# How Screwed Are We? (with Andrew Seidel)

An episode of [TheThinkingAtheist](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/412308695), 16 Dec 2025, 1 h 01 min.

Audio: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/mgln.ai/e/711/api.spreaker.com/download/episode/68996380/podcast848_andrewseidel.mp3

Constitutional attorney Andrew Seidel joins the show to talk about the state of the States as we tumble toward 2026. The Die Hard Christmas Movie Video Video of this conversation Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/thethinkingatheist--3270347/support.

## Transcript

[0:00] Speaker 1: We understand.
[0:05] Speaker 2: The thinking atheist. It's not a person, it's a symbol,
[0:09] Speaker 2: an idea.
[0:10] Speaker 1: The population of atheists this country is going through the.
[0:13] Speaker 2: Rule, rejecting faith, pursuing knowledge, challenging the sacred. If I
[0:19] Speaker 2: tell the truth, it's because I tell the truth, not
[0:22] Speaker 2: because I put my hand on a book and made
[0:24] Speaker 2: a wish and working together for a more rational world.
[0:29] Speaker 1: Take the risk of thinking. Feel so much more happiness.
[0:32] Speaker 1: Truth Fusian wisdom will come to you that way.
[0:35] Speaker 2: Assume nothing, question everything, and start thinking. This is the
[0:43] Speaker 2: Thinking Atheist Podcast hosted by Seth Andrews.
[0:56] Speaker 1: As we talk about the end of twenty twenty five,
[0:59] Speaker 1: approaching twenty twenty six, big question marks in the air
[1:03] Speaker 1: about just about everything, and I wanted to bring on
[1:06] Speaker 1: a friend and a constitutional attorney to speak about the
[1:11] Speaker 1: state of the state. Andrew Seidel, Good to see you man.
[1:15] Speaker 3: Always a pleasure, my friend.
[1:17] Speaker 1: We have to talk first about the answering of one
[1:21] Speaker 1: of the deep and probing questions that society has for
[1:24] Speaker 1: some reason been wrestling with. Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?
[1:29] Speaker 1: You had an opinion, you wrote a piece, we collaborated
[1:32] Speaker 1: on a video, but you're going to have to defend
[1:35] Speaker 1: your thesis. Man die Hard.
[1:37] Speaker 3: Absolutely a Christmas movie. I don't think there's any real
[1:41] Speaker 3: solid argument against the position, and I've heard them all before. Actually,
[1:47] Speaker 3: I posted the video even on my LinkedIn page, which
[1:49] Speaker 3: I never do because you know, it's my super professional page.
[1:52] Speaker 3: But one of my college buddies re shared it and
[1:56] Speaker 3: he was like, oh my god, I remember having arguments
[1:59] Speaker 3: with you, you about this in our dorm room freshman year,
[2:03] Speaker 3: which you know is twenty five years ago. And I
[2:07] Speaker 3: mean to me, it is not just a Christmas movie.
[2:11] Speaker 3: It is the best Christmas movie. It's a holiday tradition
[2:14] Speaker 3: in my household. I watch it every year. It is
[2:16] Speaker 3: not Christmas until Hans Grouper falls off Knakatomi Tower.
[2:21] Speaker 1: It's just not Have you seen that Advent calend? I
[2:23] Speaker 1: think it's an advent calendar that is made with Nakatomi Plaza.
[2:27] Speaker 1: There's like a building and then there's Hans Gruber at
[2:31] Speaker 1: the top and just notch him down?
[2:37] Speaker 3: Do you mean that set?
[2:38] Speaker 1: I just looked up and there it is. This is
[2:42] Speaker 1: a kind of serendipitous convergence. Now when you got that,
[2:45] Speaker 1: was it a kit? Did you have to paint it
[2:47] Speaker 1: and do everything yourself.
[2:48] Speaker 3: No, no, no, this was a gift that that one
[2:53] Speaker 3: of my supporters sent Rich. A big thank you to
[2:56] Speaker 3: Rich for this, you know again, because people know how
[2:59] Speaker 3: serious I am about this. You know, I've been given
[3:01] Speaker 3: over the years T shirts. You can see one of
[3:03] Speaker 3: the T shirts that I got in the video that
[3:05] Speaker 3: was my mom actually got me that T shirt five
[3:08] Speaker 3: six years ago. I mean, this has been a thing
[3:10] Speaker 3: for me for a long time. I'm more than half convinced.
[3:13] Speaker 3: I actually started this entire debate, but I've never formally
[3:17] Speaker 3: weighed in on it in the video format, and I
[3:21] Speaker 3: wanted to do it. And I gotta say like, huge
[3:23] Speaker 3: thank you to you because I just called you to
[3:24] Speaker 3: pick your brain. And then you're like, yes, I want
[3:27] Speaker 3: to be a part of this.
[3:28] Speaker 4: Well, I get myself in trouble. You know.
[3:31] Speaker 1: I'll hear an idea and I'm my inbox like yours
[3:34] Speaker 1: is this big? But I'm like, you know, that'd be
[3:37] Speaker 1: kind of fun. And Natalie knows that I have a
[3:39] Speaker 1: hard time doing it halfway, so I'll sit here and
[3:42] Speaker 1: be like, you know what, it'd be great, And that's
[3:44] Speaker 1: another hour to put that graphic together.
[3:46] Speaker 4: And then you know, you know what be fun.
[3:48] Speaker 1: What if we did an explosion where Andrew's name, you know,
[3:51] Speaker 1: goes into pieces and what if the blu ray morphs
[3:53] Speaker 1: into Santa Claus at the end. And every time I
[3:55] Speaker 1: get an idea, I end up, you know, chewing up
[3:58] Speaker 1: the entire weekend, and my wife just comes up going,
[4:00] Speaker 1: you know, did you get paid for this? And I'm like, eh,
[4:03] Speaker 1: and the payment is relative, like it can be a
[4:07] Speaker 1: payment here in my heart.
[4:10] Speaker 3: I'll include it something for Natalie in your care package
[4:14] Speaker 3: an apology.
[4:15] Speaker 1: Just sent an apology lettery.
[4:17] Speaker 3: This is the thing that I love about it though,
[4:18] Speaker 3: because first of all, the end part that you just mentioned.
[4:22] Speaker 3: I can't tell you how much I love that. I mean,
[4:24] Speaker 3: I did tell you like to me, I laughed so
[4:26] Speaker 3: loud when I saw it. But this is the thing,
[4:28] Speaker 3: right like, this is Andrew in his basement here with
[4:31] Speaker 3: my shitty camera, you know, my halfassing recording stuff, and
[4:36] Speaker 3: then I give it to you, and then you turn
[4:38] Speaker 3: it into something that is close to a masterpieces. Diehard
[4:41] Speaker 3: itself is and you know it. People should go watch it.
[4:45] Speaker 1: I think it's bubble gum for the brain. It's one
[4:47] Speaker 1: of the reasons that I, dude, I got an invitation.
[4:51] Speaker 1: I did a ghost hunt. They'd like to call it
[4:53] Speaker 1: a paranormal investigation. But I was invited earlier in twenty
[4:56] Speaker 1: twenty five to go and spend almost the whole freak
[5:00] Speaker 1: a night in a mansion with my cameras. And I
[5:02] Speaker 1: was there with a ghost hunting team and I was
[5:05] Speaker 1: just tagging along, and do we see supernatural stuff?
[5:08] Speaker 3: No?
[5:09] Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, the scariest thing was the humidity, right,
[5:12] Speaker 1: But it was kind of fun. And I just got
[5:14] Speaker 1: an invite to go and tour a supposedly haunted submarine.
[5:19] Speaker 1: It's called the Batfish and it's of course it's above
[5:22] Speaker 1: ground now and it's on display and there's a museum
[5:24] Speaker 1: attached to it. And of course a submarine in Oklahoma
[5:27] Speaker 1: for me is an oxymoron. But okay, fine, So I've
[5:31] Speaker 1: been invited to go and take my cameras. Do I
[5:34] Speaker 1: have the time?
[5:34] Speaker 3: No?
[5:35] Speaker 1: Am I going to get paid?
[5:36] Speaker 3: No?
[5:37] Speaker 1: But it's kind of bubblegum for the brain in this
[5:39] Speaker 1: crazy world. We need our distractions, do we not?
[5:43] Speaker 3: So, I mean, you know, it's it's kind of like
[5:45] Speaker 3: the idea of heaven, right, Like heaven sounds terrible to
[5:48] Speaker 3: me anyway, because if everything is great all the time,
[5:51] Speaker 3: then nothing's great. You have you have to have ups
[5:53] Speaker 3: and downs. You have to have variety. For there to
[5:56] Speaker 3: be good, there has to be bad, right, and most
[5:58] Speaker 3: of the things are going to be middle of the road,
[6:00] Speaker 3: like like shit and serious. Right now, we're going to
[6:02] Speaker 3: get into it like things are scary, they are hard,
[6:05] Speaker 3: they are difficult, and you know, I actually I started
[6:09] Speaker 3: scripting this video a while back. It was going to
[6:11] Speaker 3: be an op ed. Still probably is going to be
[6:13] Speaker 3: an op ed, but I was going to publish it
[6:15] Speaker 3: last year, and I thought, you know what, nobody wants
[6:17] Speaker 3: to hear it after Trump has won an election again,
[6:22] Speaker 3: So nobody's gonna hear my cheeky ranch on Christmas movies.
[6:27] Speaker 3: So we're going to do it. You know, We'm going
[6:28] Speaker 3: to hit snooze on the project, and we did it
[6:30] Speaker 3: this year instead. But it is important to have those
[6:32] Speaker 3: kind of things. And I also I'm curious what is
[6:35] Speaker 3: haunting the submarine? Like? Is it like fish like like
[6:39] Speaker 3: is it like aquatic haunters or is it like sailors
[6:42] Speaker 3: who died sub narrators?
[6:44] Speaker 1: You know what the problem is this is I have
[6:45] Speaker 1: all of this prep on serious issues and bringing a
[6:48] Speaker 1: constitutional attorney on we're talking about die Hard and haunted fish,
[6:52] Speaker 1: haunted submarines.
[6:53] Speaker 4: But okay, let's go there.
[6:56] Speaker 1: I first of all, I go online. Apparently there are
[6:59] Speaker 1: some stories nobody died on the sub but somehow, you know,
[7:03] Speaker 1: people are They will attach lore to almost anything. But
[7:08] Speaker 1: just between you and me and the thousands of thousands
[7:10] Speaker 1: of people who are watching and listening. When I watched
[7:14] Speaker 1: the paranormal team pull out the tools to find ghosts knowing,
[7:20] Speaker 1: I mean, we've spent years debunking what they do not do.
[7:24] Speaker 1: Oh look the EMF meter, that's bullshit. Oh look it's
[7:27] Speaker 1: the spirit box that's bullshit. And it might be divining rods.
[7:32] Speaker 1: Those are bullshit. I mean, it's more of a social
[7:35] Speaker 1: experiment for me watching patterned seekers and the desire to believe.
[7:40] Speaker 1: So do I have an ulterior motive, not overtly, but
[7:44] Speaker 1: I will be watching the humans probably more than I
[7:47] Speaker 1: will be watching the dark hallways, the dark corridors of
[7:50] Speaker 1: the sub Okay, you mentioned Trump getting elected for the
[7:55] Speaker 1: second time. Did you call that? I was talking to
[7:58] Speaker 1: Matt Dela Hunty and He's like, Andrew has been right
[8:01] Speaker 1: about so many things, And I was like, Okay, Noster Damas,
[8:05] Speaker 1: did you call that?
[8:07] Speaker 3: I mean, I tried not to be. I tried not
[8:10] Speaker 3: to be publicly down on what I thought the election
[8:15] Speaker 3: result was going to be. And I really thought there
[8:18] Speaker 3: was a chance that he would lose. But the I mean,
[8:22] Speaker 3: the polling and the numbers looked terrible, especially while Biden
[8:26] Speaker 3: was still in the race. They did not look good.
[8:31] Speaker 3: And you know, I actually I remember being I was
[8:34] Speaker 3: in Spokane, Washington at a conference on Christian Nationalism, their
[8:39] Speaker 3: regional conference with Sam maguire from an American Atheists, and
[8:42] Speaker 3: she and I were talking, and you know, I kind
[8:45] Speaker 3: of like hinted like you know I am, I am worried,
[8:49] Speaker 3: you know, and she's like, oh, no, He's definitely gonna win,
[8:52] Speaker 3: like we don't have a chance, and she was. She
[8:53] Speaker 3: was convinced. So she called it even more than I did.
[8:56] Speaker 3: But I didn't I publicly, I did not. I kept
[9:00] Speaker 3: my fears and worries to myself, and I did everything
[9:03] Speaker 3: I could to help that not happen, to prevent that
[9:08] Speaker 3: from becoming a reality. And you know, I live here
[9:11] Speaker 3: in Wisconsin where you know it getting out there and
[9:16] Speaker 3: knocking doors and can have a big impact. I participated
[9:19] Speaker 3: in the Humanists for Harris fundraiser, which I was really
[9:22] Speaker 3: proud to have done. We raised a good bit of
[9:24] Speaker 3: money for her. It was sort of like the you know,
[9:26] Speaker 3: there was all those zoom fundraisers that kind of happened
[9:29] Speaker 3: right afterwards, and this was one of those. It It
[9:33] Speaker 3: was disappointing, but not surprising.
[9:37] Speaker 1: Talk to me about, you know, with a split country,
[9:41] Speaker 1: do you feel like the wheels have been wobbling and
[9:43] Speaker 1: they may come off? A lot of people are saying, hey,
[9:46] Speaker 1: twenty twenty six, you know, we're definitely going to see
[9:49] Speaker 1: the implode. It's going to be self immolation.
[9:52] Speaker 3: It depends on what folks mean by that, right, I
[9:55] Speaker 3: mean I do think what I think what we are
[9:58] Speaker 3: seeing right now is the Republican Party realizing that Trump
[10:05] Speaker 3: is a lame duck, and there has been a He
[10:09] Speaker 3: has talked a lot about running again, even though he
[10:12] Speaker 3: is constitutionally prohibited from doing that. I did a whole
[10:15] Speaker 3: podcast on One Nation Indivisible about can Trump run for
[10:19] Speaker 3: a third term? What would that look like? And one
[10:22] Speaker 3: of the things I say is, look, we should expect
[10:23] Speaker 3: him to try this. Since then, he has tamped down
[10:26] Speaker 3: the rhetoric There's even been one instance of him saying, look,
[10:29] Speaker 3: I'm not going to do that, But every time he
[10:31] Speaker 3: does that, he ramps it back up again. And I
[10:33] Speaker 3: think what we're seeing right now with kind of Marjorie
[10:39] Speaker 3: Taylor Green, for instance, pushing back. We saw the head
[10:43] Speaker 3: of the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Republican say, look,
[10:47] Speaker 3: we're going to investigate what looks like war crimes, you know,
[10:51] Speaker 3: the bombing of the or the dropping a missile on
[10:53] Speaker 3: the survivors of this boat that we also dropped the
[10:56] Speaker 3: missile on. And so you do see some Republicans kind
[11:01] Speaker 3: of peeling off and splitting with Trump. And I think
[11:04] Speaker 3: that's what people are talking about when they're talking about
[11:08] Speaker 3: the wheels coming off. Trump's had an iron grip, right,
[11:12] Speaker 3: I mean, just like a complete iron grip on the
[11:14] Speaker 3: Republican Party, and anybody that stood against him was given
[11:19] Speaker 3: a nickname, you know, run down on all the social media,
[11:23] Speaker 3: and Trump turned the mob against that person. And that's
[11:27] Speaker 3: still happening, right. That happened to Marjorie Taylor Green. She
[11:30] Speaker 3: has been one of the worst people in all of
[11:34] Speaker 3: American public life for you know, five ten years and
[11:38] Speaker 3: a foil for the left, but never did she need
[11:41] Speaker 3: protection or any kind of security until she crossed Trump
[11:46] Speaker 3: and MAGA and he turned the Maga mob against her.
[11:51] Speaker 3: And now all of a sudden she needs, you know,
[11:53] Speaker 3: personal security, and she's getting all these death threats, which
[11:55] Speaker 3: you know, gets to kind of the political violence in
[11:57] Speaker 3: stochastic terrorism of Donald Trump.
[12:00] Speaker 1: Damn you, Marjorie tagular Green forever making me agree with you? Right?
[12:04] Speaker 1: And she comes forward about the Epstein files and Trump's
[12:08] Speaker 1: treatment of her and his critics, and I just thought,
[12:12] Speaker 1: what universe do I agree on anything? And there were
[12:16] Speaker 1: some people who immediately began to jump on her bandwagon.
[12:19] Speaker 1: She's seen the light, She's on our team, and I'm like, no, no, no,
[12:22] Speaker 1: Now she is not the hero we need.
[12:24] Speaker 3: Right, yeah, I mean I will take her for the
[12:27] Speaker 3: purposes of driving a wedge into any MAGA coalition. But like,
[12:31] Speaker 3: she's still a Christian nationalist, she's still very bigoted, and
[12:38] Speaker 3: there's still many many problems with the things she has
[12:41] Speaker 3: said and done that she's not backed away from, you know,
[12:44] Speaker 3: for instance, appearing at Nick Quentes and you know, his
[12:48] Speaker 3: conference that he held on stage next to him, and never
[12:52] Speaker 3: never divorcing herself from that evil twit but you know,
[12:58] Speaker 3: the idea that the the wheels are coming off, right,
[13:04] Speaker 3: I think there's also we're gonna come up on a
[13:05] Speaker 3: point in the future where Trump is going to try
[13:08] Speaker 3: to reassert that iron grip even more, and he's gonna
[13:10] Speaker 3: he's gonna try to say, look, I am not a
[13:12] Speaker 3: lame duck, and I will still any of you try
[13:15] Speaker 3: to disagree with me. You know, it's gonna there's gonna
[13:17] Speaker 3: be a backlash, a Trumpian backlash. In other words, I
[13:20] Speaker 3: expect to see that in the future. And I mean
[13:23] Speaker 3: the scary thing and the thing that I worry about is,
[13:26] Speaker 3: you know, our institutions are barely barely holding on I mean,
[13:30] Speaker 3: and to some extent maybe not. And we have seen
[13:34] Speaker 3: in Trump one point, oh that many of the checks
[13:40] Speaker 3: and balances and and checks on power that we're written
[13:44] Speaker 3: into our institutions do not work.
[13:49] Speaker 4: You know.
[13:49] Speaker 3: I think probably the best example of this is is impeachment. Right.
[13:53] Speaker 3: Trump was impeached twice but still retained power.
[13:56] Speaker 4: Right.
[13:56] Speaker 3: This is a man who, on January sixth, insight a
[14:00] Speaker 3: violent mob to attack the beating heart of American democracy
[14:05] Speaker 3: and try to stop the peaceful transfer of power, and
[14:10] Speaker 3: was then reelected. I mean that is not somebody who
[14:14] Speaker 3: should ever be allowed near public office or given an
[14:18] Speaker 3: ounce of government power ever.
[14:20] Speaker 1: Again, And when you talk, if I may, about checks
[14:23] Speaker 1: and balances, you've got the either their sickophants, their corrupt,
[14:28] Speaker 1: or they're just invertebrates. In the Congress under Mike Johnson, right,
[14:32] Speaker 1: So the Republicans have the majority and they are just
[14:34] Speaker 1: almost completely in lockstep. And then you've got the neutering
[14:38] Speaker 1: of the judiciary, I mean the Supreme Court. You call
[14:41] Speaker 1: it a hostile takeover. Those people are like a, oh, well,
[14:45] Speaker 1: the majority of the Supreme Court, right, I mean we
[14:48] Speaker 1: expect them now to rule in his favor on almost anything,
[14:52] Speaker 1: don't we.
[14:52] Speaker 3: Yes, I mean absolutely right. I mean, like, I don't
[14:56] Speaker 3: think it's crazy to suggest that you could draw a
[14:59] Speaker 3: direct between the Supreme Court saying Donald Trump is immune
[15:02] Speaker 3: for pretty much anything he does while president and these
[15:07] Speaker 3: war crimes that are being committed on people who are
[15:10] Speaker 3: on boats in the middle of the Caribbean Sea, right, Like,
[15:14] Speaker 3: one of the hypotheticals in the case involving you know,
[15:19] Speaker 3: is Trump liable for illegal acts that he commits was
[15:23] Speaker 3: what if he tells Seal Team six to go out
[15:25] Speaker 3: and kill one of his political enemies, and the answer
[15:29] Speaker 3: to that hypothetical was like, yeah, you can't. He can't
[15:31] Speaker 3: be held liable. I mean, that's what we're seeing effectively happening.
[15:34] Speaker 3: A version of that is happening out in the real
[15:37] Speaker 3: world now. I mean, the Supreme Court is absolutely no
[15:41] Speaker 3: kind of check on Donald Trump, and at every chance
[15:44] Speaker 3: that it seems to have to be a check it folds.
[15:49] Speaker 3: Congress certainly is not. The idea of impeachment is not.
[15:53] Speaker 3: So that those are the things that worry me. And
[15:56] Speaker 3: really what it comes down to is those first three
[15:58] Speaker 3: words in the Constitution, We the people, We're going to
[16:02] Speaker 3: have to be the check on this authoritarian.
[16:05] Speaker 1: How does that happen if the courts are compromised and
[16:09] Speaker 1: the Congress is compromised. I worry about violence. Maybe I
[16:13] Speaker 1: need to come back to this potential civil war question
[16:16] Speaker 1: in just a second, because I want to stick to
[16:18] Speaker 1: sort of this potential turning of the tide with this
[16:21] Speaker 1: recent Tennessee special election between mad Van Epps and Democratic
[16:28] Speaker 1: challenger Afton Bane and the Republican one fifty four to
[16:32] Speaker 1: forty five percent. But in the state of Tennessee, the
[16:35] Speaker 1: fact that it was even that close it came down
[16:37] Speaker 1: to a single digit percentage, is in the eyes of
[16:42] Speaker 1: many an indicator that wait a minute, you know, there
[16:45] Speaker 1: may be a I hate to say blue wave because
[16:47] Speaker 1: it's such a cliche. Do you see that election as significant?
[16:52] Speaker 1: Are the numbers significant?
[16:54] Speaker 3: I mean, I think the most significant thing coming out
[16:56] Speaker 3: of at that election was the shift in the elector
[17:00] Speaker 3: You know, if you look at the breakdown of the
[17:04] Speaker 3: various counties that make up part of that district that
[17:06] Speaker 3: we're voting, you know, I believe, and I haven't looked
[17:10] Speaker 3: in the last twenty four hours, and by the time
[17:13] Speaker 3: people will be hearing this, it'll be it'll be longer.
[17:16] Speaker 3: But the smallest shift blue was an eight point shift.
[17:23] Speaker 3: Maybe it was a seven point shift, and many of
[17:25] Speaker 3: those were double digit shifts in the blue direction. So
[17:30] Speaker 3: it suggests a significant change in the electorates preferences. And
[17:37] Speaker 3: I generally in any midterm election, it is a backlash
[17:43] Speaker 3: against the party that's in power, So we would expect
[17:45] Speaker 3: to see this mid terms go the Democrats way. Anyway,
[17:50] Speaker 3: it's a question of kind of how much. And I
[17:54] Speaker 3: think those numbers in that you know, Trump twenty plus
[17:58] Speaker 3: way plus district suggests that it could be a significant shift.
[18:04] Speaker 3: It's a it's a hard election for the Democrats. It
[18:06] Speaker 3: always is when it comes to, for instance, the Senate,
[18:10] Speaker 3: because that body is both their miney. But that's a.
[18:17] Speaker 1: Streamers were outlets off.
[18:21] Speaker 4: Of the river. We could be here all day.
[18:23] Speaker 1: Let's talk about the Ten Commandments. This is in your wheelhouse.
[18:26] Speaker 1: You've written about it, including in book form at least once.
[18:30] Speaker 1: Texas this year has become the third state to mandate
[18:35] Speaker 1: that the Ten Commandments be displayed in public school classrooms.
[18:38] Speaker 1: I find this amazing because statistically, Americans across the board
[18:42] Speaker 1: can't even name five of the Ten Commandments right, and
[18:44] Speaker 1: they certainly don't keep them. But it's really about marking territory,
[18:48] Speaker 1: isn't it. They want to hang that stuff as a
[18:50] Speaker 1: Christian nationalist exercise. But you've got Texas, you got Arkansas,
[18:53] Speaker 1: you got Louisiana, and then lawsuits start flying, and this
[18:57] Speaker 1: has happened with all three of those states. Do you
[19:00] Speaker 1: think that Greg Abbott and Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Jeff
[19:06] Speaker 1: Landry do you think that they are hoping that the
[19:09] Speaker 1: Ten Commandments case is going to go to a friendly
[19:11] Speaker 1: Supreme Court.
[19:13] Speaker 3: I do think that was part of the initial push
[19:16] Speaker 3: to do these laws anyway, and even if it was
[19:19] Speaker 3: not necessarily like I don't think Sarah Huckabee Sanders is
[19:23] Speaker 3: necessarily the most strategic legal thinker out there for the
[19:29] Speaker 3: Christian nationalist movement. But the people pushing these bills and
[19:32] Speaker 3: the Christian nationalists legal groups behind them, I do think,
[19:35] Speaker 3: are hoping that eventually they can get this case to
[19:39] Speaker 3: the Supreme Court and get the judges that have been
[19:42] Speaker 3: part of that hostile takeover the justices on the Court
[19:45] Speaker 3: to agree that, yeah, politicians can impose their personal religion
[19:50] Speaker 3: on other people's children in the public school system. I
[19:53] Speaker 3: think that's a decision that they are hoping to get.
[19:56] Speaker 3: Very proud to be working at Americans United for Separation
[19:59] Speaker 3: of Church and Stay, which just filed along with our allies,
[20:02] Speaker 3: a class action lawsuit against the school public school districts
[20:06] Speaker 3: in Texas to ensure that that kind of thing does
[20:09] Speaker 3: not happen, that those Ten Commandments displays don't go up,
[20:13] Speaker 3: you know. I Mean, one of the things that I
[20:15] Speaker 3: find so irritating about this law that these different states
[20:21] Speaker 3: have passed that mandate they rewrote the Bible, right like
[20:26] Speaker 3: they're saying that this Bible and the Ten Commandments were
[20:29] Speaker 3: so influential to the founding that we have to educate
[20:35] Speaker 3: kids about what it says. And it's a holy book
[20:37] Speaker 3: to all of us, so we need to educate and
[20:39] Speaker 3: we need to impose them, and they have to. But
[20:41] Speaker 3: then the politicians rewrote what those Ten Commandments say in
[20:44] Speaker 3: these laws. You can't find those commandments that are going
[20:49] Speaker 3: to be in the classrooms in any given Bible because
[20:51] Speaker 3: they were rewritten. They removed things like punishing innocent children
[20:55] Speaker 3: to the third and fourth generation for the crimes of
[20:58] Speaker 3: their parents, which appear in the Commandments right. They removed
[21:02] Speaker 3: the implicit recognition of slavery, which appears twice in the
[21:07] Speaker 3: Ten Commandments. They took out a lot of the immoral
[21:10] Speaker 3: and objectionable things. In other words, they rewrote that moral
[21:15] Speaker 3: command using modern morality, because we don't get our morality
[21:18] Speaker 3: from the Ten Commandments. They kind of undercut their entire
[21:21] Speaker 3: argument for putting them up in the first place. And
[21:25] Speaker 3: one other just really irritating note, like you know me
[21:28] Speaker 3: and when it comes to us history and the disinformation
[21:31] Speaker 3: the Christian nationalists love to push, like they justified the
[21:34] Speaker 3: Louisiana law with a James Madison quote that is fake.
[21:39] Speaker 3: It's just it's not a real quote. James Madison didn't
[21:41] Speaker 3: say it. We know he didn't say it, but it's
[21:43] Speaker 3: in the law as though this is something he said.
[21:45] Speaker 3: And it just there's so much wrong with this, and
[21:51] Speaker 3: really the most important thing is that it violates the
[21:53] Speaker 3: religious freedom of every single student kid in a Texas
[21:58] Speaker 3: public school and their families. But there's a lot of
[22:01] Speaker 3: other little things too that bother me. In particularly well.
[22:04] Speaker 1: Our former superintendent of Public Instruction, who is gone, by
[22:08] Speaker 1: the way, you know, Ryan Walters, was disliked when he resigned.
[22:15] Speaker 1: There were parties, like people had parties, educators had bookstores
[22:19] Speaker 1: had parties there or politicians who live your life in
[22:23] Speaker 1: a way, my friends, that people do not throw a
[22:26] Speaker 1: bash and celebrate when you leave, right, That is probably
[22:30] Speaker 1: a good rule of thumb. But on his bookshelf he
[22:33] Speaker 1: had the Bible and he had one other apologetics book,
[22:37] Speaker 1: I think, and then he had David Bardon, who is
[22:40] Speaker 1: a pseudo historian and he is hugely popular, kind of
[22:43] Speaker 1: a superstar among Christian nationalists because he's been pounding the
[22:46] Speaker 1: drum that the founders, especially Thomas Jefferson, were Christians who
[22:51] Speaker 1: intended a Christian nation. Now, I know Andrew Seidel has
[22:55] Speaker 1: written the book called The Founding Myth, which everyone should buy.
[23:00] Speaker 1: But let's address that on our conversation here. The founder's
[23:04] Speaker 1: Christian nation.
[23:06] Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely not. And and David Barton, I would even,
[23:09] Speaker 3: I would even say that pseudo historian is too kind
[23:12] Speaker 3: of a term to capture what he does. He is.
[23:16] Speaker 3: He is the granddaddy of Christian nationalist disinformation. Like so
[23:21] Speaker 3: much of so many of the talking points that you
[23:25] Speaker 3: hear regurgitated, especially on social media, about us being founded
[23:29] Speaker 3: as a Christian nation, about the founding fathers all being
[23:32] Speaker 3: Christian ministers, or you know whatever, this disinformation here, so
[23:35] Speaker 3: much of it traces back to David Barton, And he
[23:40] Speaker 3: really is responsible for pushing that that popular counter narrative
[23:45] Speaker 3: that that no serious scholar agrees with. Right, Like, there's
[23:49] Speaker 3: not actually a debate in the higher scholastic circles about
[23:55] Speaker 3: whether America was founded as a Christian nation or not.
[23:58] Speaker 3: It wasn't. There's not really a serious debate about that.
[24:02] Speaker 3: It's just this Christian nationalist disinformation and these talking points
[24:06] Speaker 3: that keep getting repeated over and over and over again,
[24:10] Speaker 3: and so many of them trace back to David Barton.
[24:12] Speaker 3: But when you when you look at them, when you
[24:14] Speaker 3: pull them apart, and when you try to get to
[24:18] Speaker 3: the heart of the matter, there's just there's no truth
[24:20] Speaker 3: to any of it. Right. And I know people are
[24:22] Speaker 3: out there screaming in their heads right now, say talk
[24:24] Speaker 3: about the Treaty of Tripoli, Andrew and look, Treaty of
[24:26] Speaker 3: Tripley is wonderful. Right. The United States has not in
[24:29] Speaker 3: any sense founded on the Christian religion. Bam, that's a
[24:32] Speaker 3: great line. It's it's a it's a document that was
[24:36] Speaker 3: negotiated under George Washington, that was unanimously consented to by
[24:41] Speaker 3: the US Senate and signed by President John Adams right
[24:45] Speaker 3: like like it's it's as clear and emphatic a statement
[24:49] Speaker 3: as you can get, and it was signed off on
[24:51] Speaker 3: by like all the founding fathers. Kind of so really
[24:54] Speaker 3: really useful. But I go much deeper in the founding
[24:58] Speaker 3: myth because to me, it's not just that America wasn't
[25:02] Speaker 3: founded as a Christian nation. I think you can take
[25:04] Speaker 3: it one step further. It's that the claim that we
[25:07] Speaker 3: were founded it as a Christian nation. It's not that
[25:09] Speaker 3: it just doesn't hold up to scrutiny. It's actually that
[25:11] Speaker 3: it's the the opposite is true that when you look
[25:14] Speaker 3: at those those values on which America was founded, and
[25:17] Speaker 3: some of them are absolutely aspirational. Right, we haven't lived
[25:20] Speaker 3: up to them yet. But when you look at those values,
[25:22] Speaker 3: they're fundamentally opposed to the values that you would see
[25:26] Speaker 3: in Christian nationalism.
[25:28] Speaker 1: Next up, the religious beliefs or lack of of the
[25:33] Speaker 1: Founding Fathers. I'm going to ask Constitutional Attorney Andrew's Seidel
[25:38] Speaker 1: about that and much more. I so appreciate your listening today.
[25:49] Speaker 1: I am speaking with Constitutional Attorney Andrew Seidel. You said
[25:55] Speaker 1: something in a conversation we had a few years back,
[25:58] Speaker 1: and I want to go there again. Were talking, and
[26:00] Speaker 1: often we talk about the religiosity or lack.
[26:03] Speaker 4: Of and the founders. You know, this idea that.
[26:05] Speaker 1: They were not all Bible thumping Jesus lovers. There were
[26:08] Speaker 1: some Christians. I think Jefferson was a deist. Franklin, I
[26:11] Speaker 1: think he mocked the Puritans. I don't know where he landed.
[26:14] Speaker 1: Sometimes they like Jesus as a philosopher. We would talk
[26:17] Speaker 1: about whether or not they were Christians. But you said, well,
[26:21] Speaker 1: that's not really the point, right, whether they were personally
[26:25] Speaker 1: a believer or not is not. That shouldn't be the
[26:28] Speaker 1: hill that we fight on.
[26:30] Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't matter. It's super fascinating, right, and I
[26:33] Speaker 3: love to have the conversation, and you know, you open
[26:35] Speaker 3: that bottle back there behind me and get a little
[26:38] Speaker 3: bit in me and I can go for hours talking
[26:40] Speaker 3: about the personal religious beliefs of the Founding fathers. But
[26:45] Speaker 3: it's a fallacious argument in the sense that even if
[26:48] Speaker 3: I am, even if I were to concede the Christian
[26:51] Speaker 3: nationalists claim that all of the founders were Bible believing
[26:55] Speaker 3: Jesus rose from the dead evangelical Christians, that doesn't do
[26:59] Speaker 3: any anything to prove that they wrote the Constitution or
[27:05] Speaker 3: base the Constitution or any of our governing documents or
[27:09] Speaker 3: philosophy on the Christian religion. Right, Christians are perfectly capable
[27:14] Speaker 3: of doing things that do not infuse their religion onto
[27:19] Speaker 3: those things, you know, like like we wouldn't talk about
[27:22] Speaker 3: like a building as a Christian building unless it were
[27:26] Speaker 3: a church, unless it incorporated those aspects of the Christian
[27:31] Speaker 3: religion and the kind of the sacredness of the Christian religion.
[27:35] Speaker 3: Right then you say, you might say Okay, that's a
[27:37] Speaker 3: Christian building. Same thing. There's there's no reason, even if
[27:40] Speaker 3: we concede all the founders were Christian to say that
[27:42] Speaker 3: the Constitution is a Christian document. You have to dig
[27:45] Speaker 3: a little bit deeper and look at the principle so
[27:48] Speaker 3: that it's based on. So it's a fascinating conversation. But
[27:51] Speaker 3: you can actually while you're having that argument conceded and
[27:54] Speaker 3: just say, forget about that for a second and just
[27:56] Speaker 3: name me a single principle that is unique or origin
[28:00] Speaker 3: all to Christianity which can be found in our Constitution.
[28:04] Speaker 3: And that's a stumper that can't be done. So to me,
[28:09] Speaker 3: it's fun. I love the and I do the argument
[28:12] Speaker 3: in the founding myth because because it's unavoidable, but it's
[28:16] Speaker 3: actually not necessary. And I think when when you are
[28:18] Speaker 3: trying to persuade people, it often becomes one of those
[28:24] Speaker 3: those rabbit trails which which you can get lost down.
[28:26] Speaker 3: And if you keep your eyes on the prize of
[28:29] Speaker 3: you know, were we founded as a Christian nation or
[28:32] Speaker 3: based on Judaeo Christian principles, which is their fallback oftentimes, right,
[28:36] Speaker 3: you don't even need to get into the personal religious
[28:39] Speaker 3: beliefs of the Founding Parlis. It's also it's also just
[28:42] Speaker 3: kind of hard too, because right, like like look at yourself, Seth, Right,
[28:47] Speaker 3: did you believe the same thing when you were a
[28:49] Speaker 3: young man of eighteen as you do now? Oh? Yeah?
[28:52] Speaker 1: Historian was to say, what did Seth think? It's like, well,
[28:57] Speaker 1: was I twenty one? Was I twenty nine? Was I
[29:00] Speaker 1: forty five? Where was I? You know, theologically, philosophically in
[29:04] Speaker 1: my life? I mean I don't fit in a box.
[29:07] Speaker 1: I mean I'm a work in progress. And the founders
[29:09] Speaker 1: were the same.
[29:09] Speaker 3: Right, absolutely right, and you know they changed their minds
[29:14] Speaker 3: about things all the time. And so it's not just
[29:16] Speaker 3: a question of like taking the errant the you know,
[29:19] Speaker 3: an errant quote out of context here or there. It's
[29:22] Speaker 3: maybe they did believe that when they were eighteen, and
[29:25] Speaker 3: they didn't believe that at the time of the Founding
[29:27] Speaker 3: or when they were actually like at the Constitutional Convention
[29:30] Speaker 3: in Philadelphia, you know, getting into the nuts and bolts
[29:32] Speaker 3: of crafting the Constitution, and maybe they personally believed in
[29:37] Speaker 3: the divinity of Jesus and that people who hold power
[29:40] Speaker 3: should be Christian. But they created a document that bans
[29:45] Speaker 3: religious tests for public office and that's that is like
[29:48] Speaker 3: clear and unavoidable. You cannot you cannot work around the
[29:53] Speaker 3: ban on religious tests in Article six. So it's it
[29:58] Speaker 3: oftentimes is a little bit of a distraction, I think,
[30:02] Speaker 3: and when you're having that debate with Christian nationalists, it
[30:07] Speaker 3: can really derail things pretty quickly.
[30:09] Speaker 1: Okay, well, I'll put on an apologist hat for a
[30:12] Speaker 1: moment and say, well, God doesn't exist. There's no reference
[30:14] Speaker 1: to God in the Constitution. But the Declaration of Independence
[30:18] Speaker 1: talks about the rights given to us by a creator
[30:23] Speaker 1: with a capital c uhha.
[30:25] Speaker 3: Andrew Seidel, Yeah, well, we're going to hear a ton
[30:28] Speaker 3: about that in twenty twenty six because it is the
[30:30] Speaker 3: country's two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
[30:34] Speaker 3: So there's gonna be so much disinformation out there about
[30:40] Speaker 3: the Declaration of Independence, about it being our founding document.
[30:44] Speaker 3: And I would really encourage people to pick up a
[30:48] Speaker 3: copy of the Founding Myth from their library, because I
[30:50] Speaker 3: got two chapters that dive into the Declaration of Independence,
[30:54] Speaker 3: including each of the supposedly forementions of the Christian God
[31:00] Speaker 3: in there. And the first thing to note is that
[31:02] Speaker 3: none of those mentions invoke the Christian God right that
[31:05] Speaker 3: they don't. They don't say Christian God or Jesus or
[31:09] Speaker 3: Yahweh or Biblical God right they are. They are these vague,
[31:13] Speaker 3: at best, deistic references. And there was only one in
[31:19] Speaker 3: the original Constitution as it was, or excuse me, in
[31:22] Speaker 3: the original Declaration as it was drafted. There was only
[31:25] Speaker 3: one of those mentions. And the reason that that's important
[31:28] Speaker 3: is because there was really it was only that one
[31:30] Speaker 3: mention that was integral to the philosophy that Jefferson lays
[31:34] Speaker 3: out in the Declaration. And the more important thing I
[31:38] Speaker 3: think to note is that the Declaration is not a
[31:40] Speaker 3: document of creation. It did not create the United States
[31:43] Speaker 3: of America. It's a document of destruction. It severed our
[31:47] Speaker 3: political connection with Great Britain, right, it destroyed that subservient
[31:54] Speaker 3: relationship that the colonies had with Great Britain. It broke
[31:58] Speaker 3: our chains, it set us free. But it didn't create
[32:01] Speaker 3: the United States of America. That wouldn't happen until we
[32:04] Speaker 3: drafted the Constitution in seventeen eighty seven and it was
[32:06] Speaker 3: ratified two years later. So important document, and some people
[32:11] Speaker 3: call it the birth Certificate, but it did not create
[32:14] Speaker 3: the United States of American in fact, that the document
[32:17] Speaker 3: that was our governing document in between was kind of
[32:21] Speaker 3: a failure, the Articles of Confederation. You may remember this
[32:23] Speaker 3: back from your history classes. It didn't work, and that's
[32:26] Speaker 3: the reason we needed to have the Constitution to kind
[32:28] Speaker 3: of redo that and rewrite it. And the other thing
[32:30] Speaker 3: to note about the declaration is that the philosophy that
[32:33] Speaker 3: it lays out is almost anti biblical. I think it's
[32:38] Speaker 3: fair to say that it's anti biblical in that it
[32:42] Speaker 3: directly cuts against, for instance, one of the Christian nationalists'
[32:45] Speaker 3: favorite Bible chapters, Romans thirteen, which says that you have
[32:49] Speaker 3: to be basically subservient to the rulers because the rulers
[32:55] Speaker 3: are put in place by God. I'm paraphrasing, but the
[32:58] Speaker 3: declaration completely counteracts that that the people people have a
[33:02] Speaker 3: duty to rebel against tyranny and doesn't make a distinction
[33:08] Speaker 3: between divine or human there. And you know, to get
[33:13] Speaker 3: into the mentions a little bit, right, the laws of
[33:15] Speaker 3: nature and of Nature's God is one of the ones
[33:18] Speaker 3: that people say reflects the Christian God. And I don't know,
[33:21] Speaker 3: the laws of nature and Nature's God do not sound
[33:23] Speaker 3: very Christian to me. It sounds pagan if anything, but
[33:26] Speaker 3: it's clearly an invocation of an idea called natural law
[33:31] Speaker 3: endowed by their creator the other. And this these fourmentions
[33:35] Speaker 3: to me, are also they're highlighted by Christian nationalists constantly,
[33:39] Speaker 3: But if you look at the balance of the document,
[33:41] Speaker 3: it is not concerned with the supernatural or the divine.
[33:45] Speaker 3: It begins when in the course of human events it
[33:49] Speaker 3: is necessary for one people to does all of the
[33:53] Speaker 3: political bands which have connected them with another right. And
[33:57] Speaker 3: it is talking about humans and humanity and our shared humanity,
[34:03] Speaker 3: and that is what it is concerned with, not with
[34:06] Speaker 3: the Christian God, which again doesn't even get a mention.
[34:09] Speaker 1: Okay, I want to bounce into current events in just
[34:12] Speaker 1: a second, but let me throw this at you. You're
[34:15] Speaker 1: a constitutional attorney, you will know. Do you think that
[34:19] Speaker 1: the secular Constitution was fueled in some way by our
[34:24] Speaker 1: separation from the Church of England? I mean, did they
[34:27] Speaker 1: see the England as a theocracy?
[34:30] Speaker 4: They'd seen the.
[34:31] Speaker 1: Religification of government. Did that fuel some of the attitudes?
[34:35] Speaker 3: Absolutely? In fact, in the rough draft of the Declaration
[34:38] Speaker 3: of Independence, which we do have a copy of, there
[34:43] Speaker 3: was a mention of Christianity and it talked about the
[34:46] Speaker 3: Christian King of Great Britain Christian in all caps. That
[34:52] Speaker 3: we shouldn't pay too much attention to the capitalization of
[34:54] Speaker 3: anything in the Declaration for reasons I explained in the
[34:57] Speaker 3: Founding myth, but that was edited out because it was
[35:00] Speaker 3: a condemnation of the Christian king basically rubber stamping and
[35:06] Speaker 3: allowing the slave trade to happen. And you know, our
[35:08] Speaker 3: founders had they had some serious issues, and not in
[35:13] Speaker 3: the good way when it came to slavery.
[35:15] Speaker 1: And beyond personal liberties autonomy with the people, did they
[35:21] Speaker 1: see the divine right of kings and push back hard
[35:24] Speaker 1: against that?
[35:26] Speaker 3: They so, they definitely did. And like one of the
[35:29] Speaker 3: things that they looked at were historical examples of how
[35:35] Speaker 3: not to create a country. And they looked at one
[35:39] Speaker 3: of the phrases that stands out is James Madison's phrase
[35:42] Speaker 3: the torrance of blood, torrents of blood that had been
[35:46] Speaker 3: spilled in the old world trying to get to some
[35:49] Speaker 3: sort of religious uniformity or conformity, right, talking about when
[35:54] Speaker 3: religion and the government unite, they try to stamp out
[35:58] Speaker 3: all dissent, and it often is is done through it
[36:01] Speaker 3: inevitably it is done with violence. And we have you know,
[36:05] Speaker 3: Thomas Jefferson and the Notes on the State of Virginia
[36:07] Speaker 3: looks at the Puritans and the Pilgrims up in Massachusetts,
[36:10] Speaker 3: which we you know, we just got done celebrating this Thanksgiving, right,
[36:13] Speaker 3: and he says, hey, that's a terrible way to organize
[36:16] Speaker 3: a government, right, Like they're just establishing these little theocracies
[36:20] Speaker 3: and enforcing their religious will and imposing it on everybody else.
[36:23] Speaker 3: And it's grim and brutal, and we should not do
[36:27] Speaker 3: that when we're like thinking about doing something else here.
[36:31] Speaker 3: So you know, they look at these examples that existed
[36:34] Speaker 3: out there and say, no, no, no, we don't want
[36:37] Speaker 3: to go that way. We want to avoid that. And
[36:39] Speaker 3: the only way to avoid that is to separate church
[36:41] Speaker 3: and state. And by the way, that's the only way
[36:44] Speaker 3: that we can guarantee for everybody true religious freedom. Right.
[36:49] Speaker 3: There's there's no way that we can guarantee you the
[36:53] Speaker 3: freedom to believe in worship as you want, so long
[36:55] Speaker 3: as you're not harming others, right, which is an important
[36:58] Speaker 3: caveat that's often missed these days. Without keeping church and
[37:03] Speaker 3: state separate, and to answer the Christian nationalists follow up,
[37:08] Speaker 3: there's no such thing as a one way wall. We
[37:10] Speaker 3: were not just talking about a national church here, or
[37:12] Speaker 3: the church could influence the government, but not the other
[37:14] Speaker 3: way around. That's why they chose the metaphor of the
[37:16] Speaker 3: wall of separation.
[37:18] Speaker 1: I'm interested in this idea of today's government seems to
[37:22] Speaker 1: be more about the Old Testament God. Now I don't
[37:24] Speaker 1: let Jesus off the hook, right, but I mean we
[37:27] Speaker 1: do tend to separate our ideas that Jesus is the
[37:30] Speaker 1: hippie love and light. Come and I'll give you a hug,
[37:33] Speaker 1: and we'll all, you know, smoke weed and listen to
[37:36] Speaker 1: Yannie music together. And it was, you know, yahweh. He
[37:39] Speaker 1: was the one who was crazy and everything was on
[37:41] Speaker 1: fire and there was blood in the rivers and.
[37:44] Speaker 4: All that stuff.
[37:44] Speaker 1: Well, you know, I see in Christian nationalists a kind
[37:49] Speaker 1: of an attraction to the God of the punisher, the
[37:52] Speaker 1: punisher of the wicked. And now we're seeing in many
[37:56] Speaker 1: more egalitarian churches they are saying, well, my Jesus as
[38:00] Speaker 1: would never expel the immigrants or target someone of color
[38:04] Speaker 1: or gay or trans people. They would never be cruel,
[38:08] Speaker 1: they would never execute people in a boat, you know,
[38:10] Speaker 1: coming out of Venezuela, et cetera. It's a clash of cultures.
[38:14] Speaker 1: It's a broad umbrella question. Do you want to comment
[38:16] Speaker 1: on this sort of splash of different types of Christianity
[38:21] Speaker 1: warring with itself.
[38:22] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that is a conflict that
[38:27] Speaker 3: goes back to the founding of the country and even before.
[38:32] Speaker 3: And you know, I think you can see it. One
[38:35] Speaker 3: of the encapsulations of it is, well, Christian nationalism is
[38:40] Speaker 3: not Christian or or Christian nationalists are not real Christians, right,
[38:45] Speaker 3: And yeah, I already hear people talking about, you know,
[38:49] Speaker 3: the no true scotsman. I think that is interesting because
[38:53] Speaker 3: to me, it shows that this division in Christianity itself
[39:00] Speaker 3: has existed for a long time, right, It's not new,
[39:05] Speaker 3: you know. So for instance, to give you, as John
[39:07] Speaker 3: Fugel saying has a book out right now, Separation of
[39:11] Speaker 3: Church and Hate, where he talks about, you know, the
[39:14] Speaker 3: real Jesus and that Christian nationalists are betraying the true
[39:17] Speaker 3: Gospel of Jesus and are not real Christians. I'm I'm
[39:20] Speaker 3: summarizing and putting words in his mouth, and I apologize John,
[39:24] Speaker 3: But that kind of thing goes back to right. Like,
[39:28] Speaker 3: go listen to Lincoln's second inaugural. You can't listen to it,
[39:31] Speaker 3: go read it. You know. He talks about how both
[39:34] Speaker 3: sides in the Civil War read from the same Bible,
[39:37] Speaker 3: and this is what he is talking about. They prayed
[39:40] Speaker 3: to the same God. This is what this is what
[39:42] Speaker 3: he means. He means, how are we We're coming out
[39:45] Speaker 3: of the same book, But we have these two very
[39:48] Speaker 3: divergent ways of operating and believing. And to use your word,
[39:53] Speaker 3: the culture right, I mean the culture of slave holding
[39:56] Speaker 3: South versus the North right. And to me, this suggests
[40:03] Speaker 3: the way that we fight Christian nationalism is not by
[40:11] Speaker 3: saying they're not Christian, and not by saying they've got
[40:15] Speaker 3: the Gospel wrong, but by saying they are anti democratic.
[40:21] Speaker 3: They are abusing their power. They are trying to create
[40:25] Speaker 3: a country where they are legally favored and everybody else
[40:29] Speaker 3: is disfavored. We attack them on the other fronts. We
[40:33] Speaker 3: attack them because they are a threat to a government
[40:36] Speaker 3: of the people, for the people, and by the people,
[40:39] Speaker 3: not on those theological grounds, because that theological debate appears
[40:43] Speaker 3: to be eternal and insoluble.
[40:45] Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean, we do have to say that
[40:50] Speaker 1: those people who say that the Christian nationalists are not
[40:52] Speaker 1: true Christians have not read the Bible at least literally, right,
[40:56] Speaker 1: it's a dominionist book. Yeah, you know, they're supposed to
[41:01] Speaker 1: go and win the culture war. They're supposed to take
[41:03] Speaker 1: land and change minds, et cetera. So you know, I
[41:07] Speaker 1: want to I do get sucked into those conversations where
[41:10] Speaker 1: I'm like, well, actually they kind of are true Christians.
[41:13] Speaker 1: But I see what you mean. Maybe more on a
[41:16] Speaker 1: humanity and human rights front, we may get more traction.
[41:20] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's I don't I don't care. It's
[41:22] Speaker 3: not for me to police Christianity and say what is
[41:24] Speaker 3: or is not a Christian. I mean, I definitely think
[41:27] Speaker 3: they're Christians. Like they they call themselves Christian, they go
[41:31] Speaker 3: to church, they read from the Christian Bible. They use
[41:34] Speaker 3: Jesus to as a justification and as a permission to
[41:38] Speaker 3: do a lot of terrible things. Like you. The other
[41:41] Speaker 3: part of it, Seth, And the reason that I do
[41:43] Speaker 3: like I also get sucked into them is because there's
[41:46] Speaker 3: tied up in that debate about like, well they can't
[41:50] Speaker 3: be real Christians. Is this implicit belief that conflates Christian
[41:58] Speaker 3: with good person, and that is one thing that I
[42:01] Speaker 3: cannot stand and I think so much of the knee
[42:05] Speaker 3: jerk pushback against calling Christian nationalists Christian is that they
[42:10] Speaker 3: can't be Christian because they're clearly bad people, they're clearly big.
[42:12] Speaker 3: It's they're clearly racist, so therefore they can't be Christians.
[42:15] Speaker 3: And that's just that is a false belief that we
[42:21] Speaker 3: do need to call out and do. It does need
[42:22] Speaker 3: to tear down like we actually it's part of the
[42:25] Speaker 3: stigma attached to being non religious in this country. It
[42:29] Speaker 3: is something that really does need to be tackled and
[42:33] Speaker 3: destroyed as well. To be a Christian says nothing about
[42:37] Speaker 3: your morality or whether you are a good person, and
[42:39] Speaker 3: we cannot let people conflate that and get away with it.
[42:43] Speaker 3: So I don't mean to suggest that, but I do
[42:46] Speaker 3: think that when we are specifically tackling and trying to
[42:50] Speaker 3: push back on Christian nationalism, especially in a public debate,
[42:53] Speaker 3: it is more effective to talk about it not as
[42:58] Speaker 3: not being Christian or being counter to the values of Jesus,
[43:01] Speaker 3: but as a threat to a government of the people,
[43:05] Speaker 3: for the people, and by the people, and all of
[43:07] Speaker 3: those other things that I.
[43:08] Speaker 1: Said, scary days. These days, a lot of people worried
[43:13] Speaker 1: about civil war. What does Constitutional Attorney Andrew Seidel think
[43:18] Speaker 1: we'll find out next coming up next week, I'm going
[43:29] Speaker 1: to be releasing the audio and the video of the
[43:32] Speaker 1: speech that I've been touring with around the United States.
[43:35] Speaker 1: It's called a War Story about Love. And then at
[43:39] Speaker 1: the end of the month, we're doing kind of a
[43:41] Speaker 1: general knowledge show. It's called What's Up with that Wet
[43:45] Speaker 1: Dog Smell? And we're going to do some science together
[43:48] Speaker 1: and enjoy a little levity as we approach twenty twenty six.
[43:52] Speaker 1: Right now, I am continuing my conversation with Constitutional Attorney
[43:57] Speaker 1: Andrew's Seidel.
[44:00] Speaker 4: Okay.
[44:01] Speaker 1: In May of this year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and
[44:05] Speaker 1: ain't he a piece of work? He got praised by
[44:08] Speaker 1: none other than Franklin Graham, son of the late evangelist
[44:12] Speaker 1: Billy Graham, for a Christian prayer service that he led
[44:15] Speaker 1: at the Pentagon, And this is one of several that
[44:18] Speaker 1: he's done. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk, it was
[44:22] Speaker 1: Pete Hegseth who led military troops in a Christian prayer
[44:27] Speaker 1: and then he apparently took clips of that and put
[44:30] Speaker 1: it on X and he was over with the visuals
[44:34] Speaker 1: of fighter jets flying by and flags waving in the
[44:38] Speaker 1: usual Americana and whatnot. So you and I pushed back
[44:41] Speaker 1: and were like, what in the actual hell are you doing?
[44:44] Speaker 1: But the argument might be, well, since Eisenhower and before
[44:49] Speaker 1: this stuff's been going on, I mean, God and country,
[44:51] Speaker 1: this is nothing that Pete Hegseeth came up with. What
[44:54] Speaker 1: would you say to that?
[44:55] Speaker 3: I mean, that is where I think, yeah, let's push
[44:58] Speaker 3: back against that. Right, that is a man who abusing
[45:00] Speaker 3: his power to impose his personal religion on soldiers who
[45:05] Speaker 3: are risking their lives for this country, to violate their
[45:09] Speaker 3: religious freedom, to trample a founding American value, the separation
[45:12] Speaker 3: of church and state, while pretending he's doing it in
[45:16] Speaker 3: the name of patriotism. Right. I mean, that is absolutely,
[45:20] Speaker 3: to me a quintessential example of something that we can
[45:24] Speaker 3: and ought to push back on. Not as this is
[45:27] Speaker 3: an an accurate reflection of the Christian Gospel because Jesus
[45:30] Speaker 3: was gentle and meek and mild, which may or may
[45:33] Speaker 3: not be true, but because this is a literal threat
[45:36] Speaker 3: to our lives and our society as we know it
[45:41] Speaker 3: and if I.
[45:41] Speaker 1: Can jump in yeah, I guess My question is, given
[45:45] Speaker 1: the current the intensity of the current political and cultural climate,
[45:48] Speaker 1: does this kind of theater hit different than it did when, say,
[45:53] Speaker 1: Congress was voting in God we trust to be on
[45:56] Speaker 1: the money during the Red Scare? I mean, is this
[45:59] Speaker 1: a different animal today?
[46:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think I think we're in a
[46:05] Speaker 3: time that is not terribly dissimilar from kind of the
[46:09] Speaker 3: nineteen fifties. There have been other times in our country
[46:12] Speaker 3: where dissent and pushing back were it was scary to
[46:20] Speaker 3: do and where where the government really kind of cracked
[46:24] Speaker 3: down on it. There was a time during during the
[46:26] Speaker 3: early years that Thomas Jefferson referred to as the reign
[46:29] Speaker 3: of Witches. You know, I think I think the Red
[46:32] Speaker 3: Scare is another example, is you know, with McCarthyism and
[46:36] Speaker 3: the House on American Activities Committee, right, we've seen waves
[46:39] Speaker 3: of this, and we often see during those times Christian
[46:44] Speaker 3: nationalists seizing on those those times of national fear and
[46:48] Speaker 3: crisis to abuse their power and impose their personal religion
[46:51] Speaker 3: on others. And we get a lot of the artifacts,
[46:55] Speaker 3: the scars, the disfiguring scars of Christian nationalism, that modern
[46:59] Speaker 3: Christian national let's point to as an example to say, see,
[47:01] Speaker 3: we really were found that as a Christian nation. A
[47:03] Speaker 3: lot of those scars came from those earlier waves of
[47:07] Speaker 3: Christian nationalism and those times of fear and crisis, and
[47:11] Speaker 3: they lead up to the Civil War and during the
[47:12] Speaker 3: Civil War, for instance, the nineteen fifties were huge. We
[47:17] Speaker 3: get in God, we Trust added to our coins, we
[47:20] Speaker 3: get it you under God, added to the pledge we
[47:22] Speaker 3: get in God we Trust adopted as our motto. All
[47:25] Speaker 3: of these different things happen where dissent is suffocated and
[47:30] Speaker 3: almost impossible and likely to get you thrown in jail.
[47:33] Speaker 3: And it's no coincidence that at those times they are
[47:37] Speaker 3: able to abuse their power to impose their personal religion
[47:40] Speaker 3: on all of us. So to me, the historical note
[47:45] Speaker 3: and the time that we're in, it's all the more
[47:47] Speaker 3: reason to push back against it and to stand up
[47:52] Speaker 3: all of us and say no, not on our watch.
[47:55] Speaker 1: So if the courts are compromised, if the Congress is compromise,
[48:00] Speaker 1: and the White House is out of control, people feel powerless.
[48:03] Speaker 1: We've seen millions. I was there for the No Kings.
[48:06] Speaker 1: I'm sure you were there for the No Kings demonstrations.
[48:09] Speaker 1: We are being seen and heard, but we also in
[48:13] Speaker 1: many ways still feel helpless.
[48:15] Speaker 4: I think it was.
[48:16] Speaker 1: Martin Luther King Junior that once said that. Forgive me
[48:19] Speaker 1: if I've misattributed, but he said riots are the language
[48:24] Speaker 1: of the unheard.
[48:26] Speaker 4: And so I.
[48:27] Speaker 1: Worry now what happens if we are seeing the pressure
[48:31] Speaker 1: cooker continue to heat up, people feel desperate and helpless
[48:36] Speaker 1: and outraged, and then the Trump administration is aching for
[48:40] Speaker 1: something to break out, because then he's got an even
[48:43] Speaker 1: greater excuse to wage war on the citizens of this country.
[48:47] Speaker 1: The words civil war are more and more easily coming
[48:51] Speaker 1: to mind. Andrew, I need you to walk me through
[48:54] Speaker 1: your thoughts on that one.
[48:56] Speaker 3: Yes, And I mean, I think it's good to clarify
[48:59] Speaker 3: what I meant when I said, you know, it's up
[49:00] Speaker 3: to we the people, because I'm not talking about a
[49:03] Speaker 3: civil war. I'm talking about civil resistance, which is far
[49:08] Speaker 3: more like. It includes the No King's rallies. And I
[49:12] Speaker 3: do think that is the way forward, not only because
[49:15] Speaker 3: it captures the popular imagination and channels are frustrations and
[49:22] Speaker 3: anger and hurt into channels that are fruitful. So you know,
[49:29] Speaker 3: I have been doing a ton of reading this year.
[49:34] Speaker 3: I'm on just finished book number one twenty five, and
[49:39] Speaker 3: I'm asking my reading list in addition to being complete
[49:43] Speaker 3: escapism because I need that right now, is asking how
[49:46] Speaker 3: did the twenty twenty four election happen? What can we
[49:49] Speaker 3: do to stop it? And so a lot of it
[49:51] Speaker 3: focuses on politics, but also on communications, meaning like do
[49:57] Speaker 3: we live in a shared reality? How could something like
[49:59] Speaker 3: this happen? And two of the books that stand out
[50:01] Speaker 3: that I read were Why Civil Resistance Works by Chenowith
[50:05] Speaker 3: and Steven And it's a very scholarly book, but you
[50:10] Speaker 3: may have heard recently like it only takes three percent
[50:12] Speaker 3: of the population to really stand up and force a
[50:17] Speaker 3: change in a country through civil resistance. It is this
[50:20] Speaker 3: book that is the genesis of that statistic, and it
[50:25] Speaker 3: makes a convincing case that civil resistance is the way
[50:30] Speaker 3: to change the politics of a country and that civil
[50:34] Speaker 3: wars often are going to fail. That the subtitle is
[50:36] Speaker 3: the strategic logic of non violent conflict. So I like
[50:41] Speaker 3: doing more things like the No King's Rally, and not
[50:44] Speaker 3: just the No Kings Rally, but resisting Ice in all
[50:47] Speaker 3: of the creative ways that we've seen it, whether it's
[50:49] Speaker 3: you know, teenagers driving around, high schoolers driving around in
[50:52] Speaker 3: filming ice and you using, in their words, their privileged
[50:56] Speaker 3: to resist, or you know, during the shutdown coffee there
[51:00] Speaker 3: was a coffee shop in Portland. I'm going to get
[51:02] Speaker 3: the name wrong, but it was something like Heathen Coffee.
[51:04] Speaker 3: They had a great godless name to it, right. There
[51:07] Speaker 3: was just giving out free breakfast, not to not to
[51:10] Speaker 3: people who were on snap, but to anybody who showed
[51:12] Speaker 3: up to get one. And then and then that caught
[51:15] Speaker 3: our imagination and it raised hundreds of thousands of dollars
[51:17] Speaker 3: to make that program work.
[51:22] Speaker 1: It's amazing the power of a Portland frog, I will say.
[51:26] Speaker 1: I mean, I think, you know, the artists, I think
[51:29] Speaker 1: are also going to be on their front lines of
[51:31] Speaker 1: resistant says. They have been through history. I think it's
[51:34] Speaker 1: one of the reasons that autocrats go after the arts first.
[51:37] Speaker 3: Would you agree, Oh, I mean absolutely that, and they
[51:41] Speaker 3: genuinely you know, Hitchins wrote that the literal mind can't
[51:45] Speaker 3: understand the figurative one. And part of and he wrote
[51:47] Speaker 3: it in the context of autocracy, and part of what
[51:49] Speaker 3: he means there is they cannot take a fucking joke.
[51:52] Speaker 3: I mean, they they cannot stand any kind of mockery, right.
[51:56] Speaker 3: It is like Steven Miller is a short piece of
[51:59] Speaker 3: shit and he that being said, and that being out
[52:02] Speaker 3: there in the ether drives him insane and drives him
[52:06] Speaker 3: to distraction. He can't allow it. And the other book too,
[52:10] Speaker 3: I want to recommend to folks because I think it's
[52:12] Speaker 3: equally important and it also is kind of the flip
[52:15] Speaker 3: side of what we're talking about, is How Civil War
[52:18] Speaker 3: Start by Barbara Walter. I think it's maybe the most
[52:22] Speaker 3: important book I've read all year. The subtitle is and
[52:25] Speaker 3: how to Stop Them. So it's also like it's not
[52:27] Speaker 3: just like scary, it's also uplifting and kind of gives
[52:30] Speaker 3: you some good good takeaways there. But I mean, to me,
[52:36] Speaker 3: those two books and a number of other things that
[52:38] Speaker 3: I've read, and going to the Note King's Rally, you know,
[52:40] Speaker 3: with the whole family, like that is our way out
[52:43] Speaker 3: of this. And I know people are saying, like, really,
[52:46] Speaker 3: marching doesn't seem to be enough, but it's it is
[52:49] Speaker 3: the physical manifestation of so much more, and it is
[52:54] Speaker 3: something that cannot be ignored. And to your point, right,
[52:58] Speaker 3: it's it's not. It's not a manifestation that is going. Yes,
[53:07] Speaker 3: it could get out of control h and could get
[53:09] Speaker 3: cracked down, but they're doing a great job of making
[53:11] Speaker 3: sure that that doesn't happen. And people like we took
[53:14] Speaker 3: our kids to those those marches and it was it
[53:17] Speaker 3: was perfectly safe, and I felt safe doing that. And
[53:21] Speaker 3: that's the kind of that kind of civil resistance is
[53:24] Speaker 3: I think a viable path forward.
[53:27] Speaker 1: Well, I can see in the background the books and
[53:30] Speaker 1: the Choske's. I'm sure we're paid for by the George
[53:33] Speaker 1: Soros check that must have arrived. For the way, it's
[53:37] Speaker 1: the way the level of conspiracy theory thinking that the
[53:41] Speaker 1: Fox newsers have been pushing, I just think, how irredeemably
[53:45] Speaker 1: stupid can you be to believe that we were all
[53:49] Speaker 1: out there, you know, professionals and and uh, you know
[53:52] Speaker 1: lay people and and and professors and school teachers and
[53:57] Speaker 1: you know janitors and plumbers and active like me and
[54:01] Speaker 1: constitutional attorneys like you, and somehow we're all in on
[54:04] Speaker 1: one of the greatest conspiracies and no one's been busted,
[54:07] Speaker 1: no one can trace the money.
[54:09] Speaker 4: It just blows my mind. So go ahead, go ahead.
[54:12] Speaker 3: They don't believe it right, it's they know it's a lie.
[54:15] Speaker 3: They're telling themselves that lie. And what it is a
[54:19] Speaker 3: It is a way to preserve the integrity of the
[54:24] Speaker 3: information silo that they are in, right, Like, it is
[54:28] Speaker 3: a way that they can it's it's got enough of
[54:32] Speaker 3: something for them and their audience to latch onto, to
[54:36] Speaker 3: provide them that kind of mental security blanket to say, Okay,
[54:40] Speaker 3: this isn't really happening, and that that is why, that's why,
[54:43] Speaker 3: that's what I'm talking about, doing these kind of marches
[54:46] Speaker 3: with millions of people around the country, so that you
[54:49] Speaker 3: can't log on to social media, you can't turn on
[54:51] Speaker 3: the TV without seeing how fucking pissed off everybody is. Right,
[54:56] Speaker 3: that breaks through into their silo, and it breaks through
[55:00] Speaker 3: in a way that is not really deniable, like that
[55:04] Speaker 3: is the flimsiest and it may work for some of them,
[55:07] Speaker 3: but it's not going to work for all of them,
[55:09] Speaker 3: and will it will break through and crash through the
[55:14] Speaker 3: walls that they have so carefully erected of these media silos.
[55:19] Speaker 1: Okay, let's wrap up with a proactive you. Working with
[55:23] Speaker 1: Americans United for Separation of Church and State. We are
[55:27] Speaker 1: talking about an interfaith efforts. I happily ally with progressive
[55:31] Speaker 1: religious people who have more in common with me as
[55:36] Speaker 1: far as a human being, as a humanist than many
[55:39] Speaker 1: others do. And we can talk about their god belief later.
[55:41] Speaker 1: But I'm more interested in humanity, shared humanity, human rights,
[55:46] Speaker 1: that's what you are advocating and promoting. Right, going to
[55:50] Speaker 1: win The atheists ain't going to win this one unless
[55:54] Speaker 1: we join with other people, right.
[55:56] Speaker 3: I mean absolutely, it's not possible. Right. The numbers just
[55:59] Speaker 3: aren't there, even if you take like the best numbers
[56:01] Speaker 3: that are possibly out there for us. Right, Like, if
[56:04] Speaker 3: you look at wil Gervas's study from oz I think
[56:08] Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, where he doesn't ask people what they are,
[56:10] Speaker 3: you know, they don't self identify. He asked them questions
[56:13] Speaker 3: about what they believe, and he says, look like even
[56:14] Speaker 3: a quarter of the country may be atheists, even in
[56:16] Speaker 3: that best case scenario. Right, Like, we're still outnumbered and
[56:21] Speaker 3: we're not going to do this on our own. And
[56:23] Speaker 3: we're also not a We're a very progressive liberal group
[56:28] Speaker 3: by in large, but we're not politically uniform. We're not
[56:31] Speaker 3: a monolith by any means. So we need allies, and
[56:35] Speaker 3: they are going to have to be religious. And it
[56:37] Speaker 3: is absolutely true that shared values matter more than shared beliefs, right,
[56:45] Speaker 3: And that especially is true when you are fighting an
[56:49] Speaker 3: authoritarian movement like Christian nationalism or an autocrat like Donald Trump.
[56:54] Speaker 3: Shared values matter more than shared beliefs. So find those
[56:57] Speaker 3: people who share your values, whether they believe in Jesus
[57:01] Speaker 3: or not, and fight alongside them. And the other truth
[57:05] Speaker 3: is like, we can be on the outside talking about
[57:10] Speaker 3: how bad Christian nationalism is and how dangerous it is,
[57:13] Speaker 3: but unless there are Christians who are inside that bubble
[57:17] Speaker 3: willing to call their friends and family and neighbors out where,
[57:21] Speaker 3: we are not going to convince them on our own.
[57:24] Speaker 3: We need their help to be able to do this.
[57:27] Speaker 3: We just do.
[57:28] Speaker 1: And my position is not one that is so cynically strategic.
[57:33] Speaker 1: I hope it doesn't come off like, well, we ain't
[57:34] Speaker 1: gonna win without them, so let's pair up with them.
[57:38] Speaker 1: For me, it's more like a lot, I mean a
[57:41] Speaker 1: lot of people who have some kind of God belief
[57:44] Speaker 1: are lovely, good, amazing, noble people of integrity and great
[57:51] Speaker 1: values that I'm proud to ally with. And you know
[57:55] Speaker 1: what's that line. It's a great line shared value are better.
[57:59] Speaker 3: Than shared value matter more than shared beliefs.
[58:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that may be a good show title. Pitch
[58:04] Speaker 1: your books real fast. I want to make sure everybody
[58:06] Speaker 1: knows what you've written before we wrap it up. It's
[58:10] Speaker 1: really good stuff.
[58:11] Speaker 3: Thank you. The founding myth why Christian nationalism is Unamerican,
[58:16] Speaker 3: you know, that's the founding of our country debunks every
[58:18] Speaker 3: single bit of disinformation you've heard from the Christian nationalists,
[58:22] Speaker 3: and you're going to hear a lot of it again.
[58:24] Speaker 3: The two fiftieth of seventeen seventy six coming up, So
[58:27] Speaker 3: get those Declaration of Independence chapters read. The second book
[58:32] Speaker 3: is American Crusade. How the Supreme Court is weaponizing religious freedom.
[58:35] Speaker 3: That's sort of the other bookend on our history. That's
[58:38] Speaker 3: the modern history of the Supreme Court's attempt too, as
[58:40] Speaker 3: I said, weaponize religious freedom. And then definitely please go
[58:43] Speaker 3: check out the Diehard is a Christmas movie video bookmarket.
[58:47] Speaker 3: When you see somebody in the comments, not of that
[58:50] Speaker 3: video but anywhere on the Internet, you respond with that
[58:53] Speaker 3: video link to me.
[58:54] Speaker 4: So the debate really is over.
[58:57] Speaker 1: I just have to toss this out person, Andrew. But
[59:01] Speaker 1: with the Supreme Court, with the zelots and the sick
[59:04] Speaker 1: of fans and all those. I find myself looking at
[59:07] Speaker 1: their ages. I'm like, okay, the average live span of
[59:11] Speaker 1: the American male one seventy seven. How old is Clarence Thomas.
[59:15] Speaker 1: I mean, I do find myself doing that. And of
[59:17] Speaker 1: course then the next step is, ah, shit, Trump would
[59:21] Speaker 1: a point his replacement and that person would be forty
[59:25] Speaker 1: or something like that. Do you ever go there in
[59:27] Speaker 1: your head?
[59:27] Speaker 3: Oh god, yeah, I mean like I've I feel like
[59:31] Speaker 3: I've studied actuarial tablet into the Supreme Court. But like
[59:37] Speaker 3: it's also right, it's not. The scarier question is, okay, well,
[59:42] Speaker 3: Thomas and Alito are quite old, and they are they
[59:47] Speaker 3: are zelots, And what if they decide after the midterms
[59:50] Speaker 3: they want to retire. You know what, if it doesn't
[59:55] Speaker 3: have to be an actuarial reality that sets in. It
[59:58] Speaker 3: could just be them making a decision to give up
[1:00:01] Speaker 3: power in an effort to solidify their seat on the
[1:00:05] Speaker 3: Supreme Court to a conservative for another fifty years.
[1:00:08] Speaker 1: Now, Holy shit, Then you'd have Kevanaugh and Amy Cony
[1:00:11] Speaker 1: Barrett and some younger guns in there for decades, plus
[1:00:16] Speaker 1: the new hires that they may be able to spend
[1:00:20] Speaker 1: half of their lives as justices of the Supreme Court
[1:00:24] Speaker 1: doing zealot type stuff. It is terrifying. I was going
[1:00:27] Speaker 1: to try to end light and you know how that
[1:00:30] Speaker 1: worked out for me. Sorry, Andrew. I will link to
[1:00:32] Speaker 1: your site and your a diehard video and your books
[1:00:35] Speaker 1: in the description box of this conversation. I hope you
[1:00:38] Speaker 1: have a wonderful holiday and a happy new year. And
[1:00:41] Speaker 1: depending on how twenty twenty six goes, we may have
[1:00:44] Speaker 1: to rendezvous here again and sort of catch everybody up
[1:00:46] Speaker 1: on more recent events as they happen.
[1:00:50] Speaker 3: Okay, absolutely, my friend. Always happy to see you and
[1:00:53] Speaker 3: always happy to chat. Thanks Broan.
[1:00:55] Speaker 2: Follow the Thank You Atheists on Facebook and Twitter for
[1:00:58] Speaker 2: a complete archive of podcasts and videos, products like mugs
[1:01:02] Speaker 2: and t shirts featuring the Thinking Atheist logo, links to
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