https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=Y3C1WsGmt2w
One of the things that strikes me as problematic, let’s say, with projects like the 1619 Project or the leftist insistence in the United States that America per se was founded on, let’s say, slavery and oppression. The reason it really bothers me is because I think it’s an anti-truth. I don’t think it’s just a lie, because a lie is sort of like a deviation from the truth, but an anti-truth is something that’s exactly the opposite of what’s true. And this is how I look at it. So the first question might be, well, is slavery a universal human proclivity or not? And the answer to me, to that, as far as I can tell, and I’ve done some research into the topic, is yes. It’s the default mode of operation for human cultures has been slavery. And that might be a consequence of our proclivity to engage in war, because my suspicions are that the institution of slavery arose as a consequence of capturing enemy combatants, deciding not to kill them, which would be the simple thing to do, and then utilizing them, and also feeling justified in doing that, because, well, after all, they were trying to kill you, or there was a reason you were at war. And so we could say, well, slavery is the default condition for social organization. So then what emerges out of that is a kind of miracle, and the miracle to me is that any society ever decided that that was a bad idea. And as far as I can tell, the society that decided that most particularly and explicitly was Great Britain, and that was particularly Wilberforce, and he was an evangelical Christian, and the reason that he opposed slavery, 100%, the reason that he opposed slavery, was because he was steeped in the biblical tradition. And then the Brits fought slavery on the high seas for 175 years. And basically eradicated it as at least a morally acceptable enterprise. And the American tradition comes out of that tradition, and even if the US, like other cultures, is contaminated by the desire for power, it’s the antislaver ethos that’s actually central to the entire project. And so when the radical types are making the claim that Western culture is essentially slaveholding in its essence, as far as I can tell, they are opposing the only strain of culture, which also wasn’t Western, by the way, because it’s not like the Bible is a Western book exactly. It’s not European, it’s an import. And so they’re opposing the only strain of thought that’s ever existed that made it both a powerful, implicit and explicit antislavery case. And so that seems to be entirely counterproductive if they actually care about slavery. And then one more twist on that, historically speaking. Well, I don’t think that it’s debatable. The enlightenment types, like Steven Pinker, would debate this, I think, but I think he’s wrong. I think all the societies in the world that are free and productive and generous, and those would be the societies that people would flee to if they had their choice, all of those are offshoots of the biblical tradition, every single one of them. And I can’t see that as chance. And I also think the same thing about literacy is that without the biblical tradition, it was the biblical tradition and the invention of the printing press that brought literacy to the world. And it needed both of those. The Chinese had the printing press, but they didn’t have that evangelical fervor to elect, to bring everyone up to the pinnacle of self-governance and self-realization. The bloody Brits, they wanted to do that even to their colonies. And Wilberforce talked a lot about that too, is that it was the obligation of the Brits, as the colonial administrators say, to inculcate in the people who they had colonized, the spirit of independence and freedom that would enable them to be self-governing citizens. And I also think that the British Empire managed that to a great degree. There’s plenty of terrible mess and catastrophe along the way, but the US and Canada are both, and Australia and New Zealand, these are great countries. And you can say the same about many of the other Commonwealth countries, including India. They’re beneficiaries of that tradition. And it’s English, but it’s also more deeply biblical. So I think you can make an extremely strong historical case for this. I don’t know what the contrary case would be. It’s gotta be the Enlightenment idea, right? That it was the Enlightenment that produced. Now, let’s talk about that, because you talk about the French revolutionaries. Yes. And okay, so do you wanna just outline that part of your book and your thoughts on the French rational revolutionaries? Yeah, absolutely. But first, Ken, I disagree with you by restating Wilberforce’s argument, because I think you’ve made a profound point there. Wilberforce’s argument from the Bible, from the biblical tradition, was, I think, twofold. Number one, it is the idea in the Old Testament, and you mentioned it when you talked about Moses. God says to Moses, tell Pharaoh, let my people go wise so that they can worship me. There is an equality there that is implied. There’s only one king, right? I mean, the message of the Old Testament is there’s one God, only one sovereign. Everyone else serves him. But because of that, everyone else is equal. You don’t have this hierarchy of gods, and therefore, hierarchy of humans, in the Old Testament. God eventually does give the Israelites a king, but that is a concession to them. And of course, in the Old Testament, God says, they’ve rejected me from being king. They want a king over themselves, and he warns them about the king. He says, you’re not gonna like this king. The king’s gonna oppress you. The king’s not gonna treat you as equals. So you have the Old Testament tradition, which is very strongly, God is sovereign, and he calls all humans are equal before him, number one. Number two is the Christian tradition, which of course extends that. And the Christian tradition is that in Christ, there is no slave or free. Paul says that explicitly. There is St. Paul. There is no male or female. There is no Jew nor Gentile. All are equal in Christ, and the spirit of God is poured out on all people. Those are profoundly revolutionary ideas, revolutionary ideas, and Wilberforce got that and extended that, applied it, if you like, in his own time. But to your point about why the tradition of the Bible is a revolutionary tradition everywhere it goes, every culture it touches, whether we’re talking about ancient Rome or Britain or America, it always cuts against what I think you correctly identified as the natural human tendency to organize culture around the elite who have the power and everybody else who are basically slaves. And the biblical tradition cuts against that everywhere. It’s applied. So there’s something very powerful and profound about that. Now, the French Revolution. Here’s what I’d say about that. That’s the Tower of Babel. That’s the Tower of Babel proclivity, by the way. Correct, yes. That’s the erection of Babylon as a profane alternative to proper sovereignty and the proper sovereignty. So part of what the Bible is attempting to do is actually to define what constitutes the proper sovereign. And it isn’t the king. It’s not the earthly ruler. It’s something transcendent and eternal. And that would be the principle of sovereignty itself. It’s something like that, whatever that happens to be. And you’re trying to outline that in your book. Yes, can I just ask you actually on this point, because this is an interesting point with ancient mythology and the contrast with the Bible. And this is your area much more than mine. But in the Bible, we don’t have a hierarchy of gods. We have one God. We don’t have a myth in which the gods order themselves. You’ve got one God who’s in charge. All the other gods or servants are slaves to him. And then that replicates itself in the human realm. You see in the other mythologies, you have the hierarchy of the gods. And then that hierarchy replicates itself among the humans. And so it’s natural in a sense to think of, oh, well, if there’s a hierarchy of gods and there’s one lead god or several, and then there are slave gods, if you like, the same thing would be true on human cultures. The Bible, different picture altogether. No, there’s one God. The humans are not his slaves. He does never treat them as slaves. He treats them as partners who are called in to cooperate with him. And in some sense, called into his divine life with them. Very different picture. And I just wonder, back to the idea of why is the biblical tradition, why does it tend to produce equality, self-government, liberty? These other traditions don’t. Maybe that’s part of it. Maybe it’s this fundamental difference in how they picture the universe.