The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 221
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However weird you thought the Nazis were before, they're weirder than that. In fact, they were outright mystics, and the point of the Positive Christianity movement given in Point 24 of the Nazi Party platform can only be summarized as to take German Christians of all stripes, deconstruct their Christian faiths, and move them into this counterfeit mysticism and the Nazi "Myth of the Blood." Hitler's chief ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg, makes that case powerfully and undeniably in the third chapter of his very strange book, The Myth of the Twentieth Century. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay continues his series of readings from Rosenberg's strange tome with a fifth volume exploring the centrality of German Mysticism derived from the heresies of Johannes Eckhart from the 13th century. Join him for an alarming look at Nazi ideology like you've never seen before. 

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 220
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In 1765, Great Britain had foolishly decided to continue escalating its attempts to recover the cost of the French and Indian War from its American Colonists by passing the infamous and odious Stamp Act upon the colonies, who famously were not represented in the Parliament that would tax them. In response, a great deal of pre-Revolutionary mayhem and energy was unleashed on this side of the Pond, and within that current came one of the most brilliant and under-recognized essays of the nascent American era, penned under pseudonym by the incredible John Adams. "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law," as it was called, was a hammerstroke against the twin tyrannies of an overbearing church and state, and worse yet, their confederacy. It was also a call to learning and to memory for the colonists about who they are, who they were, and why they and their forefathers came: not just for religion, but for religious liberty and a hatred of these wicked tyrannies all across Europe. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads Adams's amazing essay with no less goal than to make it famous among all Americans. Join him and share the essay with everyone you can!

(Get Eric Metaxas's Revolution here and Tim Sandefur's Proclaiming Liberty here!)

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 219
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The United States of America was founded on a very particular view of the people's right relationship to government authority that can be, and was, summarized by the famous phrase, "Resistance against tyrants is obedience to God." But, many have wondered, even in our present day, what about the injunctions of Paul's famous Romans 13, which demands we obey our civil authorities, for they are ordained by God for our good through that role? This crucial question loomed very large through the Covid-19 abuses and has ever since, including in the American churches. The definitively American answer to the question was given as a sermon in Massachusetts Colony in 1750, however, by a fiery young Congregationalist named Jonathan Mayhew, and this sermon laid bedrock under what would become the United States. "A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers," he called it. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads the majority of this sermon to you with as much passion as he can muster so that you, too, can hear this incredibly important message, 276 years after it was first preached. You won't want to miss it.

(Get Eric Metaxas's Revolution here and Tim Sandefur's Proclaiming Liberty here!)

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 218

The school of thought known as Critical Theory was born, as we understand it today, in an essay written in 1937 by Max Horkheimer, who was director of the infamous Frankfurt School. This definitive essay of Western Marxism makes it clear that what we think of as "theory" is only one side of the story, and it's the side that keeps reproducing our present society. Horkheimer calls this "traditional theory," and we call it "knowing what you're talking about and applying it to make the world a better place." He contrasts it against his  own approach to Western Marxist thinking, which he calls "critical theory," which questions the very foundations of the society we inhabit in favor of an alternative we can't even articulate. In this important episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay brings you through some of the text of the first half of this historical essay so you can understand the Critical Theory from its birth, in the words of its own founder. Join him to hear the truth: Critical Theory has always been like this, from the very beginning.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 215
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The Nazis had an ideological mission for their own Volk in addition to those we're all more familiar with from the dark stories of history: to transform a widely Christian Germany into a fully Nazi Germany, not just in practice and politics but in belief and commitment. That is, in the language of the Nazis, German Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, had to be transformed into people who accepted the racialist worldview and Fascist organizational principles of National Socialism. In practice, that would mean devastating the real foundations for their faiths, providing them an ersatz intermediate faith called "Positive Christianity," and using it to lead them to full-blown Nazism. The key man tasked with this endeavor was Alfred Rosenberg, the Chief Ideologist of the Third Reich, who wrote the book on it in 1930. The Myth of the Twentieth Century was arguably the Third Reich's second most important book after Mein Kampf, and it presents the "myth of the blood" that all Nazis were eventually to come to believe as an article of unshakeable faith like their leaders. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay returns to the second chapter of The Myth of the Twentieth Century to outline Rosenberg's very New-Atheist-ish effort to undermine the foundations of German Christianity while retaining a mythological Aryan Jesus so that he could complete this task. Join him to see how Nazis really regarded Christianity, especially Catholicism.

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 217
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A very relatable feeling today is that of having something incredibly important to say while nobody listens. We go on screaming about the nearly existential horror of the situation we are in while everyday life goes on beside us, ignoring us, denying us. It's incredibly frustrating. This now far-too-familiar circumstance was written about eloquently at a time when it mattered as much as it may ever have mattered, in January 1944. In that month, Arthur Koestler, writing in the New York Times, published a monumental essay titled, "The Nightmare that Is Reality," describing the madness of screaming the truth about the unfolding Holocaust in Germany. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay shares Koestler's landmark essay with you in full and then explores the unsettling question it raises: with so many "screamers," which ones, like Koestler, are crucially right, and which ones are cranks and fools, if not worse? How can we tell them apart? Join him for an important exploration.