Derek: 00:28

Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. We are starting to draw our season on government to a close, which feels really good to me. But I feel like even though I've made a pretty compelling case for how Christians should view government, that this betrothal to government, this betrothal to pragmatic systems is is so ingrained in us that I just feel like I've emphasized it so much that maybe listeners are going to think that what I'm saying is hyperbole. I can hear a lot of people saying right now, sure, because humans are fallen, all systems are going to have flaws, but we don't have to assent to moral compromise when participating in government. I get that.

Derek: 01:15

I I understand that pushback. But, yeah, that's that's extremely idealistic, and you know, this coming from the the exact same people who speak of pacifists as being idealists. Nevertheless, I understand that that I am going to have to deal with this kind of pushback, people who think this kind of thing. I've made a a very comprehensive case this season about as comprehensive as as I can make it at this point, but I don't think that there's there's anything as powerful as maybe getting information straight from the source. So I can argue philosophically, theologically, all that I want, but until you kind of are able to to see things in action straight from the horse's mouth, it it's not gonna be nearly as meaningful.

Derek: 02:10

So conveniently for me this season, I came across something just the other day, which I think is going to help you see that the criticism that I have levied this season so far, and and a lot of Christian anarchists levy, this idea that, you know, moral compromise is horrendous and inevitable when you join government, I I think that I came across something that is gonna show you from the real world that this isn't hyperbole, but it's absolutely 100% accurate and realistic. The other day, I came across an interview done by Al Moeller, who is a major player in the Southern Baptist Convention, which is the largest, I think, Protestant denomination in The States at this point, and is the the second largest Christian denomination in The States, next to the Catholic Church, which is not Protestant, of course. So Moeller and the SBC are very representative of Evangelicalism and Protestantism in The States. In this particular interview, which is entitled Spycraft and Soulcraft, Mohler interviews James M. Olson, and Olson is a man who is a Christian, along with his wife, and both of them served in the CIA for a number of years.

Derek: 03:39

Mohler spends a lot of the interview discussing with Olson what some of the big moral issues were that he had to deal with, and how Olsen worked through those ideas as a Christian. The interview is is a gold mine in terms of uncovering so much of of what we've talked about this season in regard to the way that government calls Christians to moral compromise, as well as revealing the consequentialism that we've talked about, I mean, a whole season, as well as through lots and lots of different episodes. So I'll put a link to the interview in the show notes, and I'll because I'll be jumping around from quote to quote, and you might like to see where it is in the context of the whole interview. I'll also be discussing Olsen's book a little bit, because after I heard this interview, I I definitely went and and read his book called Fair Play, and we'll we'll be discussing a bit of his book as well. So let's jump in.

Derek: 04:38

To set the stage for the first extended quote from Olson and Moeller, when I was reading Olson's book, one of the one of the first things that stuck out to me was and this is not a direct quote, but Olson said that, like, he lied, cheated, and stole every day of his career, which is probably a little bit hyperbolic, but maybe not really. He probably did at least one of those things every day of his career, you know, because you're participating in lies all the time. And this harkens back to an interview I did with Zach Johnson this season where he was talking about, hey, look, you get into other moral issues too, which he found because when he declared that he was a conscientious objector, but he's in the Air Force, and he's like, Well, they tried to move me around to some different positions, but he's like, you know, the position I found myself in, it's like, well, for counterintelligence, part of our job is we have to figure out how do we lie to our allies and our enemies. We don't want our allies to know our full strength, but we want them to know a little bit, and we don't want our enemies to know things.

Derek: 05:50

So now my job is just lying all the time. So how do you how do you deal with that as a Christian? So Olsen is he's gonna come face to face with this, and of course, Olsen is gonna have a little bit different of a take than I would or Zach Johnson had. And Olsen is going to essentially justify this. He's going to see that absolute morality or he refers to veritatis splendor, I think is what he calls it, which is kind of some Catholic teaching on at least certain certain aspects of absolute morality.

Derek: 06:29

And he's gonna say, Look, that's that's just idealistic because it doesn't it doesn't protect you. It doesn't get you the results that you want. Yet, he'll deny consequentialism as as I think you'll see in one of the quotes. So let's just get into his his interview here. Let me read what he says.

Derek: 06:49

So this is, first of all, from Al Mohler. Quote, you acknowledge in both of your books that spycraft or espionage will invoke some serious moral questions. And in your first book, Fair Play, The Moral Dilemmas of Spying, you actually set out so many of these explicitly, and I think with a lot of intellectual honesty. One of the things that you acknowledge is that it comes down to whether or not one will do spycraft or not. You write, I will concede that spying is a dirty business, but my question is this, what's the alternative?

Derek: 07:21

No intelligence? Should we abstain from lying, cheating, deceiving and manipulating, and do without the intelligence they produce? Should we unilaterally discontinue espionage and covert action operations overseas? Should we put all our trust in overt sources of information, diplomacy, and the peaceful arts and hope our enemies will not take advantage of us? Is that the real world?

Derek: 07:44

Would that be safe? Well, you raised that question, End quote. So Olsen's gonna reply to that, right? Direct quote from his book. He's like, how how do we avoid doing all these bad things because if we didn't do these bad things, these things that people deem bad, it wouldn't be good for national security.

Derek: 08:06

So here's Olsen's reply. I did raise the question. It is something I've thought a lot about because my life was a paradox in many ways. Because on one hand, the most important things to me in my life were my country, my family, my honor, and my faith. But on the other hand, I spent my entire CIA career lying, cheating, stealing, manipulating, deceiving.

Derek: 08:29

So that's the issue that I wanted to deal with. Can those two points be reconciled? Can a man of faith conduct himself in such a way that he is engaging in those things? When Meredith and I, my wife was also in the CIA by the way, when we launched into this career, we had to make an upfront racialization. We had to say, All right, as people of faith, we know that we will be doing things we would not ordinarily be doing, the lying and cheating and so forth.

Derek: 08:58

But we sincerely believe that we're doing these things for a greater good, for the legitimate defense of our country. And I can tell you that throughout our career, even though we engaged in some things that sometimes bordered on, we did not see any conflict between what we were doing and our faith or our moral code. We devoted our lives, Doctor. Moeller, to protecting our country against totalitarian, evil, oppressive, atheistic communism, and we thought that we were on the right side of that. And so, we had no qualms about doing what we had to do for our country.

Derek: 09:31

If we're going to defend our country against the evils that are out there, we can't go out there with our hands tied behind our back. We've got to fight tough. And that's the issue. How tough is too tough. When do we cross the line?

Derek: 09:45

When do we betray those values that we're fighting so hard to defend? When do we become them? And that's kind of the point that we had to discuss throughout the book. Yes, I think that's accurate. That's the way I saw it.

Derek: 09:57

And I do believe that the Just War Theory does apply to us in intelligence community. If it could be morally acceptable, as Aquinas said, to kill in legitimate defense of our country, it seems to me that it should be morally acceptable as well to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, coarse, and legitimate defense of our country. Okay. Let's pause here. So this this brings to mind a couple things.

Derek: 10:22

I mean, number one, again, Olsen is going to say that and I'm sorry. But before I I kinda start attacking Olsen, I do wanna say something positive first. I I do appreciate how Olsen is very open and upfront about his moral reasoning. I disagree with him 100%, but I like that he does not compartmentalize things, but he admits what his morality produces, or or what his reasoning is. Because I and and I think part of that is because he was thrust into a situation where he does value his faith, but he also does value protection.

Derek: 11:04

And I don't think he's he's just purely self interested trying to protect himself. Really do think he's trying to protect the people of The United States and the lifestyle that we have here. Like he's trying to protect our country. I just think that his moral system, I mean, it undermines the Christian morality, and it also undermines the Christian kingdom, this idea that, you know, we're a borderless nation and so he's willing to take advantage of other people just because they're in a different border, and that's throwing off this Christian ideal of borderless nations and subjectifying people. So I really disagree with it, but I appreciate that he takes it head on, and a lot of the the conservative Christians here, stateside, they're not going to do that.

Derek: 11:54

They're gonna, you know, dismiss and say, well, no, you know, and they're they're just gonna obfuscate or whatever you call it. And I like that he he's honest, he's open, he's upfront because we can have a conversation where we disagree and we we battle that out. So I appreciate that about him. So to what he said, I mean, first of all, he's gonna say that he's not a consequentialist, but 100 I don't know how you say you're not when you say, you know, what's the alternative if I don't do these things? And that that's a consequentialist ethic.

Derek: 12:30

He's saying, I have to do these things because they work. He also uses the term, you know, it's the greater good. Well, that's that's a consequentialist ethic right there when you when you see words great or good. That ends justifying the means, right? I'm willing to do a bad thing so that good things may come.

Derek: 12:46

A better thing in my perception may come, right? He's assuming his perception justifies him to do these bad things, but you know, somebody in a different country, their perception doesn't justify them to do the same things back to us. And then another tip-off here is gonna be where, you know, he talks about Aquinas' Just War Theory. And yeah, I have problems with that too, so I think I think if you base something off of Aquinas' Just War Theory, you've got you've got problems. But so let let's just let's just explore what he says.

Derek: 13:20

He says, you know, according to Aquinas' just war theory, it's okay to kill in defense of our country, so it should be morally acceptable as well to lie, cheat, steal, manipulate, coarse, and legitimate defense of our country. And I I think Olson is right, and that's a problem with Aquinas. If I can kill somebody for my country, why can't I lie to somebody for my country? Right? Why can't I steal, manipulate, course, manipulate, deceive, whatever?

Derek: 13:53

Why can't I cheat? I should be able to, right? My problem with Olsen's list is, I assume Olsen would say if I were to ask Olsen, and again this is speculation, but I'm I'm pretty sure I know what he would say. Okay, Olsen, Let's see. Would you ever James Bond it with some other woman for the better for for the greater good of your country?

Derek: 14:19

You can save a couple thousand lives, so go be unfaithful to your wife, you know, as part of the spy game. And I think you draw the line there, no no no, you can't fornicate, you can't commit adultery for for the course of your country, even if that saved thousands of lives. There's when when you get into some of his explicit scenarios in his book, one of the ones that stuck out to me, it was it was so interesting like how how people justified doing certain actions in spycraft but not others, and how they kind of changed back and forth. It's it's a really good book because it gives you lots of real life scenarios, and and you get to hear a lot of different people react to those scenarios, and it's just fascinating. But one of the ones that I think everybody was unanimous on was, no, it's not okay to obtain a child prostitute, an underage girl, for for somebody, like for a diplomat that you're trying to court.

Derek: 15:24

It's it's not okay to do that. And you're kinda like, well, Olsen, if I if I can kill somebody, if I can lie to somebody, if I can cheat or steal, why would why would obtaining one child prostitute for this diplomat that maybe I save thousands of lives, What's one child prostitute to thousands of lives? Sure, the child prostitute thing, that's terrible. I hate that. It's horrible.

Derek: 15:54

But that's one life that you're sacrificing, and you're not even sacrificing your life, you're just sacrificing one traumatic experience so I can save thousands of lives. Why like, his his moral his moral boundaries are just like he just he doesn't realize it, but he's he's just picking and choosing the things that he doesn't think are big deals, and he's choosing where he can compromise and where he can't, and it's arbitrary. Because there are other scenarios where obtaining an older prostitute, everybody's like, oh yeah, yeah, that would be fine as long as she's not exploited, you know, go ahead and obtain her. Well, what would happen if Olson was in a different country? A country where, you know, you've got a 12 year old girl, but there, there's no such thing as as child underage sexuality.

Derek: 16:53

And you could obtain it legally, and it's not against their like, with their intelligence agency, if there were Christians there, they might be okay with procuring an underage girl according to Olson's moral ideology if you're a Christian in that culture. So what you find is when you depart from objective morality, you end up getting this subjective morality where it doesn't make sense why you compromise on some things and not others. It's just it's arbitrary, it's subjective. And this harkens back to Augustine's, you know, books, his works. We did some episodes on lying and against lying, and when Augustine has this guy come to him and say, hey, look, can I can I lie to to these these heretics to try to entrap them and catch them in their their heretical acts?

Derek: 17:50

And Augustine's like, no, you can't do that. That's against the character of God. He's like, you wouldn't go fornicate with them to say, well, I can catch a heretic if I fornicate with them. So if you can't fornicate with them, you don't lie. And and I mean, it's the same thing here, I think Augustine's argument would would hold.

Derek: 18:11

Now, I think Augustine then is inconsistent with with his his whole killing, you know, his his justification of killing. Nevertheless, even there, Augustine could say, well, killing isn't inherently wrong. It's not something that's against the character of God, whereas lying would be. I definitely recommend you go back and listen to some of those episodes, as well as the season on consequentialism to kind of, get more of an idea of what what problems I think Olson has going on here. Alright.

Derek: 18:43

So let's get into the next quote that I'm gonna have, where Al Moeller asks a question. Moeller says, I agree that spycraft is an honorable thing to do, but you're not merely saying that the end justifies the means. And Olsen replies, Well, it's close. And I don't want to be labeled a utilitarian, but a lot of the means that we use. Let's take some examples.

Derek: 19:09

Targeted killings, waterboarding, blackmail, seduction are ugly things in the abstract, but have they saved lives? Have they been for a greater good? By waterboarding Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, how many American lives did we save? How many terrorist attacks did we thwart? By killing Osama bin Laden, assassinating him extra judicially, didn't we in effect render justice?

Derek: 19:34

Didn't we prevent anything that he was planning to do in the future? Now a lot of people objected to those acts, and I understand why. But as I point out in the book, and you cited that, what if we had not engaged in those activities? What if we'd refrained from collecting that intelligence? Where would we be?

Derek: 19:52

And I think that's an unacceptable alternative. I believe that when we go out there, we've got to have the tools at our disposal to match the evil forces that we're fighting against. So Olsen doesn't want to be called a utilitarian, but he's a utilitarian. I mean, I just there's there's absolutely no escaping it. Now that again, I I appreciate his his candidness, but that's just what it is.

Derek: 20:22

He's a consequentialist. He's a utilitarian. And the the goal of this episode isn't to bash James Olsen. The goal is to say like, Olsen is just telling you what the reality of government is. You go into government, this is what you do.

Derek: 20:41

The ends justify the means. Like, your job in government is to figure out how far can I morally compromise to get the greatest good out of this because moral compromises are required? Now, Olson tries to justify those and say, well, they were actually good things because it accomplished a a better thing. The the result was better than the act was bad. But that's what government is.

Derek: 21:12

That that's what it is. This is reality, straight from the horse's mouth. I wanna read you just one more quote that kind of gets at this this, you know, consequentialism, utilitarianism aspect, and and kinda cement that in, and then move on to a final part. So here's a quote. It's really unfair after the fact, I think, for people sitting back in Washington to say, You went too far.

Derek: 21:42

You should not have kidnapped that person. You should not have waterboarded that person. Because it's easy to say, and our people were doing this with the best of intentions, waterboarding is nasty. I hate the fact that we had to do it, but it's easy to take the moral high ground and say, we're not gonna do that. And of course, the Obama administration decreed that we would not do it anymore.

Derek: 22:03

That's fine. Tell us, we won't cross the line. But we have to realize that when we refrain from activities like that, and I would contend as my good friend and colleague Jose Rodriguez wrote in his book, Hard Measures, that waterboarding these three people did save lives. And these people were not permanently harmed, the ones who are waterboarded. And so that's kind of a horrible calculus that you have to make weighing the lesser of evils.

Derek: 22:26

But I take the position that in an extreme case with preferably judicial oversight, we should not take enhanced interrogation off the table. If we have an imminent threat to our country, lives are at stake, we know the information could be extracted that can save those lives and that enhanced interrogation is the only way to get it. That's a horrible position to have to state, and I'm not proud of it, but I believe that in the greater good, you can make that case. So again, Olson here uses the words, you know, lesser of evils, greater good. Hands down, consequentialism, utilitarianism.

Derek: 23:06

So then, after this, Moeller is like, yeah, I agree with you, but I'm a little bit disturbed because I feel like, well, then can't you end up justifying everything? And Olsen asked him a question. He says, Well, let me ask you, do you think that waterboarding is bad, but it doesn't kill? And Moeller kind of chews this over and he's like, Yeah, I mean, I guess, I mean, like, killing is really the worst thing that you can do, right? So if we justify killing and we know that killing is right, or can be right, then how do I not justify these things?

Derek: 23:45

And they get into this, in their minds, murky territory. And and I get that because I I was there for sure. And it was it was actually this sort of thinking which made me realize, hey, look, I've I've gotta make a choice. I've choose either killing is bad or a lot of things can be justifiable. And so one of the one of the the situations, the the clincher for me was when I realized, okay, I love old World War two movies, Nazi Germany.

Derek: 24:22

I would kill a Nazi in a heartbeat to to just because Nazis were terrible. They were killing lots of people. I'd kill a Nazi in a heartbeat to save people. Yet, the place that I get my haircut, it's right next to a Five Guys, and on the other side of it is a Planned Parenthood. And you'd see people protesting, and you'd see women who are walking in, who I know were going to get abortions.

Derek: 24:50

If abortion is the modern day holocaust, there's a quote Nazi doctor in that abortion clinic as I speak getting ready to murder. And I would never justify somebody going and bombing that clinic or killing that doctor, but I'd kill a Nazi in a heartbeat to save the life of the Jew, or whoever else they're going to kill. There's there's a major dissonance there, and I I have yet to hear anything that's even close to convincing about the distinction between those two things. Because if abortion is the modern day holocaust, then I've got a Nazi right next to me when I when I am getting my haircut, and I don't do anything about it. So either killing the German and killing the the abortion doctor are wrong, or they're both right, and really, I should probably go and kill some abortion doctors to defend life.

Derek: 25:53

So I recognize for me, it was more ludicrous to justify bombing an abortion clinic than it was to say, You know what? I shouldn't kill the Nazi or the abortion doctor. Because anything in between those two options is inconsistent moral application. It's hypocrisy, it's failing to it's refusing to acknowledge the logical conclusions of your system. And that's that's where Moeller and Olsen are, right here.

Derek: 26:32

Moeller is more wrestling through it. He's like, yeah, I I feel like you can justify everything, but we know that it's okay to to kill because of just war, so I guess you're right, Olsen. I guess, you know, and they're really wrestling with that. Olsen's kind of come to his conclusion, molar still vacillates a little bit, but that's the type of thing that that you really need to to sift through to create this this dissonance that's going to get you to land where you need to land. Either you land with Olsen and say, Yeah, we can pretty much justify anything, really, if if we can find a good that is big enough to to negate the evil of the act that I'm gonna do, or you come down on the side of of non violence.

Derek: 27:24

So there's another quote that I like that Olson pulled out once or twice in his book that I think summarizes maybe Olson's ideology here. And it was a quote from Nathan Hale, which Nathan Hale is the guy who was was caught for being a spy and you know, he said, Miles, something to the extent of like, I just wish that I had more than one life to give for my country, right? Well, Olsen pulls out another quote from Hale that Hale used to justify his spying because apparently, spying used to be just like really looked down on, like, oh, that's deception and you know, that's that's not honorable. So Nathan Hale, before he made his decision to be a spy, to justify his being a spy, made this statement, quote, Every kind of service necessary to the public good becomes honorable by being necessary, end quote. So in Olsen's mind, because espionage, the lying, the cheating, the stealing, maybe the fornication, I don't I don't know where he lands on that, Procuring prostitutes, embezzling, like, whatever.

Derek: 28:35

All these things. If they're necessary to the public good, which I guess is good for the greatest number of people, I I don't know. But because if an action is necessary to that good of the people, then it becomes honorable because it's necessary. From a Christian moral perspective, that's messed up because Olson is choosing to define good as in my physical well-being at this moment or even economic freedom. So there's a point in Olson's book where he says that economics or he agrees with this idea that economics is national security.

Derek: 29:20

I forget which president kind of said that and used it as a justification for war or violence, but Olson, as far as I could tell, agrees with that. Economics is national security. So now we're talking about killing people, lying to people for the the good, right? Because it's it's necessary for the good, and what makes something good? Well, economics is national security, so I can kill and lie in the name of economics because that's a public good, that's a security measure to to maintain my economic standing and well-being, which ironically, we disagree with when, you know, Japan bombed us because we messed with their economics through sanctions.

Derek: 30:09

So is economics, you know, a call to war if we mess with somebody's economics? Is it does it justify doing evil things? If so, does that work both ways? Or is that only if it harms The United States does it justify our immoral actions because our economics is a greater good? So I think there's enough there for you to see the just moral issues, the just wasteland that is that that moral reasoning.

Derek: 30:44

It's it's consequentialist, it's utilitarian no matter how you want to dress it up. And, yeah, I I think there's plenty there for you to to sift through that. But I do wanna to leave with with two things. I'll leave with a more practical, pragmatic realism check, and then we'll end with a Christian Kingdom realism check. So one of the first thing, you know, practically speaking, Olsen makes a big assumption.

Derek: 31:13

He makes a lot of big assumptions, but one of the big assumptions is that the government is out to protect our good, and that they do that well. Yet, there are so many things and Olsen even brings up one thing that I hadn't heard of before. HT Lingual, which is when the government for like twenty years or something was basically opening people's mail. But, you know, on top of HT Lingual, all of the other things that the the government has done in the intelligence sector, There were the Pentagon Papers that showed we fabricated, you know, the reason that we got into war with Vietnam, like we made that up so we could go to war with them. We had COINTELPRO when the government was spying on everyday citizens like feminist groups, Martin Luther King Jr, trying to get them to commit suicide, sending them things in the mail, getting liberal professors fabricating stories of infidelity and breaking up marriages of liberal professors who were part of like anti war groups, non violent anti war groups, and all kinds of terrible things that are uncovered in COINTELPRO.

Derek: 32:32

WikiLeaks talking about how we're harming civilians in in our wars. Snowden, what the things that Snowden released about how the government basically has all of our emails and phone records and things. I mean, it the the amount of evil that our government does, the the police state that it is, it's it's insane. But Olson has this idea that the government is is like a father, like like a good father. It's almost like this surrogate father for us.

Derek: 33:08

It's almost like like a god, like a second god, which justifies the evils that we do and which wants to take care of us. Like, it I don't know. It's it it just doesn't sit well with me knowing what I know about who our government is and and our history. I mean, the CIA and the the assassinations that they're they're doing in all of these other countries, the the coups that they're they're doing, the the tyrants that they're installing in Iran and Cuba and who knows where else, just all of our international interactions, I mean, there's so much gross wicked stuff going on externally as well as internally. And so for me to trust Olson and and his department and and government institutions that they're making huge moral decisions that compromise objective morality, but then if I was gonna have anybody compromise objective morality to have them do it?

Derek: 34:08

There's no way. There's no way that I am going to to put my name on that and and put my name behind that as, you know, these people I trust to make moral compromises for me, because they care about my well-being. I just history tells us the opposite of that. And that leads into not only so that's that's more of a practical side of things, like history shows us that this just is illegitimate, but as a Christian, it's it's a million times more illegitimate that for my economic interest, installing a tyrant in Iran and Cuba is good. We can overthrow their leaders, we can assassinate people, we can install somebody who we train to torture and make people disappear who are political enemies, like, because that's good for us.

Derek: 35:01

How as a Christian does that make sense? Okay. Maybe maybe what we did in Iran and Cuba and South America, maybe that was good for me. Maybe that was good for citizens of The United States. Maybe economically that was great.

Derek: 35:18

I don't know. Let's assume that it was. For me as a Christian, does that justify it? Like, when when Olsen defines what is good, he is defining what is good for American citizens because he's protecting American citizens. How is that even a a Christian perspective that I am going to do what is good for the people on my borders at the expense of people just because they're they're across the ocean, they're they're behind some other arbitrary borders.

Derek: 35:49

It's it's not a Christian thing. It just isn't Christian. I mean, I don't think any of it is. The the moral justifications, the the killing, the lying, all that stuff. I don't I don't think you can have moral justifications for that.

Derek: 36:03

But what's just disgustingly unchristian is our willingness to sacrifice and objectify non Americans. That is not a kingdom mindset because if you're a Christian, we are all in the same Big K Kingdom, but it seems to me that Olson and nationalists and patriots are willing to sacrifice brothers and sisters, anyone, but especially brothers and sisters in the Big K Kingdom for their idols in Little K Kingdoms. But don't take my word for it. Check out the interview with Olsen. Check out Olsen's book, Fair Play.

Derek: 36:46

It really is a good book that gives you insight into things. Even if you're gonna disagree with it, it you know, I don't wanna straw man it, and so go check it out for yourself. That's all for now. So peace, and because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it. This podcast is a part of the Kingdom Outpost Network.

Derek: 37:27

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