Patriot Academy Interview With Jeremy Boreing Part 2 – We have to pick up the pieces of our broken culture and rebuild our Country for God’s glory. Let’s work together to make this happen! Tune in to hear part 2 of this great interview.

Air Date: 10/02/2020

Guest: Jeremy Boreing

On-air Personalities: David Barton, Rick Green, and Tim Barton

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Transcription note:  As a courtesy for our listeners’ enjoyment, we are providing a transcription of this podcast. Transcription will be released shortly. However, as this is transcribed from a live talk show, words and sentence structure were not altered to fit grammatical, written norms in order to preserve the integrity of the actual dialogue between the speakers. Additionally, names may be misspelled or we might use an asterisk to indicate a missing word because of the difficulty in understanding the speaker at times. We apologize in advance.

 

Rick:

Welcome to the intersection of faith and the culture. It’s WallBuilders Live, where we talk about today’s hottest topics on policy and faith and the culture, always from a biblical, historical and constitutional perspective, well, that includes today even though we have a different lineup than normal. Usually, you would be listening to David Barton, America’s premier historian and our founder at WallBuilders, along with Tim Barton, national speaker and pastor and president of WallBuilders, and my name is Rick Green, I’m a former Texas legislator and America’s constitutional coach.

Normally, this would be a Good News Friday, and they would be bringing you rapid fire good news from across the country, but we wanted to share with you some other good news presentations from Patriot Academy this summer at our virtual academy, some great speakers as you heard earlier this week, Dennis Prager, and the last couple of weeks you’ve heard from Ben Shapiro and so many others. Next week, we’ve got Dinesh D’souza going to be with us on Monday, you don’t want to miss that.

Today is Jeremy Boreing. Yesterday, we had the first half of Jeremy’s presentation at Patriot Academy. Today, we pick up where we left off yesterday with Jeremy Boreing at Patriot Academy. So very quick break, I know it’s early in the program, quick break, when we come back, we’ll dive right back in with Jeremy Boreing at Patriot Academy.

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This is Tim Barton from WallBuilders with another moment from American history. Founding Fathers, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson originally worked closely together but later became ardent opponents. This troubled Dr. Benjamin Rush, a signer of the Declaration, who knew both of them very well. In the Bible, 2 Corinthians 5:18 tells us that God has given each of us the ministry of reconciliation. Dr. Rush believe this and set out to bring the two back together.

It took a while but Adams and Jefferson once again became close friends. And looking back on his role and helping bring about this reconciliation. Dr. Rush stated, “It will give me pleasure as long as I live to reflect that I have been in any degree instrumental and affecting this reunion of two souls destined to be dear to each other and motivated with the same dispositions to serve their country though in different ways.”

For more information about Dr. Benjamin Rush and his other remarkable achievements, go to wallbuilders.com.

Jeremy:

The Left had a blast over the last 50 years, destroying the country, the least we could do is have a good time trying to rebuild it, not conserve it. It’s not left to conserve. We’re radicals. We’re revolutionaries. We are the founders, the founders were trying to conserve the British monarchy, they were radically trying to create something brand new. We’re not trying to create something brand new, we’re trying to recreate something that once was. Let’s have a good time doing it. That’s my message for you for today. I’d love to take some questions.

Rick:

So good, brother. So good. Okay, first question was actually answered by someone in the chat, but I wanted you to know what it was. The question was, how did you get your hair to look so good, and what is your routine? The answer might or might not have come from someone related to you. And the answer was, his routine is being the “god-king” and being the epitome of awesomeness.

Jeremy:

Okay. So, I will tell you this, if you were to come by the Daily Wire HQ, on a normal day, you would not find me to have excellent hair. I have excellent hair today, because before I let them point a camera at me, I asked Nica, our wonderful hair and makeup professional to make me look handsome or than I actually am because I have a reputation to maintain and she does an excellent job.

Rick:

I love it. I love the background. By the way, I haven’t seen the new studio which looks awesome.

Jeremy:

Thank you.

Rick:

Listen, you know, I agree with you in terms we have lost the culture and even if and I hypothesize that the riots and the backlash from the riots if they continue to happen night after night could potentially give Trump the victory and potentially even a landslide. But even if that happens, I’ve been saying exactly what you’re saying in terms of we’ve lost the culture, now it’s time to pick up the pieces, we have to rebuild, we have to teach these young people. It’s a long game. So how does a Daniel who’s marching off to 70 years of captivity in Babylon lead differently than a David who is leading in a culture that does still have the majority?

Jeremy:

It’s a great question. I think that the key to sort of insurgency to being in the rebel alliance, first, it really is a sense of hope. You don’t fight. Listen, the underdog is actually fighting what is almost certainly a losing battle, but he doesn’t fight it like a loser. He fights it with confidence in the future. So I think a big part of it is that it’s a kind of optimism, kind of a kind of confidence.

I think another aspect of it is you have to create coalitions with other people with whom you don’t perfectly agree. And one of the reasons I think that we failed over the last 50 years is because we became so narrow in how we saw the world that we wouldn’t allow coalitions to form with other people who might agree with us on a large swath of our principles but didn’t agree with us in every application of them.

This will sound a little bit out of vogue to you, because a lot of what people say now is that actually, if anything, we were too accommodating of the Left. But when they say that, they will quickly point to politicians. They’ll say, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, were too accommodating to Barack Obama; George W. Bush was too accommodating to the media, George HW Bush was far too liberal, he wasn’t nearly conservative enough. If anything, we were too open to these ideas.

But note, that in having that conversation, you’re immediately falling into the trap of thinking that culture follows politics. When I say we need to be more open, you immediately resist that and point to politicians who you think have been too open. But what I’m talking about is so much bigger in politics and politicians, I’m talking about the actual culture, what actual people, the people, we have to coexist with, the people we have to build a country with them. Listen, the only government that we can have is one that exists by the consent of the governed. That’s what our founders told us.

That means you actually have to get people to consent to the values that we want to see functionally governing a country, that’s far bigger than politicians. That’s 330 million people today, and by the time we win this battle, there’ll be half a billion people who live in this country, and you’ve got to get most of them to want some version of the values that we have.

So yes, in our politics, perhaps we’ve been a little loosey goosey, but in our cultural approach, especially since the 80s, we’ve been incredibly rigid, and we’ve been suspect of anyone who might could have made a good ally. We’ve driven off allies because of our rigidity. And when you drive them off, where are they supposed to go? They end up in the other camp.

So I think from a cultural point of view, you know, I would say the way I said it in my remarks, Christian rock, bad; Christians in rock, good; Christians in rock won’t be making Christian rock, they will be making rock as Christians. And one of the problems that we have, especially as believers is that we crucify anyone who does something like that: until they’re very successful, and then we suddenly embrace them. So Mel Gibson would be embraced in any church in America today, even though he’s an adulterer, a trad Catholic, obviously, he has some problems with anti-Semitism, nudity, and all of his films, horrible language and all of his films, and yet he be embraced by any pastor in America today. The only reason is because he is very, very famous. And when you’re very, very famous, we suddenly have no values, because it makes us feel cool to be around you. But God forbid, you be that young filmmaker, that up and coming filmmaker who isn’t famous who wants to make a film like Braveheart, and you want to make…

Listen, Braveheart, one of the great films of the 20th century, encapsulates almost all of the values that are important to a culture. And yet if anyone’s short of Mel Gibson had made that film and it had a little bit of nudity and it had some bad language, Christians would have eviscerated them, you would have been thrown out of a church, you never would have been invited to come and speak to the church the way that Mel Gibson often is.

That kind of attitude is the attitude that causes us to fail. It’s the attitude that causes us to lose, because we don’t give people permission to go engage in the culture. We only present you with two options, and again, this is a losing strategy. Your only two options are, make VeggieTales, only make things that can be watched by six year old homeschooled children, you can’t even have humans in them, you have to have talking radishes. That’s the only thing we’ll put up with, and you have to actually quote Bible verses the whole time, and it has to be rated sub-G. Or go out in the world, do all the drugs you can do, have sex with all the women you can have sex with, be as coarse and vile and terrible as you want to be, ruin your marriage, ruin your children, but then after you’re very, very successful, do something we like, and man, then we’ll embrace you so much. How can anyone win in that situation? That’s a losing mentality. It’s too narrow. It’s too rigid. It’s too graceless. It’s actually a lie. You’re lying to yourself about what the actual struggle is.

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Our core program is still for young leaders 16 to 25 years old, but we also now have a citizen track for adult, so visit the website today to learn more. Help us fill the void of leadership in America. Join us in training champions to change the world at patriotacademy.com

Jeremy

I often think about this. If a Christian filmmaker made any story from the Bible, accurately, Christians would reject it. We only like the VeggieTales version of the Bible. We actually only like the story of Noah, where the animals come in two’s whoozy’s, and everyone praises the Lord: that is not the story of Noah, right? That’s the child’s version of the story of Noah. We only like the children’s version of our own story. That should tell you if you can’t even embrace the actual text of the Bible, maybe your view is too rigid, and too exclusionary, I would argue even for God, but certainly for winning in the culture. So I think we have to have grace with each other. We have to be honest about how we exist in the world. We have to be honest about Christian history. This idea of the Moral Majority version of Christianity, it’s 30 years old. But we all kind of feel like well, that’s always what Christianity was in this country. Of course, that isn’t what Christianity was in this country. If it was, they never would have been in the majority in the first place.

Rick:

You know, even as you were describing, and by the way, just to interpret that correctly as a child of the 80s, Petra bad, skillet good, would that be? No. Okay…

Jeremy:

So I will have a little grace for Petra and the guys in the 80s, because they didn’t know it was a brand new idea. They tried it, but they tried it in good faith. They had great intentions. It didn’t work. We don’t have the same excuse. So it’s sort of like slavery, right? Slavery was always bad, but you can at least say of the people who lived before if slavery had been abolished, they didn’t know what would happen to a world that had no slavery, there’d never been one. For us, slavery would be even a worse moral crime because we have history. Same with communism. Same with many problems. Like the communists in the late 1800s, early 20th century, they were wrong their idea was evil, but at least they had the benefit of not knowing whether or not it would work. We don’t have that excuse. Same with Petra. We know now that that’s the wrong path, so let’s don’t duplicate it.

Rick:

I was thinking as you were describing the people that we need to work with that may not agree with us 100%, and I’ve been guilty of that pushing people away because they didn’t agree on certain things. And I use King David as an example of lean when he had the culture, but really when he was kicked out and Saul was after him, who did he surround himself with?

Jeremy:

Hard people. That’s right.

Rick:

Yeah, no doubt about it. And that was one of the questions in the chat was who are some of those coalitions that we need to be as young conservatives looking to partner with?

Jeremy:

Well, interestingly enough, I actually think there’s a great opportunity for us was among liberals. You know, Liberals have lost to the left, because the Left was strong, and the Liberals were weak. Dennis Prager and I talked about this on his radio show yesterday for a little bit, that the Liberals actually agree with us, they would rather live in the world that we want to live in than in the world that the rioters in Portland want to live in. But they only get the carrot when they attack us, there is no carrot when they attack to their left. And so they’re afraid of people who are burning down police precincts as well, but they’re actually afraid of them in not just that they’re going to come and burn down their house. They’re afraid of them in the sense that they’re going to cancel, them take away their career. You see it with J.K. Rowling’s, right?

This is all always a funny thing to me that in the 1950s and 60s, Christians would burn Elvis Presley records, but by the 1990s and 2000s, we view Elvis as an almost Christian figure, and you could play his songs at almost any youth group in America for the most part. And it’s the same with Harry Potter. When Harry Potter came out, Christians were terribly opposed to Harry Potter, and now you know, 20 short years later, almost all Christian kids read Harry Potter, because it actually is benign, because the culture is moving that quickly.

But we’ve seen with J.K. Rowling’s here in the last few months. Here you have a woman who Christians have basically abhorred for 20 years. She’s a liberal. She doesn’t agree with us on many, many issues, especially social issues, but she does agree with us about freedom of expression. And we’ve seen her on the verge of cancellation from the Left. They’re coming after her because she supports the idea that listen, she thinks there’s a transgendered person, and if Steve wants you to call him, Eve, you should call him, Eve; if Steve wants to wear a dress, he should be allowed to wear a dress; if Steve wants to undergo hormone therapy, Steve should be able to undergo hormone therapy; if Steve wants to have breast implants, Steve should get breast implants. Probably J.K. Rowling’s should even say if Steve wants you to call him her, you should call him her. But while J.K. Rowling’s believes all of that, she also believes that that doesn’t fundamentally scientifically make Steve into a woman.

So if you think about compared to probably where most people at Patriot Academy are on that issue, J.K. Rowling’s his way to the left of everyone at Patriot Academy, except that she doesn’t believe in the tyranny that the government can just impose its will upon reality itself. And just for that, the Left hates her almost more than they hate Donald Trump because they hate an apostate far more than they hate a member of the opposite team.

Does that make J.K. Rowling’s one of us? No, of course not. Does that mean that we have an amazing opportunity to have a coalition of opportunity with J.K. Rowling’s right now in defense of freedom of expression? Absolutely, it does. Do we have to have freedom expression to even be able to have that next conversation about whether or not some of her other premises are right or wrong? Yeah, without freedom of expression, if the left gets their way, that conversation itself will not even be lawful. If J.K. Rowling’s gets her way, that’ll just be an argument that we go on having. We should be on the side of J.K. Rowling’s.

Now, there’s a danger. Sometimes, especially when someone is very prominent in the culture, like say Kanye West, we overcorrect in our embrace of them because we’re so excited that anyone agrees with us about anything, and then we almost carte blanche, like want them to become sort of cultural, messianic figures. Then that’s not what I’m calling for us to do at all.

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The Founding Fathers of America made a habit of reading through the Bible once a year. There’s no better source of wisdom and it is applicable to every issue in our lives. What a great time for us as American citizens to take this time. If you’ve got extra time at home now, if you’re quarantined at home and you’re looking for something to do, what better thing could there be to do than to read through the Bible, maybe for the first time in your life?

I tried to make this a habit several years ago and I had a new tool to start doing that with and it was called the Founders’ Bible. It gave me a chance not only to read through the Bible once a year, but also to learn history while I was doing that. And what I love about the Founders’ Bible is that as I’m reading that Scripture, then all of a sudden, there’ll be an article inserted right there by that Scripture about what the Founding Fathers learned from that specific verse or chapter and how they applied it to launch our new. It’s a really fun way to learn. It’s incredibly empowering and it has answers for today. The Bible is full of all the right answers for today, in fact, it’s the only source that has all the right answers.

So, if you haven’t read through the Founders’ Bible, I challenge you and encourage you get a copy of the Founders’ Bible today, it’s available at wallbuilders.com, and we even have a digital version, so you can do this on your phone or iPad or computer. Check out the Founders’ Bible today, make it a part of your regular reading throughout the year. But right now, is a great opportunity to redo the Founders’ Bible. Check it out today at WallBuilders.com.

Jeremy:

Listen, it’s sort of the George Washington view of foreign policy. We should build relationships that are in our interests when they’re in our interests. We shouldn’t fully embrace someone who has interests distinct from our own such that we get bound to them to where we now have to back them even in things that we wouldn’t have supported them in. But we should be unafraid to build coalitions with people who are different with us, coalitions of opportunity toward our shared ends. That’s one example.

Rick:

Several comments in the chat, loving your Star Wars references and the fact that rebellions are built on hope. I was just thinking about for Star Wars, a new hope. I mean, that was even the beginning. How do you because this is a very unique, you’ve got a very unique viewpoint, you see how dangerous things are, you see the negative that’s there, but yet you remain hopeful? What’s your intake, and this goes back to the first question your routine in a way, what’s your intake of information, the Bible talk show, all of that, in order to do that, because that intake impacts your attitude, so you must have a pretty good balance there, and what do you recommend for them?

Jeremy:

Listen, I said it before, and I’ll say it here. God is a jealous God, but he’s not a fearful God. So God is jealous that you would put your faith in Him through Christ. He’s not fearful though of you exploring other ideas, because He knows that His ideas are the best ideas. God doesn’t want us to be ignorant, and call that faith. God wants us to actually know things and have faith, right? He wants to be God above other gods. Is that interesting? He says, you will have no other gods before me. Does that mean that there are other gods ultimately? No, I think he’s the only God, ultimately, I think that the sort of Kierkegaard view of God is that God is God, there isn’t room for anything else, or God would be less than God.

But God refers to other gods in the commandment, because of course, there are many other gods, whether they’re real or not hardly matters, they’re real in the influence and impact that they have on other people and other people’s. When He says, you’ll have no other gods before me, in a way; he’s acknowledging all the ideas that aren’t Him, and saying that you would select Him above all of those.

What we sometimes do, especially a second and third generation, believers, people who grew up in Christian households, is we think we’re choosing God above all other gods, but what we’re really doing is being superstitious and just hanging on to the only thing we know and assuming that it must be right, because we know it. And I don’t think that that’s what God would have us do. I think that you should take in all kinds of ideas that aren’t exactly your ideas.

Listen, a lot of your ideas are wrong. A lot of the things that you think are just bedrock truths, when they come into contact with reality, reality will break them, and you’ll be afraid of that’s a painful process. When we talk about iron sharpening iron, Christians love to say, iron sharpens iron, but what they really mean is, I just want to be with people who think exactly the same way that I do and never challenged me at all. No, iron sharpens iron by getting really, really, really hot, and then slamming into another piece of iron, and sparks fly, and it’s destructive and terrible, and painful and awful, but it creates that sharp edge that you want over time.

So you should engage with a lot of ideas. You should engage with people who disagree with you. You should read the Huffington Post. You should read the New York Times. I mean, the New York Times, is the best and the worst, it’s the best journalism and the worst journalism in the country.

And as I said, during my remarks, you should continually be trying to open yourself up to refinement, by asking what’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with your ideas? What’s wrong with your attitudes? What’s wrong with your behaviors? What’s wrong with your approach? That’s the only way that you’re going to make changes that are beneficial to you over time.

I have optimism because the last 20 years of taking that approach, I’ve been stripped of so many of my preconceived notions, I’ve been laid bare, I’ve been forced to realize exactly what I am, and how that is distinct from what God is, how I’m not like God, I’m in almost every way unlike God. I’m completely undeserving. And therefore my optimism comes not in my own success. My optimism comes in a fervent hope that He is successful for both of us, that He is successful enough for all of us, that He’s successful enough for our country, that He’s successful enough for our culture, and that whether we win or lose in ways that I can measure and understand his success is assured in all the ways that I can’t.

So my optimism isn’t in victory. I’m optimistic about our battle, because I know we get the privilege of fighting it, but none of the burden of having to succeed at it.

Rick:

Wow, that’s good. Oh, you got a coin that one, brother. That was fantastic. Jeremy. I appreciate you man. Thank you for all you’re doing at Daily Wire. I really feel like your shows, your publications, everything you’re doing is equipping us to pick up those pieces and rebuild it. So, so important, and we appreciate you very much, man. Thanks for your time with us. Thanks for investing in these young people. And we are looking forward to that album.

And by the way, folks, you’ve got to get the Backstage access to Daily Wire, that’s the only place you’ll get to hear and see the songs from Boreing, Knowles. Actually, as much as I love all the shows, the Backstage stuff is the most fun. It really is in the candy conversation.

Jeremy:

We let our hair down a little bit on that one. Thank you guys for having me. I say it often, I brag about you guys when I’m not in front of you. I take a lot of hope just in the existence of Patriot Academy. There’s so many young people who aren’t afraid to take on that responsibility. So God bless you.

Rick:

Hey, thanks, man. Hopefully, we’ll see you in person next summer at the Texas Capitol when we aren’t having to wear pods around us as we walk around the place. See, Jeremy, thank you, man. Now, I think I’m going to toss it back to you. Everybody, you’re heading back to the house floor for more debate. Thanks, guys.

Alright, friends, we are out of time for today. Thanks so much for listening. That was Jeremy Boreing. If you happen to tune in in the middle of today’s program, then you can pick up the first half of Jeremy Boreing presentation yesterday on WallBuilders Live. It’s available right now at wallbuilderslive.com. And again, if you tuned in in the middle of today’s program, then today’s program is also available there at wallbuilderslive.com. And that is the place to make your contribution and help us continue this good news, continue influencing the culture in a positive way and helping citizens to restore America’s constitutional republic.

Thanks so much for listening to WallBuilders Live.