Pints With Aquinas - 211: Socialism, Black Lives Matter, and Systemic Racism w/ Trent Horn

Episode Date: June 23, 2020

In this special episode of Pints with Aquinas, I talk with Trent Horn about the issues facing America today. Yep, those issues. The ones you're seeing on TV and all over social media right now. What is the Catholic response to these issues? In this episode, you'll learn about: Socialism, and why Catholics just can't be Socialist Capitalism Black Lives Matter Types of racism, including systemic racism So, let's get to it. We have a lot to cover!  SPONSORS EL Investments: https://www.elinvestments.net/pints  Exodus 90: https://exodus90.com/mattfradd/  Hallow: http://hallow.app/mattfradd  STRIVE: https://www.strive21.com/  GIVING Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mattfradd This show (and all the plans we have in store) wouldn't be possible without you. I can't thank those of you who support me enough. Seriously! Thanks for essentially being a co-producer coproducer of the show. LINKS Website: https://pintswithaquinas.com/ Merch: https://teespring.com/stores/matt-fradd FREE 21 Day Detox From Porn Course: https://www.strive21.com/  SOCIAL Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter: https://twitter.com/mattfradd Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfradd   MY BOOKS Does God Exist: https://www.amazon.com/Does-God-Exist-Socratic-Dialogue-ebook/dp/B081ZGYJW3/ref=sr_1_9?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586377974&sr=8-9 Marian Consecration With Aquinas: https://www.amazon.com/Marian-Consecration-Aquinas-Growing-Closer-ebook/dp/B083XRQMTF/ref=sr_1_4?dchild=1&keywords=fradd&qid=1586379026&sr=8-4 The Porn Myth: https://www.ignatius.com/The-Porn-Myth-P1985.aspx  CONTACT Book me to speak: https://www.mattfradd.com/speakerrequestform -- Website - mattfradd.com Facebook - facebook.com/mattfradd Twitter - twitter.com/mattfradd 

G'day and welcome to Pints with Aquinas. My name is Matt Fradd and today I am joined around the proverbial bar table by my good friend, Catholic apologist and author of a billion books, even though he's like 17, Trent Horn. Okay, he's not 17. In this episode, we discuss a whole host of issues that are really relevant right now. We talk about socialism and why no Catholic can ever be a socialist. We talk about democratic socialism and what that means. We talk about socialism and why no Catholic can ever be a socialist. We talk about democratic socialism and what that means. We talk about capitalism and if Catholics can be capitalists.

We talk about the political state in the United States of America today. We talk about Black Lives Matter, racism, whether systemic racism is a reality, how we should respond to these things. Very timely episode, a very helpful episode. This is going to help you discuss these different issues with your friends and help you think it through yourself. Now, as I do on every episode of Pints with Aquinas, we always have a post-show wrap-up segment where we discuss something specific.

You are not going to want to miss today. So we talk about distributism, which is another economic model, different to socialism and capitalism. We talk about what Hélène Belloc and G.K. Chesterton had to say about distributism and see what Trent Horn has to say about that. So if you're a patron, please be sure to check out the post-show wrap-up video. If you're not a patron, become a patron. You'll get access to that right away. We also talk about the difference between socialism and communism. And we also debride. How about I just shut up and you can watch it and then you'll know what it's about.

Before we do that, though, I need to say thank you to our sponsor, Hello. Hello is a Catholic meditation app to help you find peace and grow in your spiritual journey. It is 100% Catholic, and it is very well put together. They have a free version of their app with content that gets updated every day. Check it out, Hello.com, hello.com. But if you use my name as you're signing up, Matt Fradd as a promo code, you'll get access to their and everything on their app for free for a whole month. And then you can decide if you want to start supporting them monthly to get access to everything. They have sleep stories. Father Mike Schmitz reading you a sleep story. Yes, please. Me reading you a sleep story. Maybe. Depends how tired I am. Anyway, so you can... I did actually read a sleep story for them. So check it out. I let you know whenever we put out a new video

and forcing google to do stuff is just fun so maybe consider that here's my interview with trent horn g'day trent how are you doing i'm doing well matt uh to those who are watching, Trent and I were just talking off camera about having Trent on to do a massive marathon. The last time you were on the show, Trent, we did a three hour and 58 minute discussion. I'd love to do another one, though what I think would be fun to come back onto your show, I would just love to do the real Trent Horn. So we did an apologetics extravaganza last time. It'd just be fun.

You can peel back the layers on who I really am, my thoughts on all kinds of things. No, that'd be fun. I was bummed. If we had went two more minutes, we would have broken the four hour mark, but we didn't know. So nevermind.

That was on your dog. Your dog crashed our interview. That's probably why. Yeah. What if we did like a 24 hour interview, but at different points, I go out for lunch, and then you chat with the camera, and then you go out to lunch, and then we just play Scrabble together? People would watch that, right? It's like the Truman Show. Yeah, that or it'll turn into Treasure of the Sierra Madre as we slowly start to lose our minds.

we slowly start to lose our minds. And it's kind of like, or to give another deep cut, the reference to when Mr. Burns and Homer are trapped in the cabin on the Simpsons and then begin to hallucinate the snowman soldiers. Oh, I want to watch that. It's so good. It is so great to have you on the show.

You've just written a book on socialism and you just did a debate. We're recording this the day after you did the debate. So just last night. Tell us about that debate. How are you feeling? What's it like prepping for a debate? I'm sure our listeners are really interested. Oh, yeah. Well, I haven't done debates in a while. I think the last... Formal debates, I always tell people, like, my favorite things to do as an apologist, I rank them in different ways. I mean, I obviously love writing books. I love doing Catholic Answers Live, where I can engage people. But probably my favorite thing

to do are debates, because it's like being in an academic boxing ring, so to speak. And so you get to intellectually joust or fence over a proposition, and it's just a lot of fun. So several months ago, Sam Rocha, who is a professor, I think at the University of British Columbia, commented on my book, Can a Catholic Be a Socialist?, and he disagreed with the thesis. And so he offered to—I said, well, would you like to debate the thesis? I'd actually been looking for a Catholic socialist to debate the subject, because I wrote the book on it, and I had crit been looking for a Catholic socialist to debate the subject, because I wrote the book on it, and I had critiqued previous people who had written

articles or published in America Magazine or the Catholic Herald that were defending Catholic socialism. And so I had reached out to these individuals and said, hey, do you want to do a formal debate? Can a Catholic be a socialist so we can hash this out? And they declined. So Sam was actually the only person who's accepted that challenge. Was it hard to find a Catholic socialist? Are there many out there who have prominent positions in academia? Well, there's not a lot of people who are, none that are in academia who are actively writing in major publications. I was looking for people who had been published, at least even in the popular press,

whose ideas had gotten circulation. So for example, one person I approached was Dean Detloff, who a few months ago published The Catholic Case for Communism in America magazine, which was an incredibly controversial article when it came out. America, the editor of America, even published an article with it saying why we published a Catholic case for communism in America magazine, which is a very prominent Jesuit publication. And I reached off to Detloff, but he declined.

And so Sam was willing to defend Catholic socialism. and so I proposed a resolution or a thesis. He asked me to argue the affirmative, which I'm happy to do. It always depends on the topic. And so I chose the affirmative, quoting Quadrigesimo Anno, Pope Pius XI verbatim, and that is, no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist. And so that was what I set out to defend. And yeah, Matt, I've done podcasts on this as well on my Council of Trent podcast. I'd encourage your listeners to go there. They can go back, search the debate tags.

And I've talked about doing debates before because I don't know too many other Catholics who go out and do debates. The only other one I really know who does a lot of debates is, I think his name is William Albrecht. He's a Catholic apologist. I've seen him do audio and radio debates, but I haven't seen a lot of other Catholics do debates. It's really hard. I mean, me and Cameron from Captured Christianity. Yeah yeah we're doing oh yeah your camera just flickered but it's back on uh yeah we've been doing these kind of debates um but they are just behind the paywall of patreon but they're much more kind of uh friendly you know it's more of a discussion where we both take up opposing views and ask each other questions

but yeah it's it's really difficult you've got a real gift there i'm not good at thinking on my feet you know when someone asks me a question it's very easy to get flustered. What's that like? Because, you know, you're a lot more likely to say something you regret or to look stupid in a debate. What's it like looking back on past debates and maybe seeing where you messed up? How humbling is that? And how do you live with that? You just have to always not let your pride get in the way and I feel like God has called me to defend the teachings of the church

and I've done a lot of different debates I've done debates on atheism on the person of Christ I debated Dan Barker on does the Christian God exist I was there I was in the front row I debated him twice that was my very first

debate with Catholic answers it wasn't your very first debate with Catholic answers. Yeah. It wasn't your very first. Your first one was with that dude who wore a cowboy hat and said he studied philosophy on his own time. Remember? I think I do remember that. Yeah.

That was prior to Catholic answers. I'm here to correct your, your memory. You're welcome. That was my first Catholic answers debate. Yeah. I, I was so good.

I, I just flew in from some talk i gave somewhere and got directly into an uber and drove to the was the university of san diego yeah that's where we did that we did dude that was so much fun then we all went out for drinks afterwards anyway sorry that was a great night but i will when i look back i mean that was over a dozen debates ago and even now when i look back on that i say say, oh, yeah, I was pretty green. What's hard with debates, I mean, you can do mock debates with people to prepare, but it's really not the same as just getting out in the field. And so you only learn by experience.

And so the learning curve is a very public one. And so because of that, it's the same as like if you're doing like your podcast, you look at the Pints of Aquinas. What you're doing today is going to be way different than the first 20 episodes you were doing, you know, and you, and you look back and you're like, oh, I really would have done that differently, but I can always go, but I can go back and delete them. Whereas if you've debated with somebody, it's also on their YouTube channel. You can't cover up. Yeah. But in the end for me, I would feel like it's not,that would be my pride coming forward. Absolutely.

Instead of serving the kingdom, if I were to say, I'm not going to go out and debate and defend the teachings of the Catholic Church because I'm worried that I will look bad. Now, if I have a reasonable view that, oh, I am absolutely—if I get into this debate, I am absolutely going to fail and look bad and make the church look bad. I'm not going to agree to do it in the first place. So if it is a rational fear or concern that I, because there are topics that I won't debate because they're simply not my wheelhouse. Nobody can be an expert in everything. Other than Jimmy Akin, totally. Even Jimmy would tell you that there's certain things that he wouldn't debate. Or, Matt, there are certain debate topics that wouldn't be really fruitful because you don't have common ground with the other person.

And so it just wouldn't be a fruitful topic. Like, for example, if you were to debate something like, the Bible proves Mary was assumed into heaven, for example. I wouldn't debate a topic like that, because I think the resolution is too strong to say the Bible proves this doctrine, because many of the doctrines we believe are not explicitly found or quote-unquote proved from Scripture. We also believe in sacred tradition. So I'm not going to box myself into a resolution that I feel like is a losing resolution. Right, which is why your resolution was so nuanced in last night's debate, right?

You're not saying no Catholic can be a socialist. You're not even saying no good Catholic can be a socialist. You're saying no good Catholic can be a true socialist. So it's very nuanced. Yeah, and so that was what Sam went after in his opening statement. And the argument he made that I think by his closing statement, he tried to say this is the one thing I hadn't responded to, which I certainly had, was that he had quoted several blessed like blessed. Giorgio. Giorgio Frassati and two other blesseds or venerables who had made statements that were positive towards socialism, saying things like justice is my socialism or I take from socialism and preach the gospel. He also said that they were associated with socialist groups. It was more than just that they had given lip service to socialism. Yeah, but so is but so is Dorothy Day and Dorothy Day mixed freely with

people of all stripes, whether they were anarchists, whether they were self-proclaimed socialists. You can work with all different kinds of people to achieve a common goal. So if your common goal is to alleviate poverty, you may very well mix with true socialists often. When I'm fighting abortion, I mix with five-point Calvinists all the time, you know? So what I pointed out there is that we have to talk about what socialism is. Now, some people may accuse me, and I think I've seen one person say this online, that the way the resolution was framed and the way I was arguing that I was committing the no true Scotsman fallacy. Yeah. Explain that for our listeners.

Yes. So no true Scotsman goes like this. Someone makes a statement. No Scotsman eats haggis. No Scotsman hates haggis, let's say, you know, boiled sheep stomach. You know, but my uncle McDonough, he hates haggis. Ah, yes, but nodonough he he hates haggis ah yes but no true scotsman hates haggis he's just not a true scotsman and the no true scotsman fallacy emerges when you have a set of things and say something doesn't belong there and clearly we find something that belongs there and then you create an arbitrary subset uh in to save yourself. So it's about making an arbitrary subset. However, that's not what I was doing, because the reason I added the qualifier true was to stay faithful to the language of the magisterium. I believe there's a very deliberate—if

you read Quadrigessimo Anno, what Pope Pius XI says about socialism in that encyclical, he's very deliberate when he says no good Catholic can be a true socialist, because in other parts of the encyclical he says there are people who claim to be socialists, and there are just and true and good demands in socialism that are not foreign to Christian thought. So we can just be Christians, we don't need to be socialists. So he acknowledged there were even people in his time who were Catholic, who claimed to be socialist, yet what they were arguing for were Catholic social teaching. They just called it socialist. Oh, I see.

Yeah, so Sam's argument seemed to be, and this is where the debate really hinged, what is a socialist? Which he never gave a definition to that, which was very— Oh, my camera is... Oh, there we go. Yeah, he never gave a definition of socialism to grapple with, did he? Or did I miss it? No, he didn't. And I followed him and tried to press him on that to ask him to provide us with a definition. All right, I want to say a quick thanks to our second and final sponsor, Strive. Strive21.com is going to help you break free from porn. It is a 21-day challenge that I created. We have over 17,000 men going through

the course right now. If you are a man who struggles with porn or lust in any way, I plead you, plead you, plead with you to go and check out strive21.com. It is 100% free and you can be as anonymous as you want. And if you're on the fence and you're like, yeah, I want to commit to this because porn's really starting to take over my life and I'm not okay with it. For goodness sake, give it a shot, but also check out the reviews. See up here, click reviews. You can scroll through and see what other men, these are real men who went through the course, see what they had to say. Like here's one. Each video also seems as if it is speaking directly to me. So there are daily videos that I've recorded for you. You also get a challenge

to perform every day. It's really great. Really, really great. Look at this. Somehow in my walk with Jesus, I have not gotten to the point where my love for him wins out in this area. This program has certainly made me more aware of all this and is helping me with the resolve I need to succeed. So go check out strive21.com. If you know a man who struggles with porn or lust in any way, please send him to that. Back to the interview with Trent. He never gave a definition of socialism that was to grapple with, did he? Or did I miss it? No, he didn't. And I followed him and tried to press him on that to ask him to provide us with a definition. In my opening statement, I provided the standard definition of socialism citing

socialist thinkers. What is that for our listeners? Because obviously we've got a mix of people. Some people don't even know what socialism and capitalism mean, so just to back up a bit. Yeah, this is a typical one. I mean, this is the devil in the details approach that people argue and disagree about. But when you go to the literature, when you go to dictionaries of economics, to economists, socialism traditionally is the view that private property, the property is not owned by individuals or firms, but that the means of production or property, that which generates wealth, goods and services, is owned communally. generates wealth, goods, and services is owned communally. So the idea here is that socialism is that businesses, things that produce goods and services and wealth, these things should not be owned by an individual. There should not be a person or even a group of shareholders who own company X. Rather, company X should be owned by the community as a whole. And so we all own everything that generates wealth.

We, the people, own these things. And so therefore, the wealth doesn't go just straight to the owner of that company. It goes to everybody who owns it. And so if we all own these things as a community, then people believe that's more equitable and prosperous and things like that. then people believe that's more equitable and prosperous and things like that. On this definition of socialism, though, can people own private property like houses so long as they don't generate things to sell? Well, socialists, and this is something that Sam brought up in the debate that I was able to briefly touch on, especially those who are Marxists, they'll make a distinction between private property and personal property.

So what they'll say is there's an article by Bashkar Sankara, who is the editor of Jacobin magazine. So he's a very prominent socialist who believes in classical socialism. He wants to abolish wage labor. He wants everyone to have every employee should have equal ownership in the company that they work for. But even there, he's not even arguing. He's not even arguing for the classical view of socialism, which is that the state owns businesses, that the state owns it. So Sankara has an article on Jacobin called Socialists Don't Want Your Kenny Loggins CDs. And so the idea here is someone emailed Bashkar and said,

look, I want to be a socialist, but does that mean that all my socialist friends get to have all my stuff, like they get to have my Kenny Loggins CDs? And so Boshkar says, no, socialism is just saying that you can have the stuff that you use to support yourself, like your home or your food in your refrigerator or your personal possessions. You can have that. You just don't get to own things that generate wealth for you or other people. Now, I do believe the distinction between private and personal property is a bit dubious because there's some quite gray areas. For example, most American families have two cars. What if one of the cars is used 80 percent of the time

for Uber driving? It generates wealth. Is that personal property, or is it private property? If I save up money under this view that I can't own private property, I guess I can own my home. But let's say I'm thrift and I practice frugality, which is what Pope Leo says we ought to do. Can I save up money for a down payment to buy a second home and rent that home out? It seems to me when I read socialists, they say private property is that property which someone owns and it generates wealth for them by the fact that they won't let other people use it or own it. And that seems to be the case that if I own a second home and I rent it to people, that's classic private property. I don't see how I could be allowed to

do that under socialism. Rather, what socialists would want for housing, the Marxist view, is that housing is not a commodity you buy or sell. It's just a right that government owns all housing and allocates it to people, which is totally unworkable. Because think about it, Matt, if you can just pick, the government gives you housing, well, who gets the houses that are here in San Diego and who gets the houses that are in rural North Dakota. It's going to be the people who are friends with the bureaucrats and the central planners. So just to get back to what socialism is before we continue, because that was the big thing I was trying to get Sam to really focus on here, that yeah, there are Catholics who say they're

socialists, and what they mean is they want rigorous policies that protect the poor and promote social welfare. And that's fine. But classical socialism is about communal ownership, and there's different kinds of that. So you might have, for example, like in the Soviet Union, Maoist China, North Korea, where the state owns all businesses. And so the state owns, manages the economy, owns it, regulates when goods are produced, how they're distributed. And it's just a nightmare because the state is totally inefficient. It can never manage the economy like letting individuals do it. So it leads to shortages.

They just, you know, imagine letting the DMV run your podcast, you know, with the time it takes to get around and turn around and do things. It never works. So a lot of modern socialists will say, well, no, I'm not that kind of socialist. I'm a democratic socialist. I'll say, well, what does that mean? Now, for some people, democratic socialism is synonymous with the social welfare state. And so they say, well, I'm just going to be like Norway or Sweden. And so I thought, and that's why it was so hard for me.

I think that's what Sam was kind of getting at in the debate. You know, he asked me, what did I think about post-war Europe, where they enacted a lot of these social democratic policies? And I said, I'm fine with that. But it's not socialism. Tell us what you mean then by democratic socialism, and tell us what Pope Benedict had to say on that. Yeah, so Pope Benedict, in a famous, rather infamous essay in First Things, and I think he was quoting a previous book he had written on the subject, talked about how in post-World War II Europe, there were strains of socialism that obviously you could not support. But he said a line about how democratic socialism was something that is close to Catholic social teaching and had some positive things within it.

But my point, but people take that as some kind of coup d'etat to say, ah, see, you can be a socialist. I say, well, no, because Pope Pius XI said that there are many true things in socialism. He wrote this in Quadrigestimo Anno, saying there are many things that are true in socialism, and this is something that none of the pontiffs have ever denied, but these things are not unique to socialism. And what I pointed out in the debate is that Pope Benedict didn't say that this was Catholic social teaching, he said it's close to it, and he never encouraged people to become democratic socialists. And what he's referring to, that word is so elastic. Yeah, help us understand what that means. Well, it depends who you ask. That I think in the context Pope Benedict is using it, he's talking about the generous welfare state and protecting the rights of workers, like to form a union, for example.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I haven't looked into this stuff at all. But when I hear democratic socialism, I hear like we all vote as to how the money that we all make gets to be allocated. That's closer to true democratic socialism. So you'll hear people who will argue, I'm a democratic socialist, like David Bentley Hart, for example, wrote in a New York Times editorial, something like people need to, I forget the name of the, I forget the title of the article. He basically said people need to calm down and stop freaking out about socialism.

Yeah. And in the article, he said, socialism is just another word to describe the sane governance of the national purse, which means that just the government spends its money wisely to help people. Fine. That's not socialism. So, I mean, could someone critique what you're trying to say here, Trent, in your book and saying, yeah, sure, the way socialism might have been defined and the way you're defining in the book and saying, yeah, sure, the way socialism might have been defined and the way you're defining in the book may not be appropriate, but is anyone defining it that way today? Like is AOC recommending true socialism? Is anyone that we can consider a socialist on the

political stage in America today advocating for a socialism that you're condemning? advocating for a socialism that you're condemning? Well, I think that you'll find people, AOC tends to sometimes, when push comes to shove on these things, fall back. For example, in 2019, her congressional office or a congressional office posted a summary of the Green New Deal.

And this was a congressional summary of the Green New Deal. And it had a line in there that said, to provide economic support for those who are unable or unwilling to work. And then they quickly deleted it. And they accused conservatives of spreading an urban legend or making it up when they criticized this. And then in my book, I mentioned this, and I quote as the source for this, an author at Vox, it was a rather liberal publication, saying that it's not that bad of an idea. And he tries to put forward these reasons why maybe someone should be supported by the government if they choose to not work.

And one reason he gave was maybe they want to see if they're a really good author. You know, so you and I should subsidize that. that. So the thing is, I believe, especially when you get to like the city council level, like lower local municipal offices where there's less heat, there are socialist candidates who would argue for true democratic socialism. So imagine we got three things here. Welfare state, government makes a safety net for people, which we already do have in the United States. And Australia to a larger degree, probably. Absolutely. And also in the Nordic countries. Though what's funny is people say, we should be like the Nordic countries. And I pointed out in the debate, well, the Nordic countries have a

generous welfare state because they're economically prosperous. Sweden has more billionaires per capita than the United States. So we have one billionaire, every 530,000 people. They have one billionaire for every 425,000 people. So they need that economic prosperity to pay for all the welfare programs. So they're not antithetical. Then on the other spectrum would be the statist one that everyone seems to agree. We don't want Soviet Union.

We don't want Maoist China. And I watched a previous debate where Sam said he's not a statist. We don't want the government running everything. And so if you go to the online platform of the Democratic Socialists of America, which I quoted in the debate, they say, we don't want the state running everything. We don't want a giant state bureaucracy. What they want, it seems to me, is mandated worker cooperatives. So that would be the idea that worker cooperatives, and there's a lot of different forms of these where workers either equally own and manage

a company so that they have equal rights to say how the company is governed. Everybody makes the same amount. And you see this in like, you know, hippie vegan bakeries and stuff like that that have like 10 people. And so everything has to be decided by committee. It's not like one person in charge. You all get together every week and you vote on what's what's going to happen. And it's incredibly tedious because it's inefficient and things can't grow. Larger companies can't do that. So they'll have things where people have where employees can share in equal their shareholders. So they get stock dividends from the company when it does well,

things like that. So worker cooperatives make up about 1% of U.S. GDP. About 12% of workers are in some kind of cooperative, but most are not. And so that's why I asked in the debate, I said, well, Sam, could a Catholic support a policy that mandated, that forced all employers to be worker cooperatives, even if the employers and employees don't want it. A lot of people will say, I don't want to start my own company. I don't want to own a company. I don't want, because a lot of people, Matt, and the debate between socialists and capitalists, the socialists make it seem like the capitalist is high on the hog and has no fear. He owns the factory and the laborers are at his beck and call and he's completely set and money just comes to him. As somebody who quit his job three years ago and

is now self-employed and is running a company, that's not true. No, Pope Leo XIII put it this way. He said, labor needs capital, capital needs labor. And we also shouldn't think of capital as a magical thing that capitalists just happen to have. Capital is just another word for money. It's either a liquid asset you have or it's a material that you have purchased. So you've exchanged, like look at yourself, Matt Fradd.

You have pursued vigorous labor podcasting and that has generated capital in the form of income that you reinvested into your work to buy this fancy Nikon camera I'm watching on, which looks stunning, by the way. Absolutely, except it shows all the flaws. But yes, it is stunning. Yes, I did do that. Yeah, and so that's the thing. You didn't just pick it up from your capitalist buddies at the capitalist club or whatever. You exchanged labor for it. And then so you contract out with other people to make your podcast possible, and then you compensate them for the work that they have done.

So it's a reciprocal relationship. reciprocal relationship, but it's not like they have an equal part in the podcast you've created, because they weren't there from the beginning when you undertook a massive risk to start this. And because you undertook a massive risk, you're entitled to the benefits that come from that. So the point that I would make from that is that it violates the rights of private property and the principle of subsidiarity and overlooks how markets actually work to try to enforce this sort of democratic ownership that at the one level would just be, well, all workers own their own companies. Now, if you try to make it where, but even there, you're going to have some companies

that are wildly successful and their workers are far more wealthy and have more power than the co-ops that are just successful and their workers are far more wealthy and have more power than the co-ops that are just not doing well. So when people try to say, OK, all the workers, all of us will own all of the companies, that's just not feasible. It's going to turn into state socialism. And I'll tell you why. Suppose you and I, Matt, we're part with the 300 million people. We own all the companies in the u.s how much of your time are you going to spend looking over the production quotas and budgets and voting on how things are allocated are you going to spend a lot of time doing that with

your three kids you're not even three you got more than three right yeah i wouldn't have time so you would probably say maybe i'll just you know you'll vote for someone you trust to do that, right? So then instead of a community, instead of all of us, because people say, oh, Soviet Union and China, North Korea, it's not true communism. It's not true socialism because it's not collectively owned by everyone. But here's the thing. Most of everyone don't have the time, willpower, or intellect to want to be involved in managing an entire economy. So what we will do is, well, we'll vote for people we trust to do that for us. And we already do that. It's called bureaucrats. And then what's going to happen is

the bureaucrats we select, we're going to say, do what you think is best for promoting the common good and allocating all these resources. But what's going to happen when the bureauc to say, do what you think is best for promoting the common good and allocating all these resources. Well, what's going to happen when the bureaucrats say, what's probably best is if we get rid of this whole term limit thing or move these elections that are coming up when we give them all this power? The other point I brought up in the debate about why we should be suspicious of this kind of socialism, which, by the way, under capitalism, you can have worker cooperatives. You're free to set one up. No one's stopping you. We just shouldn't force everyone to do that when that's not what may not be best for their company and their workers, hence the principle of subsidiarity. So nobody's stopping you in that regard. But when you try to impose it on everybody, things just ultimately become unworkable. Could we take a step back? I want to quickly define for people socialism, communism, and capitalism. I know there was some discussion last night about these things,

and I know you wrote a book on socialism, and you've had many people online write to you and say capitalism is contrary to the Catholic faith. So maybe we could begin with that, you know, like what is capitalism and how should we as Catholics view it? And then I'd like to discuss, you know, the difference between socialism and communism, because I think there's a lot of confusion there, not just among lay people like myself, but even among people who would claim to be socialist or communist. Oh, yeah. And the confusion, Matt, a lot of it comes from their side, because many people who claim to be socialist asked him, you know, what makes something socialist? And he said, it's not an analytic term. It's a lived reality. And that's just not helpful. So then I asked a follow-up

question. Well, what is a country that is not very socialist? You know, didn't he say China? He said China is not very socialist. And I, for the life of me, could not figure out why. And I asked him, well, why? He said, well, because they are more totalitarian. So then I asked the follow up question. force to own the means of production. And socialism is when you use democratic means to own the means of production. And I think that's what he was going towards. But he just couldn't settle on a definition. To me, if I was to answer the question, I would say Singapore or Hong Kong are the least socialist countries on earth because they are the countries that provide the most private property protections. They have the freest markets. Like when you go to Hong Kong or Singapore, like Hong Kong, you can like start a business in a day.

You like fill out a form. It's very easy to start and operate a business. There are rules, of course. You can't defraud people. You can't run dangerous operations. But it's not that hard to start a business. But you go to other countries, even here in the US, it gets harder.

You know how it is for your podcast. You had to go through a lot of forms to fill out. But it's not as bad as a place like India, for example, where it can take years to start a business because you simply, the labyrinthian maze you have to navigate of government structures is almost impossible to penetrate. It truly is Byzantine in every true sense of that word. Or then you get worse. What's even more socialist than that would be countries in sub-Saharan Africa that were operating under socialism for a long time and still have under a kleptocracy, where kleptocracy is when the government steals

whatever it wants from people. It steals foreign aid when it's donated, and it steals businesses. Like you run a business in some countries, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. You start a business. You own it one day. The government sends in their troops, and it's not yours anymore. Wow. And so they can confiscate your materials for what they think is best. And so that's the thing when it comes to Christians and capitalism. What's hard, Matt, is

a lot of people think that the only way we can help the poor is by almsgiving, and that was true in the time of Jesus, and that was true through most of the time of the Church Fathers and even up through the Middle Ages, because there was no way to really make wealth. Wealth existed—wealth was a very scattered, meager thing. Wealth was a bit of fertile land you could find, or maybe some gold in a mountain, but you couldn't make wealth. So the traditional teaching was, if you want to help the poor, you give the poor money. But nowadays, it's different. We can make wealth. And what we've seen with the data across the world is that the best way to give people wealth is to give them capitalism. And all that capitalism is, is stringent protections of private property so that you can start a business and it won't be

taken away from you arbitrarily. You can make income and profits and they won't just be taxed at 100% and taken and redistributed to other people. Yeah, this makes sense in that I'm self-interested. You know, like if you, me, and 10 of our friends all went in on a company, I'm not going to probably be as invested in that company that we all equally share than I am in this one company that if it doesn't work, my family is out of a home or something. Because if you and, yeah. Right, When the risk is more, you care more. Right, that's what I mean. Yeah, so if you put into a venture with a group, you still care. You would like to see a return on it.

But it won't devastate you if there's no return. But when you put your whole self into Pints of Aquinas... And I'm not depending on anyone else to make it work. Do you know what I mean? Like if you and I in this venture together, I can kind of lay back and hope the other 19 kind of make this thing work for me. That's right. And so when we then, you bring up the example of sub-Saharan Africa that I talked about earlier, that if you want to give people wealth, people can't generate wealth and prosperity. No one's going to invest in starting a business in a country where the business may not exist in a year because of civil unrest, because of government overregulation,

or just because of government cronyism or kleptocracy. So the problem is there are people who operate with this charity, and charity is a good thing. Charity does help people, and we ought to use it, but it's a Band-Aid. It's not corrective surgery. So we should do it to alleviate harm, but it should not be our primary means for empowering people to develop wealth and prosperity. So what are we to do with our Lord's words when he says, give to whoever begs of you? Are you saying that's no longer applicable because we have other ways of giving to the poor now? Well, we should give, we should interpret what is our Lord saying, and he's saying that we should help those who are in need. And so we should always remember,

of course, that what Jesus says when he's speaking, he speaks in hyperbole, he's speaking in an ancient Near Eastern context, and the larger lessons he's trying to teach. Now if somebody asks you for food or money here in the United States, I think that there is a presumption you ought to give to that person, unless you have good reason to believe that giving to that person will actually cause them harm. And so for example, you know, if somebody says, you know, you have a friend who, you know, has a drug problem. They say, hey, I'm really down and out. I'm you know, I just need, you know, Matt, I just need like 50 bucks so I can have somewhere to stay tonight.

And you think to yourself, he's not going to he's going to go sleep behind a dumpster and he's going to go and get drugs. I can't give you that money because I have moral certainty you're going to use it to harm yourself. Right. And so we have to use prudence there. But in many cases, though, when I see someone who's panhandling, I still give them money or I give them a gift card to a restaurant because I try to give them benefit of the doubt as much as I can. But let me just finish here. But when we're talking about on a wide scale,

like if you look at sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and East Asia 40 years ago had large rates of extreme poverty, like 60% of people lived on less than $2 a day. I mean, it was life expectancy rates in these parts of the world with like 40 years, grim. But now, because East Asia has opened up to market economies, extreme poverty has dropped from like 60% to 4%, whereas it's still hovering around 30 to 40% in sub-Saharan Africa. And so what the Church teaches is that capitalism is a tool. It's a tool that can be used for good or for evil. It's not intrinsically evil itself. And so we ought to use it to do good and promote human flourishing in that regard. And so that's all capitalism is, is you have the right to own

property, to own productive property and exchange it with others to build wealth that you can reinvest in your own industry. Socialism is the idea that, no, you don't own it. The community should own it, whatever that means, whether it's the state or all people, but all people usually just ends up being the state. And communism, Matt, for a lot of people, for many Marxists, communism is the end goal of socialism. That socialism is the state owns the means of production. And Lenin said that this is the first stage, and that eventually communism is the end stage where there's no classes. So the first stage is we have no owners and laborers because everything's owned through the state. But then by the end, we have no state, we have

no bureaucrats, no citizens, we're all equal and there's no classes. Communism is the end goal, but it's never been reached and it never can be. Yeah, it sounds really utopian because, I mean, in a way, it sounds kind of like a monastery or a convent operates, right? Have you ever had that kind of objection that, well, people choose to do that in, like, monasteries? They pull their wealth together, as it were, and rely on each other. Isn't that a beautiful thing? And so why shouldn't we be doing that as a country? apply the practices of a monastery to the world at large, how can you expect practices that work for adults of the same faith who voluntarily leave the world to enter into promises that

radically contradict the way the world exists? You're going to tell me that we should take those standards that live in radical departure from the world voluntarily among adults under a principle of faith, and apply them to the world itself, that is never going to work. I mean, it's never going to work for the same reason that you don't apply the monastery's practice of celibacy to the world as a whole. It works great for monasteries. It would be the end of the human race. So that's the whole point, that yeah, you can have communal living within these particular structures. But even there, there are classes. It's not just, it's not everybody, even there in the monastery objection, that's not true communism, because you have a hierarchical leadership, you have an abbot, you have a mother superior, who then reports to other

ecclesial officials and ordinaries. So it's not like everybody in the monastery just has equal say and communally votes on things. So even there, the objection still breaks down. What do you say to people who say that true socialism has never been tried, and so you shouldn't really knock it until we see evidence of it? What I would say there is that those who make this objection never seem to be inclined to hear this one. They're always very critical of capitalism, but I don't feel like it would satisfy them if I were to say, oh yes, but true capitalism has never been tried, where people equitably work together to maintain their property in exchange. You have to give it a chance. For them, it's always

true capitalism. So I would ask them, well, what is true socialism? And I would say, okay, so you're telling me I shouldn't judge your system because no one has ever instituted a totally unrealistic version of it that depends on people acting against their nature in a perfect altruistic way. Okay, well, if your system depends on people acting in this way, it's not a good system, because I could do the same thing, Matt. I could say, oh, yes, but true capitalism, Matt, is where employers always make sure their employees' needs are taken care of and go above and beyond. And so everything you're showing me is not true. We just had a true capitalist system. No, we have it. You can either judge fanciful socialism against fanciful capitalism,

or you can judge lived socialism against lived capitalism. And we do have ways to do that. We do have ways to do that. And we have experiments that have been done in the history of this world. And two good ones are North and South Korea and East and West Germany. That is socialism. And it's the socialism that people will object, oh, but it's statist socialism. But that's what ends up happening. As I said, if you get more than 20 people, if you get hundreds of thousands or millions of people, the social power will reside in government bureaucrats. It can't reside in the populace. So when you look at East and West Germany and North and South Korea, the differences are stark, especially when both of these four countries, when they started,

so East and West Germany started after World War II, when you had the split. Eastern Europe was occupied by the Soviet Union. I remember actually growing up, it was funny, it wasn't until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 that you had a unified Germany. I remember growing up, I had a globe in my room that had East and West Germany on it. And then we had to change it. You compare them, East and West Germany, North and South Korea, they start actually about economically the same. And then when you let the decades unfurl, you see their competing ideologies where you have prosperous, that West Germany, you have the BMWs and the most prosperous automakers now in West Germany.

South Korea is the seventh largest economy in the world. And today, of course, East Germany doesn't exist. But when it did, East Germany could only put out things like the Trabant, which was a car that was so bad, you had to mix, you had to rocket to mix the oil and fuel together. It lacked, it didn't have important safety features. North and South Korea, South Korea is the seventh largest economy in the world. North Korea is a hermit kingdom that's totally dark at night. So here's a question then. How can you explain to someone that socialism or communism is evil, as opposed to just arguing that it doesn't work? And is that something you would want to argue for?

And if you'll notice in the case that I made against Sam in my debate, I gave not just what the Church teaches, but I gave principled reasons. I gave five of them in my debate, I gave not just what the Church teaches, but I gave principled reasons. I gave five of them in my debate as to why the Church teaches good Catholics cannot be true socialists. And so when you go to Rerum Novarum, Pope Leo XIII, he does make a practical argument. He does say, look, if you implement true socialism, he actually seems to allude to Adam Smith, who is the founding father of modern economics. So, excuse me here, Smith, what Leo seems to allude to Adam Smith, who is the founding father of modern economics. Smith, what Leo seems to allude to is when Leo says that the sources of wealth would run dry, that if you took away the ability to innovate, to reinvest capital, to grow businesses,

no one would ever invest in that. The sources of wealth would run dry. There would be envy. There would be discord. And so Leo talks about how people would all be brought down to one dead level. But the argument that he makes is a principled one. And I put it very bluntly in the debate. I said, look, it's wrong to steal other people's stuff just because you think you will be better off. You can't do that. It's a sin. You can't steal something that belongs to someone else just because you think you will be better off. That is the sin of socialism. It's a sin. You can't steal something that belongs to someone else just because you think you will be better off. That is the sin of socialism. It's theft. And so I put forward that Leo puts forward in Rerum Novarum 15 through 17, he makes an argument for private property. And what he means by private property is not just personal property, things that we consume.

He makes the point, it's this. we are different than, how are we different than animals? I mean, think about this. We eat, we need shelter, we need to reproduce. So we're similar with animals in a lot of ways. So if that's the case, then the only thing we would have a right to as human beings, if we have a right to these things, would just be access to them, not ownership. So it'd be like saying, okay, Matt, you and your family, you need to eat, you need to be fed, go down to the watering hole, you know, like in the Lion King, we're all going to walk down to the watering hole, get our drink and then head back. But Leo says we're not animals because we don't merely just eat and drink and wander from place to place. We plan our lives out.

We plan and we pursue goods beyond merely surviving. and we then allocate goods to those we care about, like our children, and we support them. So in order to do that, in order to make use of our rational mind to be able to do that, we have to not just be able to use things that support us, but own them. We have to have ownership over them to say they are ours, and we are able to use them for our benefit and the benefit of those who are related to us, either familially or through a commercial relationship, like those who labor for us. And that's why Leo says that this is a right that is rooted in natural law, that it comes from our human nature. It's not something the state lets us have private property at its graces. We have a right to

this. And to take it away from the ability to be able to support ourselves and force us to be dependent upon the state instead is a grave injustice. So if socialism is evil because it essentially steals things and redistributes them, and there are kind of differing degrees of socialism, depending on how you use the term, in different countries. You know, like I'm thinking of Australia. I was just looking up tax rates the other day in Australia. As soon as you start making over a particular amount of money, you get taxed a heck of a lot more there than you do here. So could you just complain, well, that's also theft? Right. And Sam brought this up in the debate about paying taxes, that taxes are not theft. Right. And my reply would be, some taxes, some tax rates are not theft, but others are. So just because something becomes evil in degree, there are some things that are intrinsically evil, like abortion is just evil, for example.

But there are other things that come evil in degree. So for example, this works well with the current news that is happening. When an officer uses force to subdue a suspect, that is not intrinsically evil. So if an officer just put his hand on a suspect's shoulder and said, firmly on this shoulder, and said, I'm going to recommend that you just calm down for a minute. He's using force. Let's say he's pressing down on the shoulder, not breaking his clavicle, but he's just, you know how it is.

Someone might do that, like letting you know, I got force here, buddy, but I'm not going to use it, like in a well-natured way. We would say that's not evil. But if he were to lean his knee on the person's neck and asphyxiate him to death, that would clearly be evil. So force would be something that becomes evil in degrees, that clearly there's force that's not evil. So you couldn't say, ah, well, because there's some force that's not evil, I can use any force I want. That doesn't follow at all.

It'd be the same thing with taxes. Ah, because there's some taxes I can levy that are not evil, I could levy any tax I want. It doesn't follow from there either. That would be the same mistaken view. So Leo talks about this in Rerum Novarum. That's why he says the state can regulate private property. So when people – I'm actually going to respond to a Marxist soon who is critiquing my book who claimed that I argue for an absolute right to private property. I do not. That's a common straw man of the position I'm arguing for, which is the idea that your property is yours, and no one can ever take it away from you for any reason whatsoever. That is not a position I endorse, it's not a position the Church endorses, because property belongs to God made the earth

for everyone. It doesn't keep us from owning parts of it. So what Aquinas says is that because God made the earth for everyone, you have a right to other people's goods in cases of necessity. That's right. So if you're lost in the woods and you're starving to death, and you come across someone's summer cabin that they're not using right now, and you break in to get out of the blizzard and and feed yourself until you're rescued that would not be um that would not be theft that would be it falls under the duty to protect life and the universal destination of goods now you couldn't say oh this person doesn't have a right to this cabin because

we could use it to house people that are homeless in this county and take it from that person. That would be wrong. That would be an abuse of their property that they're using either personally as a summer getaway or in a private means. So I never say private property is absolute, and it can be regulated for the common good. But just because it can be doesn't mean, oh, we'll throw all the rules out the window, and the government says exactly what you can do. So Leo makes the point, he says, private property can be regulated for the common good, but the state may not absorb it altogether. And so it would be an injustice, I quoted this in the debate, for the state to assume all of people's properties through taxes.

So just to use a 100% tax rate to say, okay, you worked, we'll take that now and we'll redistribute it. Leo is very clear, the worker has a right to his wages and to dispose of them at his leisure. And now some people, Matt, I don't mean to go on and on, I got so much here. Some people will say, ah, but the encyclicals say that what you have that is superfluous, what you don't need to support yourself belongs to the poor. Yes. That's true. It's a moral duty. We have a moral duty to support the poor. But Leo even says that one may retain income not just for subsistence, but he says to keep up life becomingly. So you don't have to live in an empty house with

folding chairs. You can live a life that is becomingly, but with recognition of the moral duty you have to the poor. And so what Leo says is that the dispersal of the superfluous income is a matter of Christian charity. It is not a matter of human law. Because it's one thing to tell individual people to feed the poor. It's another thing to tell governmental officials to steal from everybody in order to try to rectify the inequalities. Right. Or to have the government not even,

it would be stealing, but to have the government enforce our moral obligation to help the poor. Because Aquinas makes it very clear that the government does not enforce all of our moral obligations. If in doing so, it makes a greater evil. That's why he infamously, Aquinas, allowed for the legality of prostitution, because he believed that if you made it illegal following Augustine, the world would convulse in lust, and it would be—so of course, so to take from that—so when I see people saying from this, oh, look at this, we have the strong moral duties of the state should compel us to do that. Well, Aquinas would say we have not just a strong moral duty, but an absolute moral duty not to frequent prostitutes. We have a stronger duty to not

avail ourselves of prostitutes than we do to give to the poor. But even there, Aquinas did not argue for the state to be involved. Now, today, we have the benefit of more empirical knowledge to know about the relevant harms that come from prostitution and the sex trade. And so we do not create greater evils in making it illegal, though we can, of course, prudentially disagree about how to implement these laws. And the same comes with the distribution of wealth. Hey, I want to ask you how socialism and communism are being rebranded today, because it seems that, you know, as we look at the country, as we look at many of these Black Lives Matter riots, I know we want to distinguish between protests and riots. If we want to look at those individuals who took over a section of Seattle, I would imagine that they

would identify as being socialists. Would you agree? I doubt they'd say they were capitalists. It's interesting that they stole people's land by force. Yes. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once said, those who fight monsters must take steps to ensure they do not become monsters. And so it's highly ironic that in Seattle, where there's currently, as the time of this recording, the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ, that has been erected, where these are primarily Antifa protesters who are anti-fascist. They claim to oppose fascism and things like capitalism and squandering property and things like that. And yet they've erected borders to an area where they demand to see

identification. They've created borders, borders that they secure with armed guards using guns, so that you become the very thing that you've opposed. And then you ask people over Twitter to bring you vegan burgers and soy and oats did you see that it's beyond parody i couldn't if i tried to make it up i couldn't do it as well but here i will say though to make a clarification uh the people who are involved with the black lives matter protests i think many of them in seattle have opposed what is going on at chas saying that it detracts from what they are doing, that they are trying to organize and have dialogue with the police departments to be able to have better policing and things like that. So I think actually a lot of Black Lives Matter, I commend those involved

with Black Lives Matter movement over the past few weeks, that the violence that has been present at their protests has decreased significantly. And I think that's a credit to those who are involved in that movement who have forcefully told people who are opportunists, who have shown up to make trouble, who have said, stop it. This is not, you know, they're going to blame us. What you're doing is wrong. It's not what we want. And so that is a good thing.

But you're right, Matt, there's a subset among these groups, including people who will call themselves Black Lives Matter, but also Antifa and others, who want a radical socialism. They want to abolish, although what they almost want, Matt, is kind of like anarcho-socialism. Like they don't want police. In Seattle, some people posted on Medium saying what their demands were for the Chas, saying they want to not abolish just the police, but the courts, for example. And they want strict communal rule without any kind of authority structures whatsoever. So that would be a version of socialism. So socialism, right, there's a huge umbrella under socialism. And you might call that anarcho-socialism.

and you might call that anarcho-socialism. I think in the early 20th century, Emma Goldman would be another example of that. Noam Chomsky seems to kind of lead towards anarchism a little bit himself. It's just funny that they lay all these evils to bear at the idea of a state, but what they forget is that these evils are not found in bureaucracy.

The evils are found in the hearts of men. As soon as you get rid of the state, the evils will remain. I just want to pull and show people this fantastic article it's from the Babylon Bee Democrats propose replacing all police with traveling bands of hippies singing imagine hey yeah give us your give us your take on black lives matter because this is something it feels like we're all kind of being pressured to speak about. What's your opinion on Black Lives Matter? Maybe the statement, maybe the group.

Oh, shoot. Are we out of time? I better head out of here. No, actually, I tweeted about this right now, so we'll see if I get fired or canceled. right now, so we'll see if I get fired or canceled. No, see, whenever I put stuff out, it's too centered or try to be even-handed to generate too much controversy. I don't just fly off the handle. I just wrote this, actually, before our interview. I wrote this. I fully support the proposition Black Lives Matter and condemn individual generational and systemic racism wherever they exist. However, I do not support the organization Black Lives Matter because it

promotes false pro-LGBT ideologies, and that is not a racist position. So there you go. Well, I mean, do they? I mean, because have you looked into the kind of institution Black Lives Matter and what they have to say about themselves? Or is it more that people who tend to say Black Lives Matter tend to also be trans activists? It's hard because Black Lives Matter is somewhat of a decentralized social movement. So they're not like the NAACP with chapters and, you know, they don't have a rigid hierarchy. But they have some leaders who identify as such and will speak to media.

They have a website at least. So I'm going at least what's on their official website. And so on what we believe for Black Lives Matter, they have a lot where they talk about things like they want to dismantle cisgender privilege. They want to foster a queer affirming network. This is on their website? Yeah, it's at blacklivesmatter.com.

You just click on what we believe. What's difficult is the statement Black Lives Matter is something everybody agrees with. But then when somebody says, yeah, all lives matter, they take offense in the way others might take offense who say, you know, the unborn matter. And someone replies, all lives matter. And then the

person who says unborn lives matter is like, no, you don't understand it. Unborn, you know, children are being arbitrarily killed in the womb. And so there's obviously something behind the phrase that you have to agree with as well. The idea that- Well, I think that it's the phrase all lives matter is taken as something that's antagonistic towards Black Lives Matter or dismissive. Dismissive. And so that's why it's dismissive. And your analogy about the unborn, if we were to have a movement that said unborn lives matter and people said, well, all lives matter, we would consider it dismissive of the claim that we are making. So I don't use, that's why I don't use that claim all lives matter as a replacement phrase.

And people have asked me, well, what should I—I want to march and support this, but I don't want to support this organization. That's why I said I don't recommend then holding a sign, Black Lives Matter, because it's also the name of the organization. And as I showed from their own website, they support anti-Christian ideals that break down the nature of the family, which I want to talk about here in a sec also. So I said, well, just march with a sign that says, end racism now, or racism is evil. To me, that is a very clear core message that we can all agree on and that we should march towards. Now, that being said, I have disagreements. So for example, I believe that there is, like my

personal thoughts on racism in the United States, I believe that there is like my personal thoughts on racism in the United States. I believe that there is a fair amount of notice in my tweet. I said there's individual generational and systemic racism. So we live in a country with 330 million people. You're going to find a lot of individual racists out there against all kinds of people, not just against blacks, but against Jews, against Asian-Americans, against indigenous peoples. not just against blacks, but against Jews, against Asian-Americans, against indigenous peoples. You'll have people who are racist against all kinds of people. Australians, that's a joke. Hispanics, yeah. You're just a bungee while you crocodile Dundee people coming over here.

Oh, no, I'm talking just like you. What am I doing? So, yeah, so obviously that's wrong. The other two, generational racism, I believe that does exist in the sense that because our country in the United States, and this also happened in other countries around the world, you had that in Australia, you know, with the treatment of Aborigines, that because of previous racist policies, undoing the policies cannot magically reverse the damage the policies did. And so even if you say, well, we don't do that anymore, it's like, yeah, but there's still residual damage that has come from that that we can feel today that has left these groups in a less advantageous position. So I do believe that

there is individual racism, there is generational racism that we have to overcome as remnants of past crimes. But I do not believe the United States engages in systemic racism. Systemic racism, I believe, would apply to the United States during the age of Jim Crow laws that prevented African Americans from voting and accessing public accommodations when there was apartheid in South Africa. That, to me, is systemic racism. If you define systemic racism so broadly that it includes generational racism, then everybody's racist. That's why you have to be careful with these terms. If you define a term so that everybody's socialist or everybody's racist, then nobody's socialist and nobody's racist. Yeah, that's what I've found. When I moved to America several years ago,

yeah, even though we obviously have our race issues in Australia, being here, as I started listening to the news, it kind of felt like CNN kept telling me I was a racist, you know, and I'd be like, no, I'm not. Now that proves that you bloody are. I'm like, well, I can't win this argument then. And yeah, so it seemed like the way people used to think of racism would be, you know, you look down on another race, another ethnicity as somehow inferior to your own. Whereas now it sounds it feels like people want to redefine race racism to mean something. Yeah. As you say, so vague and so broad that all of us are guilty of it. So it's kind of difficult to fix then if we're not really defining it with hard edges.

It is. And I think also we have to be vigilant about racism. with hard edges. It is. And I think also we have to be vigilant about racism. But at the same time, when people overreact to things, when they overreact to things like the boy who cried wolf, if you say that something is racist when it's not, you start missing the things that actually are racist. So, for example, many people who are part of Black Lives Matter, others who are promoting, you know, this idea of systemic racism will try to tie what they call microaggressions into being racist. So, for example, one might be a microaggression would be if you have an African-American friend who has very tight, curly hair. And if you say something like, I just love your hair.

Oh, can I touch that? Oh, that's just, I love this. But that's considered a microaggression, that it's a form of implicit racism because you don't do that to other people. That doesn't make sense to me. I was in Africa. I did that to little kids all the time. Their hair's awesome. Yeah, and frankly, my own children.

I've done that to your hair people when i let my hair grow out people that people do that to my son all the time because he has he has hair uh that is he he was at the park the other day and he was playing with another child who is biracial with a child whose mother was white and whose father is african-american and this girl my son had the same kind of hair and people always go up to my kiddos with their luxurious curly hair and want to touch it. To me, it's just more annoying sometimes, or a bit of fatherly pride if people see them as so cute.

My point is that with a microaggression, sometimes it may be an expression of implicit racism, but other times we have a word for it, it's faux pas. It's just don't be weird with other people people and don't overreact to to other people. I remember once I was watching a video, you know, saying, here's all the hidden racism you do. And one was it was all different kinds of groups. One had a Jewish guy saying, is it Levy or is it Levi? And I'm like, that's a fair question to ask, because Levi is a Jewish name, like to mispronounce it. I had a grandmother who is Jewish, was my great-grandmother Levi.

And I tell you what, if somebody else comes up to me and says, that's not a knife, I'm just going to lose my – I don't mean to make light of this issue, but that sounds as trivial. The Levi-Levi distinction sounds as. Yeah, I just remember it a long time. Now, some microaggressions, Matt, I do think they border on, you know, it's not racism, like malicious, but it's like, oh, you shouldn't really say it. Like if people who said something like, oh, wow, you know, you're so eloquent for a black person. It's like, to me, that is bleeding into racism. Absolutely. But I don't think the person is malicious. No, they may not be malicious,

but that sounds like a pretty shitty thing to say. But it's pretty bleeding into, and it is a form of implicit racism that people may not be aware of. We interact with people based on our past experience of what they're like. That's also got to be playing into this as well. I'm not saying

that that justifies saying to somebody you're very eloquent for a black person that sounds like a shitty thing to say to somebody but you know like if your only experience of australians was this or that then you naturally are going to assume that the next australian you meet is going to be like this or that no am i wrong we absolutely and we do this, and we have to be careful to avoid stereotypes and these kinds of—that's what prejudice is. And so we have to treat people as being a son or daughter of God, made in the image of God, and understand that person will have their own backstory, their own emotions, their own things that they have been through. And so we shouldn't let that color our perceptions of people, whether it's their race or their occupation. I have had a fair number of bad run-ins with the police, for example. I love going out with my wife because when I go to immigration checkpoints

or the police are around, they're super nice because I have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed wife. But then when I'm by myself, I get the third degree. Is that true? I mean, are you not just kind of reading into that? And why is it that you think you're getting the third degree. Is that true? Is that true? I mean, are you not just kind of reading into that? And why is it that you think you're getting the third degree? It could be like, whenever I go to a traffic stop, like let's say at an immigration, you know, checkpoint on the freeway or something, what happens, you know, when I go, when my wife is with me, we go through. Now that could be just because if I'm a single male, they're more

suspicious than if I'm married and my wife is with me. But my wife will travel by herself and she'll go through these things and they'll just waver on through. But your wife is so delightful and smiley. She's also said that I look suspicious. Yes, I can see you looking super stern and, yeah. Which, again, that's no reason necessarily for a police officer to treat you differently. I don't know. So it could be my my sex. It could be my disposition. But but it also just wouldn't surprise me if I have a bit of a I have a bit of a darker complexion to me.

And it comes off that way. So that would be so that would be an example. Now, I believe I was racially profiled when I went to Israel. They probably do that for their security protocols. I went there with my white father-in-law. Okay. And then he went through security and he was fine.

And then I was behind him and they said, you need to go over here. And they just grilled me. Well, it was the yarmulke. Right? Well, no, like the problem is when I go to Israel,

the Jews all think that I'm Muslim, and the Muslims all think that I'm Jewish. And so I'm like, ah, how do I fit in all that? So, yeah, we have to avoid all that. I want to bring up something people have asked me. Please. Because I meant to reply to this on Twitter, on Black Lives Matter, because, once again, I try to be fair to all social groups and all movements as well. There are good and bad things in them.

There's a lot of things I'm critical of with Black Lives Matter, though obviously I'm not critical of their main mission of opposing police brutality. We shouldn't have that at all. But people have asked me about this, though. They have this. prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and villages that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable. And it's the line, we disrupt the Western prescribed nuclear family structure. People say that should be a big reason we should be opposed or critical of this organization.

Yeah, that again sounds like a kind of socialism, a socialistic utopian dream right there, the idea that we're all brothers and sisters, no? Well, not necessarily. To me, the way that it's phrased, it says disrupt rather than like replace or abolish. You can read that in a positive light by saying, you know, we support each other as extended families and villages. That what's funny is some people seem to think that the Christian family is a mother, father, and children. But throughout the history of the church, that was the core.

But the Christian family was really a more established kin group i mean most people throughout the history of the church never traveled more than 30 miles from their own home yeah right i mean think about it never left 30 you would have never most throughout most of the church's history you you would not have traveled more than 30 miles from where you lived wow and so you lived and so your family was not just your mother and father and siblings it was your cousins it. It was your aunts. It was your uncle. It was your grandparents. And you were you were interconnected as a web. And even this continued into the modern age until it was kind of disrupted by the Industrial Revolution, where people would leave the farm because you lived in a farm community. And you were all you had this connected web with everyone, with your sister in law, your brother in law.

But with the Industrial Revolution, people left the farm to move to cities. And so they created these isolated, you know, quote unquote, nuclear families that actually aren't as stable. There was an article about it in The Atlantic a few months ago. I'm going to get the name of it right now. And it was David Brooks. David Brooks wrote this in March 2020. The nuclear family was a mistake. Now, I don't agree with everything Brooks says in the article, but he makes a good point that when we take the family and we make it just mom, dad and the kiddos, it becomes like stressful, isolated. You know how it is living far away from family. Yeah. When it's like you want that comfort of family, but they live 2,000 miles away

or they live across the world for you. It's hard when people didn't always have that. So back to Black Lives Matter, what they say, I agree with that sentiment in the sense that we should promote extended families that reinforce the strength of the nuclear family. And it does, what was interesting in that statement that you read was to the end of it

it said, to the degree in which the mother or father is comfortable, I think it said. Which seems to, you know, point to the fact that there ought to be a mother and father, yeah. Yes, however, I will bring up a point that does, it's like, you give with one hand and take with one back. They didn't say father.

Interesting. They say, to the degree that mother's parents and children are comfortable what is that yeah so then when i see that it's it's like oh you were so close and then you fumbled on the 99 yard line because why why in the world will we denigrate the need for fathers i mean there is a crisis crisis of fatherhood in this country. I think it was—who was it? Obama talked about it. David Popino.

He wrote a book called Families Without Fathers. Right. Excellent book that many of our social ills can be traced back to a crisis of absent fatherhood, either literal absence or metaphorical absence because fathers aren't standing up for the position they need. And fathers are undermined by making people think that, you know, fathers are actually not as helpful for families as mothers when they are instrumental for the well-being and health

of sons and daughters, respectively. Okay, well, look, what I want to do is I want to begin to wrap up here and then we'll do a Patreon segment where I want to ask you about distributism. Ooh, fun. Yeah, but before we do, there's going to be a link below so people can click and watch this excellent debate

that you had. You certainly won that debate. If we want to talk about winners and losers, you definitely won that debate, hands down. I thought he was a lovely guy. Although the one kind of pushback people gave you was, the question was, can a good Catholic be a real socialist or something to that effect? And he offered three, but I think you've kind of responded to that in the debate.

Right, and I think in the debate I made the point was that these people are not true socialists, and that's not the true Scotsman fallacy. And he just showed, here are three people who call themselves socialists. Well, that's not socialism. So people can check that out, and then they can also get your book. So just, you know, maybe in a minute or less, tell us about your book and why people should get it. Yeah, the book is Can a Catholic Be a Socialist? No, Here's Why. And it's co-authored with Catherine Bacolic, who is a professor of economics at the Catholic University of America, and it covers my case, our case, for what socialism is,

why Catholics can't support it, what capitalism is, how we should understand that, and gives a history of both of these systems and how magisterial thought has unfolded in reflecting upon them, and then ends with a call to moral capitalism. So if you want to check that out, it's Can a Catholic Be a Socialist? It's available in paperback, ebook,

and also in audiobook form, and I narrate the audiobook. Did you? Fantastic. I did. I'll put links to that below. I hope that you enjoyed that episode and that it was just delightful and helpful. If you're listening to this as a podcast,

please share it. If you're watching as a podcast, please share it. If you're watching it on YouTube, please share it. It really does help us out. Subscribe, like, comment, all of that helps the algorithm. Okay, so if you want to watch the rest of the show, you've got to become a patron.

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All right, so for those of you who are patrons, let's go over there and listen to this bit about this distributism. If you're not, that's all right. I hope you have a bloody good day. Yeah, all right. See you later. Cheers.

Cheers, big ears. Same goes big nose. There's more, but it's inappropriate. So just, bye.