

1216
01:18:22,260 –> 01:18:25,556
you would not call this person dumb in their field of, in their field of

1217
01:18:25,556 –> 01:18:29,346
work. They are not stupid. It was, it

1218
01:18:29,394 –> 01:18:31,170
was as if I had said nothing at all.

1219
01:18:34,581 –> 01:18:38,140
And they just went right back to the, the,

1220
01:18:38,544 –> 01:18:42,254
the, the The two sort of pillars they were bouncing back and forth

1221
01:18:42,530 –> 01:18:46,285
between in their brains of propaganda and/or Trumpist. And then

1222
01:18:46,884 –> 01:18:50,091
Israel is a bunch of genociders and we should stop supporting them.

1223
01:18:51,570 –> 01:18:55,381
At which point in the conversation I had to say,

1224
01:18:56,593 –> 01:19:00,373
well, we’re not going to solve this today. Let’s

1225
01:19:00,373 –> 01:19:01,326
move on to something else.

1226
01:19:04,561 –> 01:19:07,584
I think the other factor and that, that story, the reason I’m telling you that

1227
01:19:07,584 –> 01:19:11,330
story is because I think the other factor The other reason why this speech doesn’t

1228
01:19:11,330 –> 01:19:15,097
play is because social media and

1229
01:19:15,177 –> 01:19:18,768
what is in our feeds has convinced us, as

1230
01:19:18,864 –> 01:19:22,551
Jonathan Haidt would say, has convinced us that our

1231
01:19:22,551 –> 01:19:25,501
minds are righteous and that we don’t need any

1232
01:19:26,014 –> 01:19:29,412
external inputs that may push on that.

1233
01:19:30,246 –> 01:19:33,436
And when those external inputs do push on

1234
01:19:34,094 –> 01:19:37,338
or counteract Whatever it is we already believe.

1235
01:19:38,796 –> 01:19:41,518
And by the way, that has been reconfirmed for us in our social media feeds.

1236
01:19:43,436 –> 01:19:46,842
The problem lies not in us or in our social media

1237
01:19:46,842 –> 01:19:49,437
feeds. The problem lies in those folks over there.

1238
01:19:53,765 –> 01:19:57,068
That right there, that division.

1239
01:20:01,992 –> 01:20:05,640
Encourages the growth of a

1240
01:20:05,640 –> 01:20:09,156
lack of cultural confidence. It

1241
01:20:09,270 –> 01:20:12,993
also encourages a decline in the body politic and in the

1242
01:20:13,009 –> 01:20:16,441
republic. And this is why, as I said, you know, 15 minutes ago, the

1243
01:20:16,732 –> 01:20:19,827
line that’s thin is the line of people who,

1244
01:20:20,680 –> 01:20:24,205
quite frankly, are too busy to be on

1245
01:20:24,205 –> 01:20:27,705
Instagram. Yeah. Because

1246
01:20:27,817 –> 01:20:30,941
they’re busy building the infrastructure and

1247
01:20:31,038 –> 01:20:33,856
maintaining it that lets Instagram run.

1248
01:20:35,241 –> 01:20:38,858
Yeah. And allows all the people who don’t understand that

1249
01:20:38,858 –> 01:20:42,545
there’s a bunch of people who are holding up that infrastructure. It allows those

1250
01:20:42,561 –> 01:20:46,053
people the— we talk a lot about privilege in our culture now— the privilege of

1251
01:20:46,053 –> 01:20:49,466
complaining and finding moral outrage in

1252
01:20:49,595 –> 01:20:53,362
things where they begin

1253
01:20:53,362 –> 01:20:55,359
from a category error and then move forward.

1254
01:20:58,402 –> 01:21:02,105
I don’t think this is an issue of education, at least not the common way

1255
01:21:02,186 –> 01:21:05,392
we think of education. I think that this is an issue of

1256
01:21:05,970 –> 01:21:09,738
spiritual development and growth. I think this is an issue the church, capital

1257
01:21:09,738 –> 01:21:13,329
C church, needs to step in and deal with because the

1258
01:21:13,329 –> 01:21:17,178
church, capital C, is the one that actually is equipped, even though they don’t think

1259
01:21:17,178 –> 01:21:20,416
that they are. And those kinds of errors have entered the church too. So let’s

1260
01:21:20,416 –> 01:21:24,249
not go there for just a second. Yeah. They’re the ones, they’re the ones That

1261
01:21:24,249 –> 01:21:26,529
are equipped to be able to deal with this.

1262
01:21:27,830 –> 01:21:31,459
And but the church has, to my point earlier about the

1263
01:21:31,459 –> 01:21:35,007
king embodying the, the, the, the

1264
01:21:35,794 –> 01:21:39,054
being the embodiment of the Spirit of God on earth, the church has

1265
01:21:39,310 –> 01:21:42,843
abdicated its role in the body politic.

1266
01:21:43,887 –> 01:21:47,387
When faith becomes a personal matter, then it can never scale

1267
01:21:47,756 –> 01:21:51,462
to solve these larger problems. And by the way, if you don’t

1268
01:21:51,462 –> 01:21:54,417
believe me, just go read Thomas Aquinas on just war theory.

1269
01:21:57,430 –> 01:22:00,809
Thomas Aquinas comes up with just war theory, not because he has his own

1270
01:22:00,858 –> 01:22:04,302
personal Jesus. He comes up with just war theory

1271
01:22:05,046 –> 01:22:08,589
because he recognizes the church’s impact and God’s impact on the earth

1272
01:22:09,334 –> 01:22:13,138
and through the earth. Yeah. Through, yes, quite frankly, a Catholic and

1273
01:22:13,138 –> 01:22:16,970
Christian lens in the 15th century. And in

1274
01:22:16,970 –> 01:22:19,596
the 14th century, yes, that is correct.

1275
01:22:22,592 –> 01:22:25,765
I, you know, this is not, this is not, this is not, this is these,

1276
01:22:25,829 –> 01:22:29,166
the answers to these questions aren’t hard. The answers are easy.

1277
01:22:29,826 –> 01:22:33,562
The implications of them, though, are hard to deal with.

1278
01:22:33,787 –> 01:22:36,992
And we’ll talk about consequences here with Henry in a minute. But the implications and

1279
01:22:36,992 –> 01:22:40,619
the consequences of these are, are what is, are what we

1280
01:22:40,619 –> 01:22:44,285
struggle around. Because we, we are uncomfortable with where those

1281
01:22:44,317 –> 01:22:48,032
implications go. Am I advocating for a theocratic state and

1282
01:22:48,032 –> 01:22:51,815
Christian nationalism? No, I’m not advocating for that in this conversation. I’m not

1283
01:22:51,815 –> 01:22:54,957
advocating for any of that at all. I am merely saying that the church has

1284
01:22:54,973 –> 01:22:58,017
a role here, whether you believe in a transcendent God or not.

1285
01:22:59,838 –> 01:23:03,309
And I really like that because one of the things that, that I,

1286
01:23:04,819 –> 01:23:08,258
I want to add to that is this idea of category errors.

1287
01:23:08,805 –> 01:23:12,413
I really think there’s something to that. I wrote a

1288
01:23:12,413 –> 01:23:15,942
LinkedIn post about this a couple of days ago. I was listening to

1289
01:23:16,298 –> 01:23:19,715
a podcast and the hosts were talking about the— I

1290
01:23:20,429 –> 01:23:24,130
think his name’s Jason Arday, the Cambridge professor

1291
01:23:24,146 –> 01:23:27,326
who was exposed for a bunch of these lies. Yep.

1292
01:23:28,689 –> 01:23:32,062
And one of the things that I noticed was that they kept saying, now,

1293
01:23:32,176 –> 01:23:35,191
obviously, this is a very intelligent person, obviously, and

1294
01:23:35,537 –> 01:23:39,190
academics are very intelligent. And it struck me that it’s

1295
01:23:39,190 –> 01:23:42,937
like, I don’t know that these guys are actually

1296
01:23:42,969 –> 01:23:46,701
using intelligence properly. And so it led

1297
01:23:46,733 –> 01:23:50,522
me down this rabbit hole of like, what is intelligence?

1298
01:23:50,798 –> 01:23:54,490
And I think that, that this goes hand in hand with this

1299
01:23:54,490 –> 01:23:58,010
sort of category error,

1300
01:23:58,479 –> 01:24:01,790
because in our culture today, we believe that intelligence is just the

1301
01:24:01,790 –> 01:24:05,230
accumulation of knowledge. Um, I

1302
01:24:05,278 –> 01:24:09,066
believe that knowledge is the— or that intelligence is the application

1303
01:24:09,371 –> 01:24:12,949
of knowledge to solve a problem. So in a certain

1304
01:24:12,965 –> 01:24:16,705
context, a man who only has a high school diploma

1305
01:24:16,753 –> 01:24:20,075
could be more intelligent than someone who

1306
01:24:20,508 –> 01:24:24,216
is, you know, Cambridge educated. And I think

1307
01:24:24,360 –> 01:24:28,051
that what happens is, because we, we are so

1308
01:24:28,051 –> 01:24:31,853
locked in on that idea of knowledge accumulation, we

1309
01:24:31,933 –> 01:24:34,968
are unable to hear what other people are saying

1310
01:24:36,841 –> 01:24:40,432
to actually solve the problem. And we think, well, I’m smarter than you because I

1311
01:24:40,544 –> 01:24:44,079
have more knowledge accumulated than you do. And it’s like,

1312
01:24:44,160 –> 01:24:47,840
yeah, but your knowledge is about 15th century French poetry by

1313
01:24:47,840 –> 01:24:51,200
supposed lesbians. Right. And

1314
01:24:52,563 –> 01:24:56,294
we’re talking about how to fix a car. Right, right. Or,

1315
01:24:56,729 –> 01:25:00,035
or you are, you are engaged in a

1316
01:25:00,035 –> 01:25:03,868
conversation. And, you

1317
01:25:03,868 –> 01:25:07,567
know, I worked in academia for many years. I still do

1318
01:25:07,583 –> 01:25:10,683
work with folks in academia. I’m academia adjacent now,

1319
01:25:11,701 –> 01:25:15,430
which is actually a lot better. But

1320
01:25:18,525 –> 01:25:22,091
the confusion of, to your point, the confusion of the acquisition of

1321
01:25:22,091 –> 01:25:24,952
knowledge with intelligence. really began to kick off with Google

1322
01:25:25,787 –> 01:25:29,419
and Google Search. And of course, it’s going to go on

1323
01:25:29,419 –> 01:25:32,876
steroids with LLMs and AI

1324
01:25:32,876 –> 01:25:36,608
applications. We’re already seeing this. This is why— Yes. This is why

1325
01:25:36,640 –> 01:25:40,436
Anthropic, the Apple computer, by the way, of AI

1326
01:25:40,436 –> 01:25:44,191
companies, is watermarking everything now. So

1327
01:25:44,594 –> 01:25:47,547
that’s not going to help them. But okay, you go ahead.

1328
01:25:48,531 –> 01:25:51,986
You get after it. Um, uh, but

1329
01:25:52,242 –> 01:25:56,059
the, the, the, the ability to, to your point,

1330
01:25:56,347 –> 01:26:00,084
the ability to apply that knowledge correctly is

1331
01:26:00,196 –> 01:26:03,884
the true sign of intelligence. And to this Jason Arday

1332
01:26:03,980 –> 01:26:07,412
issue, um, I sort of have tangentially been following that. It’s kind of like a

1333
01:26:07,412 –> 01:26:11,260
fly buzzing around my head because of people I’m connected to. Yeah. And I get

1334
01:26:11,260 –> 01:26:14,756
things shared to me. And just like everybody else, I will

1335
01:26:14,884 –> 01:26:18,649
scroll and, and not pay attention to something and move

1336
01:26:18,713 –> 01:26:22,326
on, right? I have

1337
01:26:22,520 –> 01:26:25,956
zero opinion on Jason Arday. I have zero opinion on what happened with

1338
01:26:25,988 –> 01:26:29,692
Cambridge. I have zero thoughts on

1339
01:26:30,359 –> 01:26:33,840
his unfortunate suicide. It’s always unfortunate when a person kills

1340
01:26:33,938 –> 01:26:37,274
themselves. And no, I’m not gonna use any

1341
01:26:37,403 –> 01:26:41,202
euphemisms. It’s suicide. That’s the word we should be using. If

1342
01:26:41,202 –> 01:26:45,011
we’re— if you’re triggered by that term, I, okay, I

1343
01:26:45,011 –> 01:26:48,733
don’t know how to help you. You need to see, you need to seek professional

1344
01:26:48,733 –> 01:26:52,022
help. You need to seek professional help. I’ve counseled people who were

1345
01:26:52,022 –> 01:26:55,263
suicidal. I’ve counseled people who have had suicidal tendencies.

1346
01:26:55,872 –> 01:26:59,466
Suicide is not about the person saying the word suicide. Suicide is about the

1347
01:26:59,466 –> 01:27:03,284
person who has the idea in their head, which

1348
01:27:03,316 –> 01:27:06,942
is again, responsibility, accountability, something that we have failed to do

1349
01:27:07,102 –> 01:27:10,892
along with the infantilization of our culture, which which ties very directly into

1350
01:27:11,904 –> 01:27:15,489
the lack of cultural confidence. And on this Arday piece,

1351
01:27:16,743 –> 01:27:20,097
I think that, or to sort of

1352
01:27:20,097 –> 01:27:23,857
summarize my thoughts here, I have no opinion on any of this.

1353
01:27:25,148 –> 01:27:28,879
And Cambridge, we should probably

1354
01:27:28,879 –> 01:27:32,515
be looking really closely at what they were doing with this

1355
01:27:32,515 –> 01:27:36,280
gentleman. Yeah, I think that’s a wise stance to

1356
01:27:36,280 –> 01:27:39,995
take. very close to my stance, right? Cambridge

1357
01:27:39,995 –> 01:27:43,555
probably should have done a better job of actually vetting this guy and his

1358
01:27:43,555 –> 01:27:46,939
credentials and, you know, whether or not his stuff was, was

1359
01:27:47,037 –> 01:27:50,821
plagiarized and all of that. And you know what? I

1360
01:27:50,951 –> 01:27:54,264
personally feel bad for the man that he was allowed to get as far as

1361
01:27:54,264 –> 01:27:57,368
he did because the

1362
01:27:57,368 –> 01:28:01,131
guardrails were not up for him. Well,

1363
01:28:01,164 –> 01:28:04,904
sometimes guardrails, sometimes no is necessary. Okay. So to your point about pride, right?

1364
01:28:05,736 –> 01:28:08,471
And I’ll close with this. We’ll close up this section with this and we’ll move

1365
01:28:08,471 –> 01:28:10,510
on to, move on to other pieces of this. I want to talk about the

1366
01:28:10,510 –> 01:28:12,500
French and I want to talk about how do we get to where it is

1367
01:28:12,597 –> 01:28:16,204
we need to go here. You said that, you know,

1368
01:28:16,349 –> 01:28:19,939
from a non-Christian, the non-Christian perspective of the gentleman that you were bringing up earlier,

1369
01:28:19,987 –> 01:28:23,820
his analysis of Henry V, talking about how pride was the thing.

1370
01:28:23,884 –> 01:28:27,517
And that led us down to this conversation about cultural confidence. I don’t think pride

1371
01:28:27,517 –> 01:28:31,165
is the sin of our time. I think the primary sin of our time, at

1372
01:28:31,165 –> 01:28:34,553
least from a secularist’s perspective, the primary sin of our time is not pride. The

1373
01:28:34,553 –> 01:28:37,356
primary sin of our time is to just not— is not being nice.

1374
01:28:39,139 –> 01:28:42,914
And I use that word nice, N-I-C-E, nice. If you

1375
01:28:42,946 –> 01:28:46,770
are somehow not nice, you have committed a sin. So if you have offended

1376
01:28:46,770 –> 01:28:50,339
someone, that means that you’re on the opposite

1377
01:28:50,339 –> 01:28:54,158
side of being nice. If you don’t use the correct tone, I wrote a

1378
01:28:54,158 –> 01:28:57,809
whole blog post today. You can go check it out about tone policing. Because

1379
01:28:57,809 –> 01:29:01,424
of an email that I got the other

1380
01:29:01,440 –> 01:29:05,104
day. Again, deep. I’m being very vague. I’m going to be very

1381
01:29:05,136 –> 01:29:08,189
vague on this. Very vague. Because a lot of people who could get in trouble.

1382
01:29:08,896 –> 01:29:12,495
Very vague. Let’s just say I got an email and I was—

1383
01:29:13,331 –> 01:29:17,171
my first thought was, who are you to police

1384
01:29:17,171 –> 01:29:20,658
my tone? You don’t even know me. You don’t know me and you don’t know

1385
01:29:20,658 –> 01:29:24,240
my name. How dare you? And

1386
01:29:24,320 –> 01:29:28,110
then after I got past that initial sort of, how dare you, then I went

1387
01:29:28,110 –> 01:29:31,369
to, wait a minute, this is just them walking

1388
01:29:31,626 –> 01:29:34,918
out behavior via email in a business

1389
01:29:34,918 –> 01:29:37,423
context. Now, this is where it spilled over into

1390
01:29:38,466 –> 01:29:42,207
that we have seen on social media. Yes. This is yet again

1391
01:29:42,320 –> 01:29:45,740
another spillover from social media now into a business

1392
01:29:45,836 –> 01:29:47,908
context where you’re policing my tone.

1393
01:29:50,105 –> 01:29:53,038
So the problem actually isn’t with me and my tone.

1394
01:29:54,513 –> 01:29:57,783
The problem is with you and the avatar of me that you have in your

1395
01:29:57,783 –> 01:30:01,246
head because you don’t know me and you don’t know my pain.

1396
01:30:01,952 –> 01:30:04,901
Even folks who are looking at the video, watching the video, listening to the audio

1397
01:30:04,933 –> 01:30:08,027
of this, you don’t really know me. I mean, I’ve talked about things, whatever, but

1398
01:30:08,139 –> 01:30:11,859
you don’t know me. We’re not friends. It’s okay, by the way. We’re not

1399
01:30:11,907 –> 01:30:14,279
required to be because that’s not what the point of this is.

1400
01:30:15,840 –> 01:30:19,567
However, we believe that we should be able to know. We do

1401
01:30:19,567 –> 01:30:23,133
believe that we should be able to authenticate and be transparent.

1402
01:30:24,085 –> 01:30:27,093
But we’ve replaced it, not replaced, we’ve

1403
01:30:27,093 –> 01:30:30,787
substituted that in for intelligence and mixed it in. Again, category

1404
01:30:30,901 –> 01:30:34,570
errors, right? Being, not being

1405
01:30:34,602 –> 01:30:37,924
nice is the primary sin of our time. And sometimes saying no,

1406
01:30:38,329 –> 01:30:42,056
90% of the time saying no. I’ll use, I’ll use a perfect at-home example. I’ve

1407
01:30:42,056 –> 01:30:45,599
talked about my kids a lot on this show. When I say no to my

1408
01:30:45,599 –> 01:30:49,205
child, to my 9-year-old, like the other day we were out for ice cream or

1409
01:30:49,205 –> 01:30:52,187
whatever, and he hoovered through his one scoop of ice cream.

1410
01:30:53,517 –> 01:30:56,355
And then he, you know, because it’s hot and he’s hoovering through the ice cream

1411
01:30:56,355 –> 01:30:59,320
or whatever. And I didn’t get ice cream. I got a bottle of water because

1412
01:30:59,368 –> 01:31:02,638
I didn’t want ice cream. And we’re sitting outside. He’s hoovering through the ice cream.

1413
01:31:02,991 –> 01:31:06,726
I’m drinking my bottle of water. We’re all having a good time. My wife’s talking

1414
01:31:06,758 –> 01:31:09,810
to somebody that she saw on the street who she knows, whatever. And,

1415
01:31:10,870 –> 01:31:13,910
and he looks at me and he says, hey, can I have a— can I—

1416
01:31:13,910 –> 01:31:16,910
and by the way, I did offer him a drink of water with— unbidden, you

1417
01:31:16,910 –> 01:31:18,750
know, after he finished eating his ice cream. And then I told him to wipe

1418
01:31:18,750 –> 01:31:20,630
off his mouth because he had ice cream all over his face. It was kind

1419
01:31:20,630 –> 01:31:24,010
of a mess. Okay. That’s the context, right, of what I’m about to say.

1420
01:31:24,910 –> 01:31:27,510
Then a little later on, he’s getting bored. And you know the signs if you’ve

1421
01:31:27,510 –> 01:31:30,550
ever had a child, you know, around you, anybody under the age of 10, you

1422
01:31:30,550 –> 01:31:33,450
know what the signs are of them getting bored. Yeah. Adults are doing things that

1423
01:31:33,450 –> 01:31:36,561
they don’t care about anymore. Like they’ve lost interest. They ate the ice cream and

1424
01:31:36,561 –> 01:31:39,904
now they’re done. And so he’s doing all the things that the child does when

1425
01:31:39,920 –> 01:31:43,696
they’re bored, right? And he lands on— his eyes land on my

1426
01:31:43,696 –> 01:31:46,576
bottle of water and he says to me, he asks me,

1427
01:31:46,737 –> 01:31:50,475
hey, can I have a drink of that water? And you know what I

1428
01:31:50,475 –> 01:31:53,134
said to him? I said the kindest thing I could possibly say to him in

1429
01:31:53,134 –> 01:31:56,907
that context. I said no. And you

1430
01:31:56,907 –> 01:32:00,737
know what he said? Okay. Waited like 5 more minutes. Hey,

1431
01:32:00,753 –> 01:32:02,646
can I have a drink of that water? I said, no,

1432
01:32:04,654 –> 01:32:08,479
no, you’re fine. You already had water. You’re already hydrated. You

1433
01:32:08,479 –> 01:32:10,809
had ice cream. You’re good. You’re just impatient.

1434
01:32:13,490 –> 01:32:16,797
Category errors, right? Yes. The role of

1435
01:32:16,813 –> 01:32:20,508
society. Now let’s scale this up. The role of society

1436
01:32:20,524 –> 01:32:24,257
is to look at a person or the role of Cambridge. Let’s

1437
01:32:24,257 –> 01:32:27,791
put this on Cambridge for a minute. Not even society, Cambridge. The role of Cambridge

1438
01:32:27,840 –> 01:32:31,621
is to look at an individual. And I’m not going to pick specifically on Jason

1439
01:32:31,621 –> 01:32:35,102
R. Day. I’ll just say all of the Jason R. Days that could potentially come

1440
01:32:35,102 –> 01:32:38,608
to Cambridge and knock on the door. And to say to some of them,

1441
01:32:39,866 –> 01:32:42,607
no, no,

1442
01:32:44,687 –> 01:32:47,767
that goes back to Queen Elizabeth II upholding a standard.

1443
01:32:49,380 –> 01:32:52,202
That goes back to what it means to be Cambridge in the context of what

1444
01:32:52,202 –> 01:32:55,792
it means to be— Yeah. you know, in New

1445
01:32:55,904 –> 01:32:59,432
England or in England or wherever, like whatever that’s,

1446
01:32:59,672 –> 01:33:03,200
that’s standard, right? We’re holding a standard. We’re holding a line. The

1447
01:33:03,200 –> 01:33:06,616
kindest thing sometimes you can say as a leader to somebody is

1448
01:33:07,835 –> 01:33:11,571
no. No, I, I love this. And I just

1449
01:33:11,604 –> 01:33:15,436
want to add one, one layer to this because I think you’re spot on.

1450
01:33:15,629 –> 01:33:18,355
I think the kindest thing you can do as a leader is say no.

1451
01:33:19,237 –> 01:33:22,920
But building on this idea of Niceness, niceness, I think that

1452
01:33:23,582 –> 01:33:26,618
we interpret niceness as any

1453
01:33:26,812 –> 01:33:30,464
conflict is bad. And because we

1454
01:33:30,464 –> 01:33:33,995
interpret any conflict as bad, we create a category

1455
01:33:34,256 –> 01:33:35,932
error that all

1456
01:33:39,945 –> 01:33:43,584
conflict— or participate in a category error, I think would be the more

1457
01:33:43,584 –> 01:33:46,741
accurate way to say that. We participate in this error that all

1458
01:33:46,857 –> 01:33:50,417
conflict is contention. But that’s not the case.

1459
01:33:51,012 –> 01:33:53,918
Conflict is healthy and it has to exist.

1460
01:33:54,608 –> 01:33:58,044
Contention, I believe, is destructive

1461
01:33:58,221 –> 01:34:01,898
because egos get involved and you care more about being right than

1462
01:34:02,010 –> 01:34:05,414
doing what is right. Mm-hmm. And I think that, that,

1463
01:34:06,169 –> 01:34:09,910
you know, just, just building on what you’re saying, that’s what we’re experiencing right

1464
01:34:09,958 –> 01:34:13,410
now is this because we cannot be

1465
01:34:14,117 –> 01:34:16,911
Because we are stuck in this sin of niceness,

1466
01:34:17,906 –> 01:34:21,005
we cannot and cannot differentiate between

1467
01:34:21,117 –> 01:34:24,939
conflict and contention. We cannot solve

1468
01:34:24,955 –> 01:34:28,632
the great issues of our day. And so we’re Balkanizing.

1469
01:34:28,905 –> 01:34:31,474
And the people who are saying, I’m just going to— I’m just going to have

1470
01:34:31,474 –> 01:34:35,054
the conversation, are labeled as

1471
01:34:35,247 –> 01:34:38,699
bad by one side and a breath of fresh air by the other.

1472
01:34:39,341 –> 01:34:39,405
Yeah.

1473
01:34:45,238 –> 01:34:49,059
Yeah. Back to the play. Back to Henry V.

1474
01:34:49,107 –> 01:34:52,815
So we’re going to pick up with Act 3,

1475
01:34:54,863 –> 01:34:57,399
Scene 7. This is a long scene.

1476
01:34:59,218 –> 01:35:02,973
I’m not going to read all of it. Read part of it and read down

1477
01:35:03,022 –> 01:35:03,167
to

1478
01:35:07,198 –> 01:35:10,794
Oh gosh, there’s— and there’s French in here, by the way, folks. I’m terrible

1479
01:35:11,034 –> 01:35:14,742
at French. I don’t know the language. I do understand the people, but I

1480
01:35:14,742 –> 01:35:18,449
don’t know the language, which I will butcher

1481
01:35:18,449 –> 01:35:21,932
some French here. Let’s see, let’s read down to

1482
01:35:22,269 –> 01:35:25,560
where it says the messenger enters. You got the Orleans, you got the

1483
01:35:25,560 –> 01:35:28,898
constable talking. So we’ll read a few pages in this.

1484
01:35:29,091 –> 01:35:32,119
We’ll try to pick up on— I’m gonna try to— brush up on my French

1485
01:35:32,151 –> 01:35:34,891
here in this. So, uh, who do you want me to be?

1486
01:35:36,083 –> 01:35:39,713
Well, let’s see here. Got the constable,

1487
01:35:40,703 –> 01:35:43,850
but the Lord Rambures, Orleans, Dauphin, with others.

1488
01:35:45,458 –> 01:35:48,886
I think we’ll just go back and forth. We’ll just alternate. All right, cool. Yeah,

1489
01:35:48,902 –> 01:35:52,716
we can do that. So let’s pick up Act 3, Scene 7,

1490
01:35:53,955 –> 01:35:57,558
this long-ish episode of The Life of Henry The 5th. Don’t worry,

1491
01:35:57,591 –> 01:36:00,955
folks, we’re going around the corner. Just stay with us.

1492
01:36:03,691 –> 01:36:07,003
All right, enter the Constable of France, the Lord

1493
01:36:07,003 –> 01:36:10,267
Rambures, Orleans, Dauphin, with others.

1494
01:36:11,870 –> 01:36:15,200
Constable, I have the best armor of the world. Would it

1495
01:36:15,605 –> 01:36:18,806
were day. Orléans, you

1496
01:36:18,919 –> 01:36:22,051
have an excellent armor, but let my horse have his due.

1497
01:36:23,841 –> 01:36:27,597
It is the best horse of Europe. Will it

1498
01:36:27,791 –> 01:36:31,483
never be morning? My Lord Orléans and

1499
01:36:31,499 –> 01:36:34,439
my Lord High Constable, you talk of horse and armor.

1500
01:36:36,493 –> 01:36:40,282
You are as well provided of both as any prince in the world.

1501
01:36:42,220 –> 01:36:45,932
What a long night is this! I will not change my horse with any

1502
01:36:46,209 –> 01:36:48,260
that treads but on four-paste

1503
01:36:50,058 –> 01:36:53,596
Ha! He bounds from the earth as if his entrails were hairs. Le cheval

1504
01:36:53,693 –> 01:36:57,484
volant, the Pegasus, cuit à la narine des fieux. When I

1505
01:36:57,484 –> 01:37:01,194
bestride him, I soar. I am a hawk. He trots

1506
01:37:01,194 –> 01:37:04,788
in the air. The earth sings when he touches it. The basest

1507
01:37:04,902 –> 01:37:08,285
horn of his hoof is more musical than the pipe of Hermes.

1508
01:37:10,162 –> 01:37:12,780
He, uh, he’s of the color of nutmeg.

1509
01:37:14,171 –> 01:37:17,861
And the heat of the ginger. It is a beast for

1510
01:37:17,861 –> 01:37:21,548
Perseus. He is pure air and fire, and the dull

1511
01:37:21,548 –> 01:37:25,219
elements of earth and water never appear in him, but only in patient stillness

1512
01:37:25,571 –> 01:37:29,066
while his rider mounts him. He is indeed a horse, and

1513
01:37:29,323 –> 01:37:32,945
all other jades you may call beasts.

1514
01:37:33,330 –> 01:37:37,017
Indeed, my lord, it is a most absolute and excellent

1515
01:37:37,017 –> 01:37:40,752
horse. It is the prince of palfreys. His neigh

1516
01:37:40,865 –> 01:37:44,396
is like the the bidding of a monarch, in his countenance enforce his

1517
01:37:44,396 –> 01:37:47,462
homage. No more, cousin.

1518
01:37:49,189 –> 01:37:52,401
The man hath no wit that cannot, from the rising of the lark to the

1519
01:37:52,401 –> 01:37:55,904
lodging of the lamb, vary deserved praise on my palfrey.

1520
01:37:56,614 –> 01:38:00,327
It is a theme as fluent as the sea, turn the sands into eloquent

1521
01:38:00,327 –> 01:38:03,899
tongues, and my horse is argument for them all. ‘Tis a

1522
01:38:03,899 –> 01:38:07,633
subject for a sovereign to reason on, and for a sovereign’s sovereign to ride on.

1523
01:38:07,902 –> 01:38:11,479
and for the world familiar to us and unknown to lay apart their particular

1524
01:38:11,495 –> 01:38:15,185
functions and wonder at him. I once writ a sonnet in his praise and

1525
01:38:15,185 –> 01:38:17,704
begun thus: Wonder of nature—

1526
01:38:17,768 –> 01:38:21,185
Orléans, I have heard a sonnet begin

1527
01:38:21,314 –> 01:38:24,940
so to one’s mistress. O fond, then

1528
01:38:25,068 –> 01:38:28,838
they did imitate that which I composed to my courser, for my

1529
01:38:28,838 –> 01:38:32,624
horse is my mistress. Orléans, and your

1530
01:38:32,688 –> 01:38:36,327
mistress bears well. Dauphin, me well, which

1531
01:38:36,455 –> 01:38:40,061
is the prescript praise and perfection of a good and particular

1532
01:38:40,061 –> 01:38:43,907
mistress. Nay, for methought yesterday your

1533
01:38:43,923 –> 01:38:47,256
mistress shrewdly shook your back. Dauphin, so perhaps did

1534
01:38:47,256 –> 01:38:50,556
yours. Mine was not

1535
01:38:50,556 –> 01:38:54,114
bridled. O, then belike she was old and

1536
01:38:54,226 –> 01:38:57,655
gentle, and you rode like a kern of Ireland,

1537
01:38:58,088 –> 01:39:00,459
your French hose off, and in your strait strausses.

1538
01:39:02,480 –> 01:39:05,936
You have good judgment in horsemanship. Be

1539
01:39:06,032 –> 01:39:09,697
warned by me then. They that ride so, and ride not warily,

1540
01:39:09,793 –> 01:39:13,611
fall into foul bogs. I had rather have my horse to my mistress.

1541
01:39:15,619 –> 01:39:18,857
I had, as Lafe have, my mistress a jade.

1542
01:39:19,612 –> 01:39:22,518
I tell thee, constable, my mistress wears this own hair.

1543
01:39:24,376 –> 01:39:27,947
I could make as true a boast, As that if I had had a

1544
01:39:27,947 –> 01:39:31,478
sow to my mistress. Dorbon, la

1545
01:39:31,478 –> 01:39:35,121
chienne est retournée à son propre évanouissement, et la

1546
01:39:35,169 –> 01:39:38,828
truie l’avait appropriée. Thou makest use of anything.

1547
01:39:40,128 –> 01:39:43,322
Constable, yet do I not use my horse for my mistress,

1548
01:39:43,916 –> 01:39:46,291
or any such proverb so akin to the purpose.

1549
01:39:47,527 –> 01:39:51,202
Rambures, my lord constable, the armour that I saw in your tent tonight,

1550
01:39:51,459 –> 01:39:53,513
are those stars or

1551
01:39:54,074 –> 01:39:57,779
Stars, my lord. Some of them will fall

1552
01:39:57,779 –> 01:40:01,264
tomorrow, I hope. And yet my sky

1553
01:40:01,313 –> 01:40:04,781
shall not want. That may be,

1554
01:40:05,024 –> 01:40:08,057
for you bear many superfluously,

1555
01:40:08,830 –> 01:40:12,509
and ’twere more honour some were away. Even

1556
01:40:12,557 –> 01:40:16,060
as your horse bears your praises, who would trot as

1557
01:40:16,253 –> 01:40:19,776
well were some of your brags dismounted. Were I

1558
01:40:19,970 –> 01:40:23,609
able to load him with his desert! Will it never be

1559
01:40:23,787 –> 01:40:27,539
day? I will trot tomorrow a mile, and my way shall be paved with English

1560
01:40:27,668 –> 01:40:31,275
faces. I will not say so, for

1561
01:40:31,340 –> 01:40:34,948
fear I should be faced out of my way; but I would it were morning,

1562
01:40:35,060 –> 01:40:38,105
for I would fain be about the ears of the English.

1563
01:40:41,196 –> 01:40:44,781
Who will go to hazard with me for 20 prisoners? Constable,

1564
01:40:45,043 –> 01:40:47,663
you must first go yourself to hazard ere you have them.

1565
01:40:50,000 –> 01:40:53,565
Dauphin, ’tis midnight; I’ll go arm myself. He exits.

1566
01:40:53,744 –> 01:40:57,374
Orléans. Orléans. The Dauphin longs for morning.

1567
01:40:58,136 –> 01:41:01,928
Rambures. He longs to eat the English. Constable, I think

1568
01:41:01,928 –> 01:41:05,638
he will eat all he kills. Orléans. By the white

1569
01:41:05,654 –> 01:41:08,143
hand of my lady, he’s a gallant prince.

1570
01:41:09,198 –> 01:41:12,648
Constable. Swear by her foot, that she may tread out the oath.

1571
01:41:13,978 –> 01:41:15,974
He is simply the most active gentleman of France.

1572
01:41:17,554 –> 01:41:21,280
Doing is his activity, and he will still be doing. He

1573
01:41:21,280 –> 01:41:24,938
never did harm, that I heard of. Nor will

1574
01:41:25,054 –> 01:41:27,568
do none tomorrow. He will keep the good name still.

1575
01:41:29,092 –> 01:41:32,886
I know him to be valiant. I was

1576
01:41:32,935 –> 01:41:36,750
told that by one that knows him better than you. O Leon,

1577
01:41:36,866 –> 01:41:40,444
what’s he? Constable,

1578
01:41:40,493 –> 01:41:44,289
merry. He told me so himself, and he said he cared not who knew it.

1579
01:41:44,935 –> 01:41:47,826
O Leon, he needs not. It is no hidden virtue in him.

1580
01:41:48,730 –> 01:41:52,152
Constable, by my faith, sir, but it is. Never anybody

1581
01:41:52,152 –> 01:41:55,880
saw’t but his lackey. ‘Tis a hooded valour, and when it appears,

1582
01:41:55,977 –> 01:41:59,007
it will be bait. O Leon, ill will never sit well.

1583
01:42:00,271 –> 01:42:03,974
Constable, I will cap that proverb with There is flattery

1584
01:42:04,330 –> 01:42:07,808
in friendship. And I will take that up with,

1585
01:42:08,277 –> 01:42:11,908
give the devil his due. Well

1586
01:42:11,956 –> 01:42:15,639
placed! There stands your friend for the devil. Have at the very eye

1587
01:42:15,834 –> 01:42:19,014
of that proverb with, a pox of the devil.

1588
01:42:20,552 –> 01:42:24,165
You are better at proverbs. By how much? A fool’s

1589
01:42:24,181 –> 01:42:28,019
bolt is soon shot. You have shot over.

1590
01:42:28,726 –> 01:42:32,017
O Leon, ’tis not the first time you were

1591
01:42:32,178 –> 01:42:32,807
overshot.

1592
01:42:38,513 –> 01:42:41,311
That right there, it’s just a sampling

1593
01:42:43,365 –> 01:42:47,046
of the wordplay and the humor here

1594
01:42:47,642 –> 01:42:51,220
in Henry V. It’s not all dour

1595
01:42:51,994 –> 01:42:54,659
war soliloquies or or

1596
01:42:54,691 –> 01:42:58,186
phraseology by King Henry V.

1597
01:42:59,120 –> 01:43:02,843
It is when it comes to the French. Shakespeare

1598
01:43:03,004 –> 01:43:06,589
uses them, yes, as foils, but also he uses

1599
01:43:06,685 –> 01:43:10,238
them, as I said before, as fully fleshed-out

1600
01:43:10,238 –> 01:43:12,959
people with humor,

1601
01:43:14,048 –> 01:43:17,149
with tact, with ill manners, and of course

1602
01:43:18,254 –> 01:43:21,830
with mistresses. As I said before, the French are

1603
01:43:21,830 –> 01:43:25,533
not cardboard cutouts and they’re not straw men. We

1604
01:43:25,533 –> 01:43:29,043
don’t— and they have motivations, they have desires, they have fears,

1605
01:43:29,558 –> 01:43:33,321
they clearly have humor, and they are driven to pursue mixed

1606
01:43:33,321 –> 01:43:37,037
outcomes from unclear premises from a war that they did

1607
01:43:37,037 –> 01:43:40,604
not initiate. We’ve already

1608
01:43:40,637 –> 01:43:44,090
talked about this topic, wars being just and

1609
01:43:44,090 –> 01:43:47,639
unjust. And I wanna make a point here. The

1610
01:43:47,671 –> 01:43:51,171
French, they are fully formed enemies. They are fully

1611
01:43:51,524 –> 01:43:55,216
human in their humanity. And the fact is that all war

1612
01:43:55,216 –> 01:43:58,539
without fail is a crime. All

1613
01:43:58,828 –> 01:44:02,536
war is a crime all of the time. It is also a

1614
01:44:02,536 –> 01:44:06,196
tragedy once it begins. The French opponents in the

1615
01:44:06,196 –> 01:44:09,953
play, in Henry V, are less interested in stopping

1616
01:44:09,985 –> 01:44:13,683
the war because it’s a crime or because it’s immoral. They’re interested in stopping the

1617
01:44:13,763 –> 01:44:17,032
war because war presents them with a

1618
01:44:17,129 –> 01:44:20,849
reduction in status. And we

1619
01:44:20,849 –> 01:44:24,067
can see this in the going back and forth with the Dauphin and the

1620
01:44:24,067 –> 01:44:27,353
Constable. They are quite jocular

1621
01:44:28,438 –> 01:44:31,741
when matters of life and death are at their

1622
01:44:32,117 –> 01:44:32,917
doorstep.

1623
01:44:36,431 –> 01:44:40,109
Um, we, I talked about cultural confidence. I want to

1624
01:44:40,125 –> 01:44:41,607
talk about the French for just a minute.

1625
01:44:43,910 –> 01:44:47,454
Our enemies, right, Zach? So we talked about the

1626
01:44:47,454 –> 01:44:51,072
Iran War, right? I’m going

1627
01:44:52,958 –> 01:44:55,950
to kind of— Yeah. Kind of put this up a little bit.

1628
01:44:57,494 –> 01:45:01,002
So World War II, you had the Germans and the

1629
01:45:01,002 –> 01:45:04,189
Japanese. In the Korean War, you had the Chinese.

1630
01:45:04,816 –> 01:45:08,369
And ostensibly, I mean, they were called Koreans then, not North Koreans, but

1631
01:45:08,675 –> 01:45:12,485
let’s say North Koreans. In Vietnam, you had the man in

1632
01:45:12,485 –> 01:45:15,253
the black pajamas, South Vietnamese.

1633
01:45:16,320 –> 01:45:19,620
Um, and, uh, and then, you know, in

1634
01:45:19,652 –> 01:45:23,115
Grenada, we had an enemy. I’m not quite sure who that was,

1635
01:45:23,501 –> 01:45:27,331
but that’s okay. In the Persian Gulf War, you had, um,

1636
01:45:27,685 –> 01:45:30,775
the Iraqis, specifically Saddam Hussein’s

1637
01:45:31,267 –> 01:45:34,738
Republican Guard. In Sarajevo,

1638
01:45:36,024 –> 01:45:39,286
you had the Croats and the Serbs,

1639
01:45:39,881 –> 01:45:42,712
and then 51 flavors of people coming out of the woodwork.

1640
01:45:44,472 –> 01:45:48,227
In the Second Iraq War, you had

1641
01:45:48,501 –> 01:45:52,208
the cleanup of Saddam Hussein’s folks. And then of course, everybody that

1642
01:45:52,208 –> 01:45:55,853
sort of flooded into that space, by the way, sponsored quite a bit

1643
01:45:55,853 –> 01:45:59,601
by the Iranians right next door. So

1644
01:45:59,601 –> 01:46:03,051
everyone from al-Qaeda to the Taliban. And of course, in Afghanistan, you had the

1645
01:46:03,051 –> 01:46:06,823
Taliban who were also funded by your friends and mine, the

1646
01:46:06,823 –> 01:46:10,433
Iranians. And now the Chinese. And the Chinese. Yep.

1647
01:46:11,380 –> 01:46:15,216
And in the bombing of Iran, which we don’t have boots on the ground currently

1648
01:46:15,392 –> 01:46:18,425
as of this recording, but we may in the future when you listen to this

1649
01:46:18,554 –> 01:46:22,116
again. But currently in Iran, we have

1650
01:46:22,373 –> 01:46:25,936
the Iranian regime, such as it were,

1651
01:46:27,840 –> 01:46:29,931
who apparently is holding on quite solidly

1652
01:46:32,297 –> 01:46:35,964
without a whole lot of other extra actors coming in. Now,

1653
01:46:36,157 –> 01:46:39,804
one of the books that we are reading for our coverage of

1654
01:46:40,013 –> 01:46:43,387
warfare in December is the United States Marine Corps

1655
01:46:43,387 –> 01:46:46,262
Counterinsurgency Manual that was written and published in

1656
01:46:46,262 –> 01:46:49,971
2007. And It asserts

1657
01:46:50,020 –> 01:46:53,853
that insurgency is now the new way of warfare. And

1658
01:46:53,853 –> 01:46:57,295
I don’t see anything in the last 20 years that convinces me otherwise.

1659
01:46:58,933 –> 01:47:02,581
You can even see this happening in the Ukraine, where North Korean troops are

1660
01:47:02,581 –> 01:47:06,326
coming over to help the Russians in the Ukraine. And the Ukraine, of course,

1661
01:47:06,359 –> 01:47:10,209
is welcoming any warm bodies it can welcome from anywhere with any

1662
01:47:10,225 –> 01:47:13,723
motives. Gone are the days of

1663
01:47:15,379 –> 01:47:17,772
Henry V, where the English

1664
01:47:19,825 –> 01:47:22,573
got all the English together and went and fought the French, and the French got

1665
01:47:22,573 –> 01:47:26,161
all the French together at Harfleur and defended the town or surrendered the town,

1666
01:47:26,553 –> 01:47:29,298
depending upon, you know, what you’re looking at there.

1667
01:47:32,180 –> 01:47:35,065
Gone are those days. Gone are the days of, I think,

1668
01:47:35,714 –> 01:47:39,475
solid nation states and solid populations in nation

1669
01:47:39,524 –> 01:47:42,355
states. fighting each other, which is why,

1670
01:47:44,930 –> 01:47:48,328
and which is why when I hear talk online

1671
01:47:49,153 –> 01:47:52,794
from the persistent, very online folks about the potential for an American

1672
01:47:52,810 –> 01:47:55,573
civil war, a second civil war,

1673
01:47:56,933 –> 01:47:58,438
I shudder to think of that.

1674
01:48:00,990 –> 01:48:04,832
Yes. Because if you think that the Middle East

1675
01:48:04,832 –> 01:48:05,284
is a mess,

1676
01:48:09,751 –> 01:48:12,983
Oh man, just wait until you see what LA looks like.

1677
01:48:14,460 –> 01:48:18,237
Forget LA, like Houston, right down where, down near where I

1678
01:48:18,270 –> 01:48:22,031
live. Like, yeah, Houston is, Houston is just about

1679
01:48:22,080 –> 01:48:25,602
the size of LA and has

1680
01:48:25,735 –> 01:48:27,167
how many different ethnic groups in it?

1681
01:48:29,614 –> 01:48:33,164
Funded by who? From where? Doing

1682
01:48:33,278 –> 01:48:36,834
what? No, it isn’t going to be a simple progressives

1683
01:48:36,948 –> 01:48:40,720
versus conservatives war. If we had a civil war here,

1684
01:48:41,207 –> 01:48:44,304
it would be a Baskin-Robbins affair

1685
01:48:45,569 –> 01:48:49,100
on steroids. Yes.

1686
01:48:49,357 –> 01:48:52,545
And you would not be able to stay in your little town

1687
01:48:53,124 –> 01:48:56,505
and have the internet and have running water and have electricity.

1688
01:48:56,822 –> 01:49:00,489
electricity. It would be an

1689
01:49:00,538 –> 01:49:02,983
insurgency war of

1690
01:49:03,899 –> 01:49:07,732
terrifying proportions. And that’s even before you

1691
01:49:07,829 –> 01:49:10,330
get to the fact that

1692
01:49:12,185 –> 01:49:13,427
the native, quote unquote,

1693
01:49:16,550 –> 01:49:19,280
Americans— let me put it this way. You know how

1694
01:49:20,581 –> 01:49:22,402
the reason I don’t worry about

1695
01:49:24,117 –> 01:49:27,903
America having a tiny military

1696
01:49:28,113 –> 01:49:31,948
in relative size to the rest of the world is because

1697
01:49:32,126 –> 01:49:35,541
I’ve met the kid in Arkansas that can program

1698
01:49:35,750 –> 01:49:38,821
Iranian drones and send them to Walmart.

1699
01:49:40,269 –> 01:49:42,380
I’ve met that kid. Wow.

1700
01:49:43,879 –> 01:49:47,588
There’s a lot of that kid in America, and you don’t

1701
01:49:47,604 –> 01:49:51,218
want that kid Programming Iranian drones

1702
01:49:51,443 –> 01:49:54,873
not to do DoorDash, but programming Ukrainian drones

1703
01:49:55,469 –> 01:49:59,118
to go kill his neighbors. You don’t want that kind of

1704
01:49:59,118 –> 01:50:02,946
innovation. You don’t want that kind of thing on the ground. And that’s

1705
01:50:02,946 –> 01:50:06,434
what you would have even before you get to the multiple

1706
01:50:06,434 –> 01:50:10,268
divisions and everything else not working. Because that kid’s going to

1707
01:50:10,316 –> 01:50:13,792
find a way, even if the internet is spotty and even if the

1708
01:50:13,792 –> 01:50:17,393
electricity’s out. And even if there ain’t that much food, that kid’s going to

1709
01:50:17,441 –> 01:50:21,087
find a way because this is what we do in America. We find a

1710
01:50:21,087 –> 01:50:24,372
way. And we’ve been finding a way for 250 years.

1711
01:50:25,133 –> 01:50:28,952
So let’s stop all this Civil War talk and let’s figure out how

1712
01:50:28,969 –> 01:50:32,764
to keep the republic together because it would be a mess here

1713
01:50:33,216 –> 01:50:35,945
of epic proportions. So that’s my little side jog on that.

1714
01:50:37,253 –> 01:50:40,872
Back to the French. When we look at the French,

1715
01:50:47,149 –> 01:50:47,746
How could we—

1716
01:50:54,513 –> 01:50:57,704
okay, here’s the question. How can we have empathy for our enemies and see them

1717
01:50:57,737 –> 01:51:01,254
as human and still understand that they’re

1718
01:51:01,254 –> 01:51:05,034
committing evil? This is, this is an interesting

1719
01:51:05,034 –> 01:51:08,638
question, and I was listening to Hardcore History,

1720
01:51:11,494 –> 01:51:14,851
amazing podcast. The guy who does

1721
01:51:14,900 –> 01:51:18,374
Hardcore History, he reads a bunch of books. I

1722
01:51:18,374 –> 01:51:22,181
don’t— he may or may not have a script, but he’ll just go for like

1723
01:51:22,326 –> 01:51:25,963
3 hours. What’s his name? Dan Carlin, I think. Dan

1724
01:51:25,963 –> 01:51:29,602
Carlin. Yep. And, and I’ve been listening to Supernova in

1725
01:51:29,602 –> 01:51:33,442
the East, and I’m on part 5 of 6

1726
01:51:33,492 –> 01:51:37,049
or 7. And one of the things that he talks about is there was this

1727
01:51:37,163 –> 01:51:38,974
Marine Corps sniper who killed a man,

1728
01:51:40,964 –> 01:51:44,811
says, you know, shot a man in the dark. Hopefully he was Japanese. Comes

1729
01:51:44,843 –> 01:51:48,362
to find out, yes, the guy was Japanese. Takes the dog tags,

1730
01:51:48,782 –> 01:51:52,333
has the name translated, and then is going to

1731
01:51:52,333 –> 01:51:55,618
Japan on business 20 years later, puts an

1732
01:51:55,795 –> 01:51:58,275
advertisement in the newspaper and says,

1733
01:51:59,789 –> 01:52:03,539
if anyone wants to know about such and such soldier from such and

1734
01:52:03,539 –> 01:52:07,382
such campaign, in World War II during this time frame,

1735
01:52:07,478 –> 01:52:11,238
come and talk to me, basically. Never clear whether or not someone

1736
01:52:11,254 –> 01:52:14,538
comes and talks to him, but I bring up this story

1737
01:52:14,733 –> 01:52:16,779
because that Marine Corps sniper

1738
01:52:18,631 –> 01:52:22,058
never dehumanized that

1739
01:52:22,187 –> 01:52:25,911
person, never dehumanized the

1740
01:52:25,911 –> 01:52:29,491
Japanese as a group. And we talk about this a lot,

1741
01:52:29,620 –> 01:52:33,338
like The Nazi Party was evil, right? It

1742
01:52:33,338 –> 01:52:36,672
was absolutely a heinous stain on the history

1743
01:52:37,169 –> 01:52:40,840
of mankind. However, the Germans

1744
01:52:42,075 –> 01:52:45,682
were not. The Germans were led astray. They were

1745
01:52:45,682 –> 01:52:49,481
deceived by a man who, you know, some people believe had

1746
01:52:49,529 –> 01:52:53,136
supernatural abilities or was imbued by the

1747
01:52:53,136 –> 01:52:55,781
devil to do terrible things. Now, I don’t know if

1748
01:52:55,781 –> 01:52:59,506
that’s true or not, but I can empathize with them being put into

1749
01:52:59,554 –> 01:53:02,814
a position economically that was so horrible

1750
01:53:03,328 –> 01:53:06,186
that you are desperate and reaching for any

1751
01:53:06,924 –> 01:53:10,425
life preserver that you can. And here’s this man

1752
01:53:10,617 –> 01:53:14,118
who’s coming with, to your point, cultural confidence, which is why I

1753
01:53:14,246 –> 01:53:17,955
think a lot of people think that those people who are sharing cultural confidence are

1754
01:53:18,084 –> 01:53:21,263
fascist and misunderstanding the definition.

1755
01:53:22,355 –> 01:53:25,985
But they come back to this, and you’re— you find

1756
01:53:25,985 –> 01:53:29,583
someone who comes in with cultural confidence and says, no, we can be

1757
01:53:29,647 –> 01:53:33,406
great again. Like, I can have empathy for that.

1758
01:53:34,000 –> 01:53:37,453
I can have empathy for the individual German who made that

1759
01:53:37,453 –> 01:53:40,312
decision, while at the same time saying,

1760
01:53:41,453 –> 01:53:45,163
and as a result, they did terrible things that should be

1761
01:53:45,163 –> 01:53:48,772
stopped because they are morally repugnant. Those 2

1762
01:53:48,919 –> 01:53:52,594
things aren’t orthogonal.

1763
01:53:54,080 –> 01:53:57,660
So one of the things we’ve talked about on this show is the challenge

1764
01:53:57,805 –> 01:54:01,481
of— talked about it in— oh gosh, talked

1765
01:54:01,481 –> 01:54:05,248
about deeply in— I think it

1766
01:54:05,248 –> 01:54:07,035
was our episode, we covered Notes from the Underground,

1767
01:54:08,980 –> 01:54:10,840
where— by Fyodor Dostoevsky,

1768
01:54:12,797 –> 01:54:16,340
where we discussed this idea of

1769
01:54:17,040 –> 01:54:20,761
the Nuremberg Trials. And the

1770
01:54:20,761 –> 01:54:23,881
massive failure, in my opinion, of the Nuremberg Trials

1771
01:54:24,701 –> 01:54:28,125
is— it was, was the big massive failure

1772
01:54:28,656 –> 01:54:31,823
was Nuremberg did not

1773
01:54:31,920 –> 01:54:34,732
ground the

1774
01:54:35,088 –> 01:54:38,353
atrocities the Nazi Party

1775
01:54:38,482 –> 01:54:41,699
committed in Germany. Mm-hmm.

1776
01:54:42,565 –> 01:54:45,830
It did not ground the judgment against those

1777
01:54:45,943 –> 01:54:48,645
atrocities in biblical terms.

1778
01:54:50,028 –> 01:54:53,418
Yes. Instead, it ground

1779
01:54:53,418 –> 01:54:56,920
the condemnation and the judgment against those

1780
01:54:56,969 –> 01:55:00,441
atrocities in the much weaker framework of

1781
01:55:00,441 –> 01:55:01,101
international law.

1782
01:55:03,702 –> 01:55:07,063
Yes. And the lack of

1783
01:55:07,063 –> 01:55:08,928
ability of folks from the State

1784
01:55:08,928 –> 01:55:11,473
Department in

1785
01:55:12,858 –> 01:55:15,016
’45, ’46, and ’47,

1786
01:55:17,385 –> 01:55:21,108
many of whom were Bible-believing Baptists in

1787
01:55:21,206 –> 01:55:21,925
good standing,

1788
01:55:25,750 –> 01:55:29,121
who then employed judges and prosecutors

1789
01:55:29,782 –> 01:55:32,557
who were also Bible-believing Baptists in good standing.

1790
01:55:34,693 –> 01:55:38,016
The lack of those folks, church folks,

1791
01:55:39,935 –> 01:55:43,145
the lack of internal strength and courage,

1792
01:55:43,742 –> 01:55:47,589
and maybe they were just exhausted. It had been a hard war with a

1793
01:55:47,605 –> 01:55:51,213
lot of moral problems inside, not ethical ones, moral

1794
01:55:51,213 –> 01:55:54,745
problems inside of that war. The

1795
01:55:54,922 –> 01:55:58,131
lack of their being able to push at the Nuremberg Trial, not even able,

1796
01:55:58,792 –> 01:56:01,799
the, the The, the, the not even inability.

1797
01:56:02,718 –> 01:56:02,960
The

1798
01:56:09,008 –> 01:56:12,608
yeah, I guess inability is the correct word. The inability of those

1799
01:56:12,721 –> 01:56:16,532
folks to push for a judgment at Nuremberg

1800
01:56:16,758 –> 01:56:18,179
based on a biblical standard,

1801
01:56:20,012 –> 01:56:23,656
regardless of whether or not the world shared the biblical standard,

1802
01:56:24,912 –> 01:56:28,726
regardless of whether or not the German High Command believed in

1803
01:56:28,726 –> 01:56:32,527
the biblical. Standard, and regardless of whether or not the rest of the world was

1804
01:56:32,559 –> 01:56:35,248
going to accept that standard, to push in the face of that

1805
01:56:36,730 –> 01:56:38,227
and instead to default to international law

1806
01:56:40,348 –> 01:56:41,506
allowed for

1807
01:56:44,302 –> 01:56:48,127
the beginning. That’s the pebble, the beginning

1808
01:56:48,240 –> 01:56:52,031
of that erosion of cultural confidence. I think, I

1809
01:56:52,064 –> 01:56:55,590
think that that is one of the big problems with the

1810
01:56:55,590 –> 01:56:59,118
Nuremberg trials, that

1811
01:56:59,118 –> 01:57:02,735
lack of grounding in a biblical standard. Because if the

1812
01:57:02,849 –> 01:57:06,049
only thing transcendentally you’re appealing to is the law,

1813
01:57:08,413 –> 01:57:11,490
and this goes back to my idea about papers and the Declaration of Independence and

1814
01:57:11,490 –> 01:57:14,794
the Constitution that we mentioned earlier, these 2 ideas do go together.

1815
01:57:15,336 –> 01:57:17,453
If all you’re appealing to is the law

1816
01:57:19,150 –> 01:57:22,884
and there’s no embodiment a royal embodiment of a

1817
01:57:22,916 –> 01:57:26,405
human being, and we’re not going to appeal to a

1818
01:57:26,405 –> 01:57:30,089
transcendence of any kind that sits at the top of the hierarchy.

1819
01:57:31,330 –> 01:57:34,876
Well, as Adolf Eichmann pointed out at his

1820
01:57:34,989 –> 01:57:38,374
trial when he was kidnapped by the Mossad in

1821
01:57:38,374 –> 01:57:42,050
1962, and Hannah Arendt noted this in her

1822
01:57:42,050 –> 01:57:44,903
book that we’ve covered on this show, Eichmann in Jerusalem,

1823
01:57:46,280 –> 01:57:47,852
if all you’re going to appeal to is the law,

1824
01:57:49,937 –> 01:57:53,625
Then Eichmann repeats the same thing that Hermann Göring repeated, that Hermann Göring

1825
01:57:53,658 –> 01:57:56,488
said 20 years earlier or 15 years earlier.

1826
01:57:58,220 –> 01:58:00,803
Who says? By whose authority?

1827
01:58:02,546 –> 01:58:06,318
Yes. Who says? Who says I have to bend

1828
01:58:06,350 –> 01:58:09,896
the knee? Who says that I’m committing atrocities? Who

1829
01:58:09,976 –> 01:58:13,494
says that I have to put down my cultural? Who says?

1830
01:58:14,150 –> 01:58:17,398
Oh, you say, because you’re the victor. Okay, well, that’s just power.

1831
01:58:18,827 –> 01:58:22,562
And I’ll have power tomorrow. I may die, but my descendants will have

1832
01:58:22,562 –> 01:58:26,362
power tomorrow. And then somebody else’s descendants after them will have power,

1833
01:58:26,605 –> 01:58:29,886
and somebody else’s descendants after them will have power. And this is where the progressives,

1834
01:58:30,338 –> 01:58:34,054
even with all their nonsense about social justice, are absolutely correct. This is where

1835
01:58:34,103 –> 01:58:36,397
Foucault actually, which is where they got the idea from,

1836
01:58:38,079 –> 01:58:39,834
is correct or was correct.

1837
01:58:43,599 –> 01:58:47,266
Power, stripped from the transcendent, is the ultimate

1838
01:58:47,411 –> 01:58:50,982
authority, which is why you need the transcendent

1839
01:58:51,450 –> 01:58:55,225
on top of that power. The transcendent is the one

1840
01:58:55,257 –> 01:58:58,921
that holds the power. Yeah. It’s not the human

1841
01:58:58,953 –> 01:59:02,119
beings. It can’t be. And it also can’t be the thing that human beings create,

1842
01:59:02,167 –> 01:59:05,891
which is the law, the civil authority. Human beings create the civil authority in the

1843
01:59:05,891 –> 01:59:09,293
world. to police other human beings. But without there being a

1844
01:59:09,358 –> 01:59:13,145
transcendent behind that, who says? Oh,

1845
01:59:13,161 –> 01:59:15,386
this piece of paper says? All these guys say? Who cares?

1846
01:59:17,033 –> 01:59:20,487
And this is why Donald Trump is so frightening to the people on the left,

1847
01:59:20,503 –> 01:59:23,538
I think. Uh, because this is

1848
01:59:23,700 –> 01:59:27,163
fundamentally what Donald Trump does at every single turn.

1849
01:59:27,905 –> 01:59:31,594
And we know that it works because Pierre Polyev did the same

1850
01:59:31,707 –> 01:59:34,973
thing with that That Apple interview. Do you know the one I’m talking about?

1851
01:59:35,422 –> 01:59:39,195
Yep. Mm-hmm. Yeah, he did the same thing. And it’s

1852
01:59:39,195 –> 01:59:42,567
very simple. You’re going to come in and you’re going to make a

1853
01:59:42,648 –> 01:59:46,485
claim, right? And I’m just going to question the claim.

1854
01:59:46,742 –> 01:59:50,323
Who says? And then you’re going to say, well, this thing says,

1855
01:59:50,981 –> 01:59:54,786
okay, well, why should I trust that thing? What inherently gives

1856
01:59:54,835 –> 01:59:58,446
that thing any sort of moral authority over me? Right?

1857
01:59:59,007 –> 02:00:02,436
And then you’re going to say, oh, well, how dare you think that that thing

1858
02:00:02,613 –> 02:00:06,395
doesn’t have any sort of moral authority? You’re bad now. And then I’m

1859
02:00:06,395 –> 02:00:10,048
going to say, see, you’re just biased because

1860
02:00:10,144 –> 02:00:13,798
you’re, you’re, you’re criticizing me because I

1861
02:00:13,846 –> 02:00:17,324
don’t believe in the same authority that you do. Right.

1862
02:00:17,997 –> 02:00:21,827
And essentially, it’s, it’s what Nietzsche talked about when

1863
02:00:21,859 –> 02:00:25,640
he said, you know, God is dead. Right? You have to be

1864
02:00:25,768 –> 02:00:29,358
careful because unless something

1865
02:00:29,534 –> 02:00:32,482
universal replaces the God that you killed,

1866
02:00:33,380 –> 02:00:37,081
then you will do the same thing and you’ll see

1867
02:00:37,081 –> 02:00:40,767
even worse devils that come up. And that’s what we’ve done. Right. To

1868
02:00:40,847 –> 02:00:44,580
your point, right? Because we didn’t have this sort of universally

1869
02:00:44,628 –> 02:00:47,673
established moral standard because we’ve

1870
02:00:48,298 –> 02:00:52,146
chased God out of the public square now. Well, then I can question

1871
02:00:52,179 –> 02:00:54,511
your standard just the same way you questioned mine.

1872
02:00:56,110 –> 02:00:59,219
You know, I have this running theory that woke was sort of

1873
02:00:59,786 –> 02:01:03,333
this turning’s version of a revolution, and

1874
02:01:03,414 –> 02:01:06,994
that Trump is the Thermidorian reaction to that

1875
02:01:06,994 –> 02:01:10,638
revolution. So if you— for those listeners who don’t know,

1876
02:01:11,430 –> 02:01:15,041
Thermidorian reaction is a term for what it was that

1877
02:01:15,170 –> 02:01:18,930
essentially the counterrevolution evolution to the French Revolution that

1878
02:01:19,042 –> 02:01:22,394
led up to Napoleon Bonaparte being able to take action,

1879
02:01:23,229 –> 02:01:26,757
take power in France. And so I kind of see

1880
02:01:26,838 –> 02:01:30,655
Donald Trump as, as almost this Thermidorian reaction to woke as

1881
02:01:30,768 –> 02:01:33,863
the revolution. And I think that

1882
02:01:34,280 –> 02:01:37,954
he’s following the same playbook that is followed during these

1883
02:01:37,986 –> 02:01:41,755
Thermidorian reactions, which is we used to have this mutually

1884
02:01:41,836 –> 02:01:45,398
agreed-upon standard that you no longer So now

1885
02:01:45,671 –> 02:01:49,351
I can follow the same playbook and question any standard that you bring along.

1886
02:01:50,250 –> 02:01:53,769
And that’s exactly what you’re talking about here, is that,

1887
02:01:54,122 –> 02:01:57,833
that we’ve chased a mutually agreed-upon standard out of the public

1888
02:01:57,833 –> 02:02:00,918
square. So why is your standard any

1889
02:02:00,950 –> 02:02:04,741
superior? Why is your standard superior to

1890
02:02:04,741 –> 02:02:08,099
mine? And the only way we are going to have

1891
02:02:08,099 –> 02:02:11,858
leaders that are actually moral and ethical is

1892
02:02:11,858 –> 02:02:15,612
if we bring back the agreed— not even bring back— inside of those

1893
02:02:15,724 –> 02:02:19,109
leaders, not only at an individual level, but at scale. But let’s start with the

1894
02:02:19,109 –> 02:02:22,880
individual level first. They must be imbued, to your point

1895
02:02:22,880 –> 02:02:26,554
about the sniper that didn’t dehumanize the enemy, they must be

1896
02:02:26,554 –> 02:02:30,324
imbued with that transcendent standard. Again, I want to be very

1897
02:02:30,324 –> 02:02:33,934
clear on this. Even if you don’t believe every jot and tittle,

1898
02:02:34,415 –> 02:02:37,658
I am not talking about faith here. I am

1899
02:02:37,739 –> 02:02:41,335
talking at the very base level, and I would love for everyone to have

1900
02:02:41,368 –> 02:02:45,158
Christian faith. I would absolutely love it. And at the

1901
02:02:45,319 –> 02:02:47,964
very base level, here’s what I’m talking about.

1902
02:02:50,715 –> 02:02:52,554
Have you actually read the book?

1903
02:02:54,965 –> 02:02:58,490
Do you know what it says? Yes. Have you not only

1904
02:02:58,668 –> 02:03:02,242
read the book, but are you surrounded by people in your life

1905
02:03:02,592 –> 02:03:05,894
who are advising you, who have read the book.

1906
02:03:07,064 –> 02:03:10,366
Maybe they didn’t understand it. Maybe it was hard to get through.

1907
02:03:11,088 –> 02:03:14,855
Maybe they were intimidated by 16 different translations. Maybe they don’t know the difference

1908
02:03:14,855 –> 02:03:18,285
between the King James Version and the ESV. It doesn’t

1909
02:03:18,846 –> 02:03:22,533
matter. The book that even

1910
02:03:22,533 –> 02:03:26,251
Nietzsche himself could not overcome as much as he tried—

1911
02:03:26,300 –> 02:03:29,393
that’s what drove him crazy. He tried to overcome the book and he couldn’t do

1912
02:03:29,457 –> 02:03:32,711
it. The book that defeated Nietzsche

1913
02:03:33,114 –> 02:03:36,886
himself. The book that lies at the bottom of the Western

1914
02:03:36,918 –> 02:03:40,636
inheritance. The book that Shakespeare knew, even though

1915
02:03:40,636 –> 02:03:43,588
Shakespeare may not have even believed in it. The book

1916
02:03:44,556 –> 02:03:48,298
that lies at the bottom. The book that allows you to humanize

1917
02:03:48,330 –> 02:03:52,089
your enemies. And to Zach’s point, see the humanity

1918
02:03:52,121 –> 02:03:55,851
in the German people and be able to not make the category error of confusing

1919
02:03:55,899 –> 02:03:58,114
the German people with the German government,

1920
02:04:01,255 –> 02:04:03,920
the book that allows you to do that, and also the book that allows you

1921
02:04:03,920 –> 02:04:06,731
to correctly condemn the

1922
02:04:07,686 –> 02:04:11,202
actions of the German government and place the responsibility and

1923
02:04:11,202 –> 02:04:14,993
accountability for those actions in the correct spot, and

1924
02:04:15,025 –> 02:04:18,078
that neutralizes all appeals to power,

1925
02:04:18,946 –> 02:04:21,934
the book that does that, the only book I’ve ever seen, and the book that

1926
02:04:21,934 –> 02:04:24,408
we cover sometimes on this podcast, we’ll be covering it more next year,

1927
02:04:26,920 –> 02:04:29,989
Kids, you’ll be surprised when I say this. Listeners,

1928
02:04:30,651 –> 02:04:34,238
it’s the Bible. It’s

1929
02:04:34,302 –> 02:04:37,801
the only one. It ain’t the Quran. That— I mean,

1930
02:04:38,074 –> 02:04:41,513
the Muslims have some interesting things to say, but it ain’t the Quran. It ain’t,

1931
02:04:41,609 –> 02:04:45,273
it ain’t the Torah. Torah is very interesting, but the Torah slapped together with all

1932
02:04:45,305 –> 02:04:48,876
the rest of it, right? It ain’t the Buddhists. It ain’t the Tao

1933
02:04:49,023 –> 02:04:52,325
Te Ching. And all those books are wonderful. I’ve read them all.

1934
02:04:53,197 –> 02:04:54,382
And the book that beats them all,

1935
02:04:57,922 –> 02:05:00,866
that’s the one that’s going to help you humanize your enemies. That’s the one that’s

1936
02:05:00,914 –> 02:05:04,521
going to allow you to see that flicker of humanity

1937
02:05:05,912 –> 02:05:09,632
and yet also call the villain a villain. And I

1938
02:05:09,632 –> 02:05:13,024
think we’re sort of wandering around back to this. So I don’t know if you

1939
02:05:13,024 –> 02:05:16,544
saw the movie Masters of the Universe recently that was released.

1940
02:05:16,644 –> 02:05:20,234
Yes. Yes. Okay. So one of the— and you’ll appreciate what I’m about to say—

1941
02:05:20,796 –> 02:05:24,071
one of the more stunning aspects of that movie is Skeletor’s

1942
02:05:24,264 –> 02:05:27,860
character, played by the great Jared Leto, the great and probably

1943
02:05:27,876 –> 02:05:31,553
corrupt, morally corrupt Jared Leto. I don’t know anything about the man,

1944
02:05:31,569 –> 02:05:35,229
but what I’ve heard, probably morally corrupt. But again,

1945
02:05:35,325 –> 02:05:39,082
allegedly, I should say allegedly, I shouldn’t cast aspersions on the man, allegedly

1946
02:05:39,259 –> 02:05:42,871
morally corrupt. One of the more

1947
02:05:42,871 –> 02:05:46,041
amazing moments in that movie is when He-Man

1948
02:05:49,602 –> 02:05:52,971
tries to do the pop culture version

1949
02:05:53,728 –> 02:05:57,005
of finding the humanity in the villain and turning him back to, to good.

1950
02:05:57,522 –> 02:06:00,830
And what does Skeletor say? Skeletor says, I’m evil.

1951
02:06:02,580 –> 02:06:06,384
There’s no more depth to me than that. I do evil things. He doesn’t

1952
02:06:06,384 –> 02:06:09,883
even— he doesn’t even say like, because I like it or because it makes me

1953
02:06:10,028 –> 02:06:13,345
feel good. Or I have power. Didn’t say anything. He’s like, I do. I’m—

1954
02:06:14,915 –> 02:06:17,844
there’s no humanizing of me. I’m evil.

1955
02:06:18,654 –> 02:06:22,112
Like, one of the greatest, the greatest apotheosis of trying to

1956
02:06:22,112 –> 02:06:25,763
humanize the villain occurred in— and I like Christopher Nolan. I

1957
02:06:25,925 –> 02:06:28,787
really do. I like him as a director and I love Batman. Batman’s my boy.

1958
02:06:30,050 –> 02:06:33,030
But one of the greatest humanizings of a villain that probably should never have been

1959
02:06:33,030 –> 02:06:35,945
done was Heath Ledger’s, um, the Joker in The Dark Knight. Yeah.

1960
02:06:36,637 –> 02:06:40,122
Yeah, that was the pop culture apotheosis of this humanizing a villain and trying to

1961
02:06:40,122 –> 02:06:42,835
see the humanity in him and trying to give him a— to your point about

1962
02:06:42,835 –> 02:06:46,127
orthogonal, trying to make him orthogonal, trying to make him this— no,

1963
02:06:46,592 –> 02:06:50,334
he’s just evil. He just— I think Elphaba, I

1964
02:06:50,382 –> 02:06:53,336
think Elphaba and the Wicked Witch of the West could give him a run for

1965
02:06:53,336 –> 02:06:56,949
his money. Oh yeah, I think so. Well, yeah, I mean, maybe for, maybe for

1966
02:06:56,949 –> 02:06:59,855
women, maybe, maybe it divides up by gender, you know, for women and men, right?

1967
02:07:00,240 –> 02:07:03,964
Um, but That inability of the

1968
02:07:03,964 –> 02:07:07,778
culture to call evil evil, and yet at the

1969
02:07:07,778 –> 02:07:11,581
same time, see people for what they are

1970
02:07:11,710 –> 02:07:14,982
and not make a category error or confuse those 2 things.

1971
02:07:18,137 –> 02:07:21,030
That is what we’re missing. And the book at the bottom of the culture is

1972
02:07:21,046 –> 02:07:24,180
the one that gives us the ability to cleave those, cleave those things.

1973
02:07:25,004 –> 02:07:28,682
So I want to add something to this from my own unique faith tradition, because

1974
02:07:28,682 –> 02:07:32,477
I think that you are Spot on. I am a member

1975
02:07:32,526 –> 02:07:36,255
of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a.k.a. Mormon. You already knew this.

1976
02:07:36,544 –> 02:07:40,279
Your listeners may not. One of the things that

1977
02:07:40,312 –> 02:07:43,393
we have is it’s where we get our name Mormon. It’s called the Book of

1978
02:07:43,457 –> 02:07:46,797
Mormon. Yeah. Now, we believe that the Book of Mormon is an ancient

1979
02:07:46,910 –> 02:07:50,356
record of people sent to the Americas by God

1980
02:07:50,774 –> 02:07:54,407
at the time that, that the ancient

1981
02:07:54,567 –> 02:07:57,685
Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem about 600 BC.

1982
02:07:58,427 –> 02:08:01,618
Now, right around

1983
02:08:02,869 –> 02:08:06,526
70 AD, there’s this really cool guy named Captain

1984
02:08:06,526 –> 02:08:09,862
Moroni, and he’s defending his people

1985
02:08:10,615 –> 02:08:13,775
from their enemy, the Lamanites. And the Lamanites have a guy named

1986
02:08:13,775 –> 02:08:17,592
Zerahemnah who’s come up to war against the Nephites, and they’re

1987
02:08:17,608 –> 02:08:21,184
fighting. And Captain Moroni has

1988
02:08:21,296 –> 02:08:24,959
managed to surround his enemy And they are trapped in

1989
02:08:25,055 –> 02:08:28,550
a river valley, and he is slaughtering them.

1990
02:08:29,162 –> 02:08:32,978
And he calls for a stop of the shedding of blood

1991
02:08:33,267 –> 02:08:36,577
because he says, listen, we don’t want to kill you.

1992
02:08:37,863 –> 02:08:41,639
We would rather that you depart with an oath not to come up to war

1993
02:08:41,639 –> 02:08:44,870
against us again and let you go

1994
02:08:45,582 –> 02:08:49,259
than continue to kill you. Why?

1995
02:08:49,485 –> 02:08:52,682
Because we see you as people who are being misled by a leader who is

1996
02:08:52,682 –> 02:08:53,425
consumed with a desire for power.

1997
02:08:57,039 –> 02:09:00,504
And the leader says, no, we’re not going to do that. We won’t take the

1998
02:09:00,504 –> 02:09:04,256
oath. And so Moroni says, okay, we will finish the

1999
02:09:04,256 –> 02:09:07,929
contest. Um, great line.

2000
02:09:08,667 –> 02:09:12,387
Um, and then there’s a random soldier who comes up with a

2001
02:09:12,387 –> 02:09:15,948
sword, scalps Zerahemnah, the leader of the enemy, and says,

2002
02:09:16,204 –> 02:09:19,604
even as this scalp falls to the ground, so shall all of you

2003
02:09:20,454 –> 02:09:24,178
fall to the ground. unless you depart and make an oath not to come up

2004
02:09:24,178 –> 02:09:28,000
against us today. And that’s what we’re talking about, right?

2005
02:09:28,225 –> 02:09:31,436
Yeah. Is I can recognize that you

2006
02:09:32,191 –> 02:09:35,739
are a human being, that I don’t want to have to kill you.

2007
02:09:36,125 –> 02:09:39,448
But if you’re going to come and try and take away my liberty, try

2008
02:09:39,962 –> 02:09:43,398
and, and impress me into slavery, try and do those

2009
02:09:43,511 –> 02:09:46,401
things that, that, you know,

2010
02:09:47,268 –> 02:09:50,865
you shouldn’t do, enforce your power by right of

2011
02:09:51,459 –> 02:09:55,152
force alone, then yeah, I have a right to

2012
02:09:55,296 –> 02:09:58,989
paraphrase the Constitution, not only a right or the Declaration,

2013
02:09:59,069 –> 02:10:02,522
not only a right, but a duty to stand against you

2014
02:10:03,244 –> 02:10:06,680
violently if necessary. Hmm. And

2015
02:10:06,793 –> 02:10:10,534
that’s what we’re talking about when we bring this back to just war theory

2016
02:10:10,630 –> 02:10:14,380
and all of that. It’s like, I can be

2017
02:10:15,010 –> 02:10:17,629
a nonviolent person who

2018
02:10:18,341 –> 02:10:21,839
occasionally has to engage in violence to

2019
02:10:21,904 –> 02:10:24,207
defend what matters most.

2020
02:10:26,660 –> 02:10:30,323
Martial artists understand this. Folks who are in the tradition of the

2021
02:10:30,323 –> 02:10:33,730
martial arts. One of the things that always seems sort of

2022
02:10:33,762 –> 02:10:37,068
counterintuitive to people who don’t practice the martial

2023
02:10:37,068 –> 02:10:40,773
arts Is that someone would spend years

2024
02:10:40,870 –> 02:10:43,267
and years and years in a particular tradition,

2025
02:10:44,839 –> 02:10:48,555
whether that be, you know, kung fu or karate or my current,

2026
02:10:48,571 –> 02:10:51,953
current tradition that I’m involved in, jiu-jitsu, any of them, right?

2027
02:10:52,355 –> 02:10:55,801
Would spend any, even wrestling or boxing, right? The American, the more American

2028
02:10:55,801 –> 02:10:59,637
traditions. One of the things that’s interesting to a person who’s

2029
02:10:59,637 –> 02:11:03,376
standing outside of that is, and you see this in comment threads all

2030
02:11:03,376 –> 02:11:06,892
across the internet all the time, um,

2031
02:11:07,711 –> 02:11:11,309
is the idea that someone would spend years and years and years

2032
02:11:11,501 –> 02:11:15,164
inside of this tradition, develop these skills

2033
02:11:15,597 –> 02:11:19,388
that the vast majority of the population, particularly the vast majority of the male

2034
02:11:19,436 –> 02:11:22,552
population, just don’t possess. And they would

2035
02:11:23,050 –> 02:11:25,925
want to and want to desire to never use them.

2036
02:11:27,081 –> 02:11:30,808
Yes. I saw an interview with, uh, Jocko Willink. guy

2037
02:11:31,001 –> 02:11:33,941
who wrote Extreme Ownership, Navy SEAL.

2038
02:11:34,954 –> 02:11:38,312
Folks who listen to my podcast probably listen to Jocko’s podcast as well. We’re sort

2039
02:11:38,312 –> 02:11:42,120
of in the same sort of line. And if you’ve ever seen a picture

2040
02:11:42,120 –> 02:11:44,675
of Jocko Willink, he looks like a silverback

2041
02:11:44,675 –> 02:11:48,066
gorilla. Basically, like if a

2042
02:11:48,066 –> 02:11:51,762
silverback gorilla were a human being, that’s Jocko. Yeah. Like, you

2043
02:11:51,762 –> 02:11:55,409
know, he’s exactly what you think he looks like, you know.

2044
02:11:55,839 –> 02:11:57,161
And if you want to pull up a picture of him, you can take a

2045
02:11:57,161 –> 02:12:00,244
look at him in that other browser while you’re listening to this episode.

2046
02:12:02,510 –> 02:12:06,068
Jocko does jiu-jitsu. Jocko’s been doing jiu-jitsu for 30 years. Jocko’s a black belt in

2047
02:12:06,117 –> 02:12:09,805
jiu-jitsu. Jocko’s, along with all the other stuff that he does, that did as a

2048
02:12:09,805 –> 02:12:13,530
SEAL, right? This guy killed people and ordered people to kill people. Like,

2049
02:12:13,835 –> 02:12:17,273
please. And yet in this interview that I saw with him,

2050
02:12:18,350 –> 02:12:21,286
and it’s, and it’s, it was a clip from a longer interview that I actually

2051
02:12:21,286 –> 02:12:24,360
seen before. But he says the number one, I think it was when he was

2052
02:12:24,409 –> 02:12:28,192
on Joe Rogan, actually, he said the number one thing that he wants to do

2053
02:12:28,208 –> 02:12:32,056
is self-defense. If he’s on the street with some random dude that he doesn’t know,

2054
02:12:32,316 –> 02:12:34,769
and that random dude walks up to him and starts pushing him or starts, you

2055
02:12:34,769 –> 02:12:38,569
know, getting in his face, whatever, he’s like, I’m going to run away. This

2056
02:12:38,569 –> 02:12:42,393
is a Navy SEAL who looks like a silverback gorilla. Now, I don’t

2057
02:12:42,393 –> 02:12:45,205
know why you would walk up and start a problem with this person, but we

2058
02:12:45,205 –> 02:12:48,522
have crazy people in the world. We do. We have crazy people. We have mentally

2059
02:12:48,623 –> 02:12:52,030
unhinged people. It’s nuts, right? This man is at the

2060
02:12:52,126 –> 02:12:55,699
pinnacle of what the U.S. government can train

2061
02:12:56,068 –> 02:12:59,529
a person to be. And then he put jiu-jitsu on top of that

2062
02:12:59,961 –> 02:13:03,743
on his own time because he was doing jiu-jitsu back when it wasn’t

2063
02:13:03,743 –> 02:13:07,525
popular and it wasn’t hot. Okay. Before UFC

2064
02:13:07,653 –> 02:13:10,874
1, before the Gracies, before all of that. That’s what he started as a young

2065
02:13:10,890 –> 02:13:12,989
SEAL back in the mid-’90s. Right. Okay.

2066
02:13:14,383 –> 02:13:17,264
Runaway is still his Number one thing.

2067
02:13:21,216 –> 02:13:24,612
There is an idea in the Bible that the meek will inherit the earth, but

2068
02:13:24,612 –> 02:13:28,415
we misinterpret that idea. The word

2069
02:13:28,480 –> 02:13:31,821
meek doesn’t mean weak. It also doesn’t mean

2070
02:13:32,902 –> 02:13:36,179
fighting or taking on

2071
02:13:36,357 –> 02:13:40,121
things because of disrespect consistently and proving yourself. That’s

2072
02:13:40,153 –> 02:13:43,740
not what it means in the In the original term, the

2073
02:13:43,740 –> 02:13:47,500
original Aramaic/Greek term, meek means those who

2074
02:13:47,532 –> 02:13:51,307
have swords. And to your point, to your story that you just told from

2075
02:13:51,307 –> 02:13:54,998
the Book of Mormon, those who have swords but have to

2076
02:13:55,030 –> 02:13:57,674
basically be pushed to the wall in order to unsheathe them.

2077
02:14:01,331 –> 02:14:05,064
Yes. This is what we’re getting to with our discussion here of the

2078
02:14:05,064 –> 02:14:08,829
French. The English pushed the French to the wall.

2079
02:14:10,605 –> 02:14:14,328
And the French unsheathed their sword. But the French were not weak.

2080
02:14:14,876 –> 02:14:18,549
They were not feckless. They were not stupid. They were

2081
02:14:18,549 –> 02:14:21,623
not, again, as I’ve said before, straw men or straw people.

2082
02:14:23,803 –> 02:14:27,539
They were just human beings like you and I, pushed to the

2083
02:14:27,539 –> 02:14:31,341
wall. Martial human beings, for sure, in a martial, a more martial

2084
02:14:31,341 –> 02:14:34,772
society than ours. But still, folks who

2085
02:14:34,804 –> 02:14:38,513
understood that Sometimes

2086
02:14:40,139 –> 02:14:42,730
getting away from conflict and running away is okay.

2087
02:14:44,082 –> 02:14:47,368
But when there’s no more options to run away, then we’re going to turn and

2088
02:14:47,416 –> 02:14:50,940
fight. And the turning and fighting doesn’t make you a

2089
02:14:50,989 –> 02:14:54,422
villain. It makes you a human. And yet

2090
02:14:54,422 –> 02:14:58,083
inside of that humanity, you may indeed wind up doing villainous things.

2091
02:14:58,905 –> 02:15:02,668
And this is the, this is the line that we have to walk. Not only

2092
02:15:02,684 –> 02:15:05,397
in warfare, but also, also in our own lives.

2093
02:15:12,243 –> 02:15:15,571
Yes. I want to— I wanted to read Act 4, Scene 3

2094
02:15:17,895 –> 02:15:19,686
here in, in the play,

2095
02:15:22,400 –> 02:15:24,677
particularly the speech where King Henry

2096
02:15:26,173 –> 02:15:28,434
talks about his cousin Westmoreland.

2097
02:15:29,809 –> 02:15:33,120
And talks about, talks to

2098
02:15:33,120 –> 02:15:36,559
Salisbury and Westmoreland and Tucker and Monjoy.

2099
02:15:40,466 –> 02:15:44,292
But we’ve, we’ve talked a lot on this episode, and I want to actually

2100
02:15:44,357 –> 02:15:47,817
visit something that, because Zach did a post on, on

2101
02:15:47,817 –> 02:15:51,436
LinkedIn a little bit ahead of our conversation here, and I reposted it. You can

2102
02:15:51,436 –> 02:15:53,945
go look at that. You can go look at that conversation. So I want to

2103
02:15:53,945 –> 02:15:57,182
kind of close talking a little bit about that, or go look at that post.

2104
02:15:57,663 –> 02:16:00,293
I want to kind of bring that into our conversation here. So, one

2105
02:16:01,624 –> 02:16:04,334
of the things you pointed out in your, in your post, and I think that

2106
02:16:04,334 –> 02:16:07,895
this is, this is hugely relevant for kind of our wrap-up here

2107
02:16:07,943 –> 02:16:11,487
today. And I’m gonna go here and pull this up.

2108
02:16:12,112 –> 02:16:15,480
And you can, again, you could go look at the repost today or

2109
02:16:15,480 –> 02:16:19,169
tomorrow or anytime on LinkedIn. If you just follow me on LinkedIn, just

2110
02:16:19,169 –> 02:16:21,270
type in Hey, Sansarails, and it’ll popped right up.

2111
02:16:23,300 –> 02:16:26,803
You talked a lot about the scene in the

2112
02:16:26,868 –> 02:16:29,936
play where the night before the Battle of

2113
02:16:29,936 –> 02:16:33,378
Agincourt— I always mispronounce that, but Agincourt—

2114
02:16:34,154 –> 02:16:36,759
the French are rested and they outnumber the English,

2115
02:16:38,183 –> 02:16:41,598
and they’re asking, you know, will this night ever end? And Harry decides to go,

2116
02:16:42,082 –> 02:16:45,062
you know, pretender decides to go in disguise, right, to speak with his men to

2117
02:16:45,062 –> 02:16:48,597
kind of see how they really feel. And

2118
02:16:49,978 –> 02:16:53,254
you make this point, and I’m going to quote your words back to you from

2119
02:16:53,286 –> 02:16:56,706
this post. You said this: it’s an interesting scene because up until this

2120
02:16:56,802 –> 02:17:00,591
point, Harry is able to deftly justify the consequences of

2121
02:17:00,591 –> 02:17:04,124
his actions and shift the blame on others. But in the face of his

2122
02:17:04,124 –> 02:17:07,753
soldiers who believe they will be slaughtered because of the king’s ego after the sun

2123
02:17:07,801 –> 02:17:11,221
rises, the justifications seem feeble and sound

2124
02:17:11,253 –> 02:17:13,791
hollow. And that makes Harry mad.

2125
02:17:16,099 –> 02:17:19,810
I see that in myself sometimes, and that’s what in my mind sets justification and

2126
02:17:19,826 –> 02:17:23,201
maturity against each other. Justification focuses on

2127
02:17:23,201 –> 02:17:26,948
defending the decision because owning its consequences might be too heavy.

2128
02:17:28,188 –> 02:17:31,698
Responsibility requires someone to own the concrete costs of their own decisions.

2129
02:17:32,372 –> 02:17:35,379
I see that as a feature of maturity, not a bug.

2130
02:17:36,962 –> 02:17:40,533
That’s what to me makes this scene so interesting. Harry keeps saying, there are

2131
02:17:40,533 –> 02:17:43,389
reasons for this that you may not understand. We should trust the king. And the

2132
02:17:43,389 –> 02:17:46,845
soldiers answer, sure, but regardless of those reasons, if we die tomorrow,

2133
02:17:47,430 –> 02:17:49,270
we’re still super dead.

2134
02:17:52,225 –> 02:17:55,916
And that’s why Harry gets so angry, because these soldiers refuse to let his

2135
02:17:55,948 –> 02:17:59,187
reasoning absolve him. Now Harry’s

2136
02:17:59,187 –> 02:18:02,396
justification is no longer enough to sustain him. He has nowhere left to shift the

2137
02:18:02,396 –> 02:18:05,986
responsibility except Onto

2138
02:18:06,583 –> 02:18:07,792
himself.

2139
02:18:13,339 –> 02:18:16,050
I don’t think Henry V gets to do this

2140
02:18:17,131 –> 02:18:18,954
without some help from older friends.

2141
02:18:21,435 –> 02:18:24,966
And I want to close out our conversation today, our wide-ranging conversation. We’ve been all

2142
02:18:24,998 –> 02:18:28,126
over the map with this. This has been great, Zach. Yeah.

2143
02:18:30,858 –> 02:18:33,421
And I want to get down to practicalities and brass tacks because

2144
02:18:35,227 –> 02:18:38,128
quite frankly, we’ve got a mentorship and succession problem,

2145
02:18:39,660 –> 02:18:43,426
but we also have an accountability

2146
02:18:43,846 –> 02:18:47,609
and ownership problem. And

2147
02:18:47,609 –> 02:18:51,226
it’s on 2 ends of the spectrum. So on the one end, you have

2148
02:18:51,405 –> 02:18:54,308
Gen Z and millennials who have an ownership and accountability problem.

2149
02:18:55,952 –> 02:18:58,894
And then on the other end, you have baby boomers and yes, even my generation,

2150
02:18:58,926 –> 02:19:02,542
Gen Xers, who have a

2151
02:19:02,542 –> 02:19:03,989
mentorship and succession problem.

2152
02:19:06,917 –> 02:19:10,709
Now, to a certain degree, Gen Xers could be forgiven for some of this

2153
02:19:10,709 –> 02:19:14,082
because the cohort just at a numbers level is just

2154
02:19:14,082 –> 02:19:17,718
smaller than the other 3 cohorts that I’ve mentioned. And so there actually weren’t

2155
02:19:17,718 –> 02:19:21,179
enough of us because the twin scourges of abortion

2156
02:19:21,179 –> 02:19:24,842
and and the birth control pill fell directly on our generation from the baby

2157
02:19:24,842 –> 02:19:28,555
boomers. If those 2 scourges had not existed, or even

2158
02:19:28,555 –> 02:19:32,390
just one of them only, there might have been

2159
02:19:32,390 –> 02:19:35,845
at least 25 to 30 million more Gen Xers, and some of the pressure would

2160
02:19:35,845 –> 02:19:39,670
be off of the millennials right now. But yeah, you play the game

2161
02:19:39,943 –> 02:19:41,345
as it is laid, right?

2162
02:19:43,996 –> 02:19:46,372
And baby boomers take a lot of

2163
02:19:48,470 –> 02:19:51,938
They take a lot of crap online. A lot. I see a lot of this,

2164
02:19:52,484 –> 02:19:56,305
not only in Substack and other places, but in social media. And the chorus

2165
02:19:56,498 –> 02:19:59,597
is growing of this cultural—

2166
02:20:01,090 –> 02:20:03,900
and I’m going to use a word that I don’t think is too harsh— cultural

2167
02:20:03,900 –> 02:20:07,673
hatred for the boomers. I see a lot of the

2168
02:20:07,673 –> 02:20:11,253
day of the pillow is coming posts, particularly

2169
02:20:11,285 –> 02:20:15,059
posted by Gen Zers and younger millennials. I see a lot of

2170
02:20:15,059 –> 02:20:18,336
these. That’s terrible. Oh yeah.

2171
02:20:19,139 –> 02:20:21,805
If you go to the darker corners of the internet, it’s bubbling up from the

2172
02:20:21,805 –> 02:20:25,339
bottoms of Reddit and stuff that bottoms up from the bottles of the

2173
02:20:25,339 –> 02:20:28,664
bottoms of Reddit eventually shows up in, in, in,

2174
02:20:29,500 –> 02:20:32,953
in books with better language written by individuals with

2175
02:20:32,969 –> 02:20:36,310
PhDs who justify the stuff at the bottom of the barrel.

2176
02:20:37,788 –> 02:20:41,234
That’s what I’m worried about. That’s, that’s why I said at the beginning of this

2177
02:20:41,234 –> 02:20:44,102
episode, the stuff that starts on Reddit

2178
02:20:45,073 –> 02:20:47,406
eventually winds up as public policy and then law.

2179
02:20:49,634 –> 02:20:50,974
The problem is

2180
02:20:53,588 –> 02:20:57,397
the younger cohorts seem to forget that, as I said at the beginning,

2181
02:20:58,012 –> 02:21:01,234
you too will get old

2182
02:21:03,381 –> 02:21:06,079
and there will be Generations behind you.

2183
02:21:08,169 –> 02:21:10,859
By the way, I’ve raised 4 generations of people in my house.

2184
02:21:12,342 –> 02:21:15,400
I’m currently raising a Gen Alpha who’s under the age of 10.

2185
02:21:17,384 –> 02:21:21,008
They’re coming. And if you don’t get your

2186
02:21:21,057 –> 02:21:24,747
crap together, Gen Z, someone’s going to

2187
02:21:24,780 –> 02:21:28,163
be doing to you or posting about doing to you

2188
02:21:28,988 –> 02:21:32,601
what you’re posting and thinking about doing in very online spaces

2189
02:21:32,874 –> 02:21:36,610
among very online people to the people who came ahead of

2190
02:21:36,626 –> 02:21:39,496
you because you’re resentful and entitled

2191
02:21:40,634 –> 02:21:44,258
rather than picking up the

2192
02:21:44,258 –> 02:21:47,449
mantle that has been laid down for you and

2193
02:21:47,465 –> 02:21:51,201
advancing it. But I don’t want to come in for condemnation. I

2194
02:21:51,233 –> 02:21:54,761
want to come in for hope, right? This is a restoration piece on this show.

2195
02:21:55,546 –> 02:21:58,208
But that is the warning. That’s the thing that I’m seeing. And this is the

2196
02:21:58,208 –> 02:22:01,035
thing that— that’s one of the things that disturbs me. That’s why I opened up

2197
02:22:01,035 –> 02:22:04,554
with King Rehoboam, because I think this is a King Rehoboam problem.

2198
02:22:05,052 –> 02:22:08,218
This is, this is that problem. I will increase the,

2199
02:22:08,909 –> 02:22:12,320
the weight on you, and then the country splits, the kingdom splits,

2200
02:22:12,851 –> 02:22:16,119
and then that’s it. It’s over. And it wouldn’t take much.

2201
02:22:19,984 –> 02:22:23,774
The choice, I think, is simple for younger generations. Either build a better world or

2202
02:22:23,790 –> 02:22:27,515
don’t. But know that the responsibility and

2203
02:22:27,515 –> 02:22:30,717
accountability for that world will be thrust upon you when you are an elder.

2204
02:22:31,864 –> 02:22:35,052
You will have to answer for either building a better world or not, the same

2205
02:22:35,149 –> 02:22:38,676
way that you’re asking the elders now to answer for the world they built

2206
02:22:39,900 –> 02:22:43,678
or didn’t, in your estimation. You’ll be asked

2207
02:22:43,678 –> 02:22:44,450
to answer as well.

2208
02:22:47,828 –> 02:22:51,667
I think there are very simple ways to sort of crack this nut. I think,

2209
02:22:52,526 –> 02:22:55,297
I do think it takes time. I mean, it’s hard when you’re 20 to sit

2210
02:22:55,297 –> 02:22:58,018
still and listen to the rambling 40-year-old,

2211
02:22:59,560 –> 02:23:02,282
which is why the vast majority of the audience of the show is over the

2212
02:23:02,282 –> 02:23:04,097
age of 40. And that’s good, actually. That’s fine.

2213
02:23:05,004 –> 02:23:08,715
It’s hard to listen to the stories. It’s hard to be

2214
02:23:08,715 –> 02:23:12,262
patient with the ramblings. It’s hard to

2215
02:23:12,262 –> 02:23:15,975
not ask the generations before you, or to

2216
02:23:15,975 –> 02:23:19,648
demand, That they conform to a future that they may have had no

2217
02:23:19,728 –> 02:23:23,105
part in building. It’s hard to do that, but it’s not impossible.

2218
02:23:24,910 –> 02:23:28,639
So I guess, Zach, for you, the question becomes, based on your, your past work

2219
02:23:28,639 –> 02:23:32,480
and your current work and things you’ve seen, and even your own experiences in

2220
02:23:32,480 –> 02:23:36,247
your own cohort, in your own time, what are the practical ways

2221
02:23:37,085 –> 02:23:39,420
that young leaders reading Henry V

2222
02:23:41,257 –> 02:23:44,494
can prepare to be old leaders? years. Because as I said before,

2223
02:23:44,875 –> 02:23:48,548
everybody’s going to get old. On a long enough timeline,

2224
02:23:49,710 –> 02:23:53,437
everybody turns gray. Yes. And the Gen

2225
02:23:53,501 –> 02:23:57,180
Zers of today who are, who are

2226
02:23:57,180 –> 02:23:58,947
voting for rent control and

2227
02:24:00,506 –> 02:24:04,298
candidates that are going to promise them the moon are going

2228
02:24:04,298 –> 02:24:07,994
to wind up being 30 and 40 and 50 and 60

2229
02:24:08,043 –> 02:24:11,881
and 70 and 80. And if the science is to be believed,

2230
02:24:11,929 –> 02:24:15,767
90 and 100. And that’s a long time

2231
02:24:15,799 –> 02:24:19,437
to live as a human being with the

2232
02:24:20,852 –> 02:24:24,516
outcomes of decisions made in haste or

2233
02:24:24,629 –> 02:24:26,933
advocated for in haste in your 20s and 30s.

2234
02:24:28,417 –> 02:24:29,836
70 years is a long time.

2235
02:24:33,026 –> 02:24:35,358
And countries are— exist longer than human beings.

2236
02:24:39,410 –> 02:24:42,285
How do, how do young leaders become, how do they prepare to be old leaders?

2237
02:24:42,333 –> 02:24:46,105
How do they do that? And I’d rather, I’d rather you talk about this because

2238
02:24:46,202 –> 02:24:49,880
I talk about this a lot on the show, but I’m an old man. I’m

2239
02:24:49,913 –> 02:24:53,672
a rambling old man. You know, it’s okay. I’m, I’m 3 years

2240
02:24:53,737 –> 02:24:57,336
away from being 50. Soon I’ll be a rambling old man whose opinions will be

2241
02:24:57,336 –> 02:25:00,727
irrelevant. Will you yell at the clouds too?

2242
02:25:01,016 –> 02:25:04,462
Oh, I will absolutely Grandpa Simpson it up. It’s going to be amazing.

2243
02:25:05,420 –> 02:25:09,223
Absolutely. And I will, I will yell at the clouds every single opportunity

2244
02:25:09,256 –> 02:25:11,684
and twice on Sundays. Yes.

2245
02:25:13,286 –> 02:25:17,024
Um, I think I want to revisit that Rehoboam story there for a

2246
02:25:17,024 –> 02:25:20,858
minute because I love, I love that

2247
02:25:20,923 –> 02:25:24,450
story because what happens is you have this King Solomon who,

2248
02:25:25,423 –> 02:25:29,268
um, you know, has lots of wives. He starts off as

2249
02:25:29,268 –> 02:25:32,808
a really good dude but is corrupted by the influence of women

2250
02:25:34,355 –> 02:25:37,270
in his life. And then he has Rehoboam.

2251
02:25:38,543 –> 02:25:42,381
And Rehoboam, to your point, does not listen to

2252
02:25:42,381 –> 02:25:46,077
the senior advisors. No. He listens to

2253
02:25:46,158 –> 02:25:49,595
his young friends and he says, my father taxed you

2254
02:25:50,289 –> 02:25:53,389
a thumb’s worth. I will tax you a thigh.

2255
02:25:54,655 –> 02:25:58,341
And I love that language because it’s so visual, right?

2256
02:25:58,406 –> 02:26:02,033
It’s But, but essentially,

2257
02:26:02,579 –> 02:26:06,224
you know, when you boil it down, what, what Rehoboam is doing is

2258
02:26:06,288 –> 02:26:09,467
making a category error. He is

2259
02:26:09,563 –> 02:26:11,956
assuming that age

2260
02:26:12,550 –> 02:26:16,131
precludes someone from having

2261
02:26:17,190 –> 02:26:21,012
value. Mm-hmm. You mentioned this, right? Listen

2262
02:26:21,060 –> 02:26:23,918
to old people’s stories, ask them questions.

2263
02:26:24,978 –> 02:26:28,575
You know, there is a great movie— not— it’s an

2264
02:26:28,751 –> 02:26:32,300
okay movie, but the principle is good. It’s called The Intern, and it’s got

2265
02:26:32,300 –> 02:26:35,752
Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway. And Robert De Niro

2266
02:26:35,752 –> 02:26:39,429
plays this retired CEO. He’s a widower. He has nothing

2267
02:26:39,525 –> 02:26:43,218
to do. And so he gets an internship with this— it’s

2268
02:26:43,218 –> 02:26:46,767
an e-commerce women’s fashion company in the

2269
02:26:46,767 –> 02:26:49,127
same building that he used to work in.

2270
02:26:50,237 –> 02:26:53,572
And it’s about the wisdom that he

2271
02:26:53,653 –> 02:26:57,490
brings to, to this woman CEO that she’s bringing,

2272
02:26:58,187 –> 02:27:01,853
that she needs as she’s building this company, dealing with her husband having an affair,

2273
02:27:03,486 –> 02:27:07,157
all of this sort of, of stuff. And just

2274
02:27:07,285 –> 02:27:11,117
because someone does not know how to use their iPhone does not mean

2275
02:27:11,214 –> 02:27:14,210
that they don’t know how to structure a corporate takeover.

2276
02:27:14,406 –> 02:27:18,123
Mm-hmm. That’s the part that

2277
02:27:18,396 –> 02:27:21,800
young people are often missing. Mm-hmm. They,

2278
02:27:22,106 –> 02:27:25,687
they forget about the fact that there is value in

2279
02:27:25,880 –> 02:27:28,867
the underlying principles that these people have

2280
02:27:29,011 –> 02:27:32,528
understood and learned. And

2281
02:27:32,609 –> 02:27:36,367
so they throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I am guilty

2282
02:27:36,463 –> 02:27:39,948
of this. In my 20s, I was the biggest

2283
02:27:40,093 –> 02:27:42,389
dick about stuff like this.

2284
02:27:44,849 –> 02:27:48,672
I was, I was honestly, I was really awful. And I’ve,

2285
02:27:49,531 –> 02:27:52,479
I’ve since realized that. And I’ve, I’ve actually tried to do

2286
02:27:54,080 –> 02:27:57,930
a mini 12-step program, as it were, with regards

2287
02:27:57,962 –> 02:28:01,440
to this, where I’ve reached out to some people who I genuinely was a dick

2288
02:28:01,440 –> 02:28:05,192
to and said, listen, I’m really sorry. I didn’t see what you

2289
02:28:05,224 –> 02:28:08,351
were trying to do for me, or if I did, I didn’t value it. it.

2290
02:28:10,296 –> 02:28:12,208
And for that reason,

2291
02:28:14,088 –> 02:28:17,352
I’ve, I’ve, I’ve missed out on a lot of

2292
02:28:17,786 –> 02:28:21,538
benefit in my life, and I’m sorry. And so,

2293
02:28:21,795 –> 02:28:25,177
you know, number one is, is, you know, stop

2294
02:28:25,740 –> 02:28:29,313
disrespecting those old people. Stop making that category error

2295
02:28:29,602 –> 02:28:32,643
of just because someone is

2296
02:28:33,399 –> 02:28:37,248
tech Inept does not mean that they don’t have the knowledge

2297
02:28:37,280 –> 02:28:40,425
that you’re looking for if you ask it in the right

2298
02:28:40,489 –> 02:28:44,323
combination. Right? That’s the big thing. And

2299
02:28:44,419 –> 02:28:48,188
you can think, sure, I could learn how to structure something from ChatGPT, but

2300
02:28:48,188 –> 02:28:51,701
it’s like, how often does ChatGPT or Claude hallucinate?

2301
02:28:52,263 –> 02:28:55,936
And how certain can you be that it’s not confirming

2302
02:28:56,033 –> 02:28:59,882
your bias? Right? When you talk to someone who’s older than you and

2303
02:28:59,882 –> 02:29:02,917
ask them these questions, they are not going to confirm your bias.

2304
02:29:04,137 –> 02:29:07,382
They’re just not. And if you talk to the right ones, then they might be

2305
02:29:07,382 –> 02:29:10,707
a dick about it sometimes, but you will get the right information.

2306
02:29:11,526 –> 02:29:14,723
Right. The second one, I think, is

2307
02:29:14,932 –> 02:29:18,305
stop worshiping youth. We

2308
02:29:18,305 –> 02:29:21,983
started doing this in the 1960s because you

2309
02:29:21,983 –> 02:29:25,581
had all of these parents who came back from World War II. They had

2310
02:29:25,581 –> 02:29:29,351
kids and they Mourned the childhood

2311
02:29:29,351 –> 02:29:32,877
that they were not allowed to have because of the Great Depression and the Second

2312
02:29:32,877 –> 02:29:35,875
World War. And then they, they sort of

2313
02:29:37,045 –> 02:29:40,796
tried to live vicariously through their kids. And, and

2314
02:29:40,909 –> 02:29:44,612
that generation was sort of the last generation where it was

2315
02:29:44,660 –> 02:29:48,299
okay to grow old. Hmm. And now we’ve got like

2316
02:29:48,764 –> 02:29:51,697
65-year-old women who are still rocking

2317
02:29:51,729 –> 02:29:55,485
bikinis and and they’re like trying to pick out their

2318
02:29:55,485 –> 02:29:59,097
grandma name, but it can’t be Grandma. It’s got to be something really

2319
02:29:59,258 –> 02:30:03,031
cool and chic like Gam Gam or Grammy. And like,

2320
02:30:03,047 –> 02:30:05,857
you have to try it on and see if you really like it. Like, nah,

2321
02:30:06,001 –> 02:30:09,196
get rid of all of that. Like, stop worshiping

2322
02:30:09,694 –> 02:30:13,242
youth. Asian cultures actually do a really good

2323
02:30:13,242 –> 02:30:17,031
job of this. It’s rude in Chinese culture to

2324
02:30:17,031 –> 02:30:20,527
sit down before the oldest person in the room. Mm-hmm.

2325
02:30:21,109 –> 02:30:24,780
The oldest person in the room determines when you sit down and they’ll make a

2326
02:30:24,845 –> 02:30:28,370
game of it. They’ll like start to sit down and then they’ll try and catch

2327
02:30:28,370 –> 02:30:32,065
you and like, just as a test to see, for me, a white

2328
02:30:32,065 –> 02:30:35,835
person, to see how well I knew their culture. But they couldn’t catch me on

2329
02:30:36,012 –> 02:30:38,488
that. But, but

2330
02:30:40,770 –> 02:30:42,908
the fact is that

2331
02:30:44,231 –> 02:30:48,069
age does bring a greater accumulation

2332
02:30:48,069 –> 02:30:51,858
of knowledge, going back to this idea of knowledge versus intelligence,

2333
02:30:52,870 –> 02:30:56,499
and the ability to apply it. Mm-hmm. And

2334
02:30:56,499 –> 02:31:00,224
so you want to plumb the depths of that intelligence. You

2335
02:31:00,336 –> 02:31:04,029
want to give them the exact parameters of the situation that you’re

2336
02:31:04,045 –> 02:31:07,722
facing and allow them to help you reconstruct a mental

2337
02:31:07,722 –> 02:31:11,399
model, because just that action alone will be valuable.

2338
02:31:11,576 –> 02:31:15,121
to you, because someday you will be the senior

2339
02:31:15,121 –> 02:31:18,603
manager making the decision, and you won’t be able to turn to that

2340
02:31:18,651 –> 02:31:22,117
person because they’ll be gone. But you will have been taught

2341
02:31:22,566 –> 02:31:26,160
how to think about the problem and how to solve it. And

2342
02:31:26,352 –> 02:31:29,946
that’s what we need. We need you to be able to

2343
02:31:30,122 –> 02:31:33,524
think through problems and solve them by

2344
02:31:34,133 –> 02:31:37,710
doing what’s called destructive deduction and creative induction,

2345
02:31:38,448 –> 02:31:41,460
where we’re pulling apart, um,

2346
02:31:42,213 –> 02:31:45,883
base— how do I say this— we’re pulling apart our mental models

2347
02:31:46,396 –> 02:31:49,665
to, to find their core components, and then we’re

2348
02:31:49,665 –> 02:31:53,302
reconstituting them to match the problems that we’re facing today.

2349
02:31:54,328 –> 02:31:57,821
That’s true intelligence. That’s what we need more of.

2350
02:31:58,238 –> 02:32:01,939
But it’s like a muscle. Unless you’ve worked it out, then you’re

2351
02:32:01,939 –> 02:32:05,712
never going to— to get that. And then I

2352
02:32:05,906 –> 02:32:07,834
think that, that, um,

2353
02:32:10,199 –> 02:32:13,287
you know, one other thing that really helped me

2354
02:32:14,495 –> 02:32:18,327
was I finally got to a point where I just said

2355
02:32:18,424 –> 02:32:22,242
to God, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it.

2356
02:32:23,020 –> 02:32:25,612
Whatever you want me to do, I will do it. Just put me in a

2357
02:32:25,612 –> 02:32:29,159
position to build the kingdom. And I think that

2358
02:32:29,273 –> 02:32:32,769
that’s the third thing is that when you’re young, you

2359
02:32:32,833 –> 02:32:36,336
come out and you have these dreams, and you

2360
02:32:36,448 –> 02:32:40,115
believe in those dreams, and you believe that the world

2361
02:32:40,375 –> 02:32:43,865
owes you your dreams. And this is going to sound harsh.

2362
02:32:44,288 –> 02:32:47,258
The world doesn’t owe you your dreams. The world doesn’t owe you anything.

2363
02:32:49,207 –> 02:32:52,981
And, and frankly, your dreams are often smaller than what God would give

2364
02:32:53,078 –> 02:32:56,449
you. Hmm. It’s like Joseph in Egypt.

2365
02:32:57,233 –> 02:33:00,929
Joseph thought that he was just going to be the next person

2366
02:33:01,042 –> 02:33:04,754
to inherit the birthright and that he

2367
02:33:04,770 –> 02:33:08,578
would be probably a seer in his local community.

2368
02:33:09,126 –> 02:33:12,720
But God saw him as the second in command to the most

2369
02:33:12,816 –> 02:33:15,629
powerful nation on earth. Hmm.

2370
02:33:17,686 –> 02:33:21,380
God can make your life a masterpiece, but you have to let go of this

2371
02:33:21,720 –> 02:33:25,392
vision of of what it needs to be so that the

2372
02:33:25,520 –> 02:33:29,125
people who are in your life can mold and

2373
02:33:29,125 –> 02:33:32,458
shape you and push you in the direction that God wants you to go

2374
02:33:33,388 –> 02:33:36,993
if you’re willing to listen. Um, and that’s the,

2375
02:33:37,233 –> 02:33:39,909
the last thing that I would say. Now, Joseph had to go through a lot

2376
02:33:39,957 –> 02:33:42,889
of crap to get to where he was. He was,

2377
02:33:43,546 –> 02:33:47,328
um, almost murdered by his brothers. This

2378
02:33:47,328 –> 02:33:50,754
is not the, the Andrew Lloyd Webber version. No.

2379
02:33:51,221 –> 02:33:55,006
He was almost murdered until finally someone said, there’s too

2380
02:33:55,006 –> 02:33:58,518
much mess. Let’s, let’s just sell him as a slave. Then he worked as a

2381
02:33:58,566 –> 02:34:00,818
slave for a couple of years, was almost

2382
02:34:00,818 –> 02:34:04,546
raped by

2383
02:34:05,140 –> 02:34:08,869
the wife of the owner, then falsely imprisoned for a couple of

2384
02:34:08,917 –> 02:34:12,727
years before he interpreted the dreams. And then he was still in prison for

2385
02:34:12,727 –> 02:34:16,288
a few years after that until the cupholder was finally like, oh yeah,

2386
02:34:16,369 –> 02:34:19,773
there’s this guy. I promised that I’d help him get out. Yeah. You know,

2387
02:34:20,078 –> 02:34:23,835
like, there’s a lot of stuff that

2388
02:34:23,835 –> 02:34:27,592
he has to go through. And I think that at some point he was

2389
02:34:27,705 –> 02:34:31,510
finally able to say, okay, God, if I’m going to

2390
02:34:31,558 –> 02:34:34,432
serve as a slave the rest of my days, then I’m going to be the

2391
02:34:34,432 –> 02:34:37,917
best slave I can be. If I’m going to be in prison the

2392
02:34:37,981 –> 02:34:40,887
rest of my days, then I’m going to be the best inmate that I

2393
02:34:40,887 –> 02:34:44,686
can be. And that set him up to say, okay, God,

2394
02:34:45,024 –> 02:34:48,430
if I’m going to be the second in command of Egypt for the rest of

2395
02:34:48,463 –> 02:34:51,872
my days, I’m going to do that the best that I can.

2396
02:34:58,913 –> 02:35:02,532
Powerful ideas here to close out

2397
02:35:02,999 –> 02:35:06,135
our month of Shakespeare.

2398
02:35:07,589 –> 02:35:11,025
I want to thank Zach for coming on today. This was a great conversation,

2399
02:35:11,202 –> 02:35:14,622
wide-ranging. We covered a lot of the waterfront. There’s a lot of things here

2400
02:35:15,633 –> 02:35:19,246
for us to talk about, not only in future episodes, but also for us to

2401
02:35:19,246 –> 02:35:23,035
continue to build on as we move forward in the podcast.

2402
02:35:23,565 –> 02:35:26,792
Zach will be back to join us for our 200th episode. So

2403
02:35:27,595 –> 02:35:29,795
get ready to welcome him back for that. Looking forward to it. Yeah, it’s going

2404
02:35:29,795 –> 02:35:32,203
to be, it’s going to be, like I said, it’s going to be a humdinger.

2405
02:35:32,492 –> 02:35:36,129
Or at least it’ll do until a Humdinger shows up. So I’m

2406
02:35:37,459 –> 02:35:41,289
personally excited about it, and I can’t wait to get that episode

2407
02:35:41,289 –> 02:35:45,071
out to folks. Once again, I encourage you to pick up

2408
02:35:45,856 –> 02:35:49,109
The Life of Henry V,

2409
02:35:49,638 –> 02:35:53,131
the Folger Shakespeare Library edition, or any edition that you can get a hold of.

2410
02:35:53,243 –> 02:35:56,881
Pick up an edition, pick up a copy of this great play by William Shakespeare,

2411
02:35:57,473 –> 02:36:01,212
and read it and absorb it. And think about what we have talked about

2412
02:36:01,229 –> 02:36:04,478
here today, what Zach has brought to you today, if you are a young leader.

2413
02:36:05,560 –> 02:36:09,324
Once again, I want to thank Zach for coming on the podcast, on the Leadership

2414
02:36:09,356 –> 02:36:12,260
Lessons from the Great Books podcast. And with that, well,

2415
02:36:14,922 –> 02:36:16,471
we’re out. We’re out.