Welcome back to the Fourth Wave podcast. Today, we are going to continue on with the interview section of our season. And I'm really excited because I am going to talk with somebody who was, my first stepping stone to coming to Christian anarchism or volunteerism. And, his name is Craig Hargis, and he is the host of the Bad Roman Podcast, which you should definitely go check out. I will put it, a link to it in the show notes below.

My goal in the interview section is to just ask some lingering questions or maybe even questions that I've already kind of tried to address myself or that I've I've talked with other people about on the show. But just kind of giving you different perspectives and and, different avenues, different vantage points, whatever, for, for different ideas, which might be helpful for you. I know that a lot of times, I have to hear something two, three, four times before it clicks for me, and sometimes it's not that it clicks because somebody says things in a more profound way, or whatnot, but just the right person said it at the right time and gave the right analogy, or the right bit of information. And or I just heard it for the fifth time and that's all it took. So listen to the interview, and hear some of the lingering questions that I have, and hopefully, Craig is able to to provide you some insight and reinforcement.

So here it is, Craig Hargis from the Bad Roman Podcast. My journey to Christian anarchism kind of started with pacifism, because, you know, I became convinced of that first. And I think I kind of came the theological route, like, you know, where my understanding from listening to your show is that you've come more from the political realm. You pretty inundated in politics. And your story yours was one of the first stories because I really struggled, Because I'm like, well, if I'm nonviolent, how do I how do I support the state?

But at the same time, kind of getting rid of the state just seemed nuts to me, like, that that you just can't do that. So your show was the first show that that I heard somebody who had an almost identical testimony of just coming to 2016 with President Trump and and all that stuff that was going on. And so I yeah, I was just amazed that we kind of had the same story, even though we kind of came from different perspectives. And you're toying with pacifism, or maybe you are a pacifist, but you kind of came pacifist through anarchism. So I'd love for you to maybe kind of just briefly tell your story, because I know people can go and get a fuller story on your podcast.

But just kind of explain how you came to your position and how that kind of intersects with nonviolence.

Well, I start first time I ever voted was with, George W. Bush in his first election. And I was a party line voter for sixth, well, until the Trump year, until Trump was nominated and I couldn't get on board with that guy. So I started seeking out a third party candidate, libertarian circles, I couldn't get on board with Gary Johnson signing up, voting for Darryl Castle from the constitution party. And that was the last time I ever voted.

During all that time that I was seeking out a third party, was involved with these libertarian groups and I ran into anarchists in these groups. And I was like you, I thought they were nuts. You know, they had a lot of great things to say, but it didn't make any sense to me. But, you know, if you could find one that wasn't totally snarky because Anarkus tend to be pretty snarky anyway, but, and then just have a conversation with them. It started making a lot of sense.

The individualism side of it really connected with me because even back to my, collectivist days, I had a sense of individualism. Was always wanting to concentrate on the individual. And that's what drew me to anarchy. But once I was able to study anarchy and I was like, man, this really lines up with my faith too. It makes more sense to me to be an anarchist.

And the more I studied the early church, I believe they were all anarchists. Because if you read the stuff that they were talking about, they had no desire to involve themselves with the state. They were very Jesus centric and they followed only Jesus. They didn't have any interest in being involved with it. But, yeah, I mean, it's kind of a roundabout way to go.

I got there. It was just the nonviolent side of it. And it's like you, how can you support the state if as violent as it is. You know? It didn't make any sense.

I couldn't reconcile that in my head anymore. And it just all kind of came together. You know, I was didn't like turn into an immediate anarchist either. It took me, probably a couple more years after the Trump election to kind of really latch onto it because I just, I knew I wouldn't wanna vote anymore, but I didn't know how to go about it. I thought, because when I first moved to Memphis, was gonna, back in 2018, first, one of the first things I did was I registered to vote, you know?

And I was gonna seek out some libertarian groups to try and help them get some politicians elected and stuff. I don't know, man. I just woke up one day and it was it. Especially when I could kind of put the two together with my faith.

Yeah, it was, for me, listening to your show and kind of realizing that anarchy might be a legitimate path to take, it was almost like a red pill blue pill moment for me, because I had seen some of my friends who were so revolted by the evangelical community's embrace of Trump and just the double standards and hypocrisy and immorality, that they ended up going, like, to the left. And I was like, that's not any better. They've got their own set of issues. But then when I started to toy with Christian anarchism, and I was able to I felt like for the first time, I was able to step outside of everything and kind of see the field. And it's it's almost like a a wake up moment.

It was it was just surreal.

Yeah. That that was one thing that I was really frustrated too. I understand what your friends were experiencing because I was getting that's another thing kind of spurred our project. I was getting really frustrated with other Christians and how they were latching on to Trump because he's vulgar. I mean, he was not a, he's not a good person.

I don't he's just that there's no way that there's no way around that, but Christians would ignore it. And I was I became really frustrated with them. You know? You you can't call yourself a Christian and then support or cheer somebody on that's acting like this, the way he's treating people.

Yeah. Yeah. And anarchism, it allows you to it's everybody else has to embrace this lesser of two evils ethic. They they have to be complicit with some evil, but anarchism allows you to be consistent as a Christian, which is something that I didn't realize my whole life. I was fighting against consistency in some form or fashion.

Right. It's people the folks I just got done talking to, they brought something up and people will lose their principles. They will compromise so much just because they're afraid of the other team, you know, and they're it's the, this tribalistic mindset, man, that just, I don't understand anymore. I kind of, I guess I did at one time, but I don't remember being like that. What I saw with Trump, we saw some with Obama, you know, as far as how people were just worshiping this guy.

But with Trump, man, so it was so different. And I just, it blew, it just, I was done with it. It was just so gross to me, especially on the Christian side. I'm not so much concerned with how non Christians are behaving because that's I'm more concerned with how Christians are behaving. We're supposed to be the image bearers of Christ.

And that's not there's nothing Christ like about how these people were acting.

Yeah.

It got pretty disgusting.

Yeah. And then sacrificing truth. I mean, both sides are using propaganda and both sides sacrifice truth in in their defense and and fear. So I wanna kinda get a little bit more into into this, because I'm gonna put this at the end of a season that I've I just did on government, and I'm doing the way that I do most of my seasons is that I set them up so that they're they're like cases. So, you know, you have evidence that kind of builds and then rebuttals.

And so in this interview, I'm trying to kind of tie up some loose ends of, I don't really understand anarchism fully, and trying to kind of round that out. So one of the things that I I struggle with is and I know you've mentioned it a couple times on your show, but the term anarchism is kind of abrasive and and something that, might turn people off well, it does turn people off at first. So why do you, why do you use that? Why do you continue to use that term if you know that it, it kind of hits people in the face and, and maybe turns some people away?

When I first started I've gotten away from it a little bit, but when I first started understanding it, I used it all the time because I liked it to slap people in the face with it because it would cause a conversation. And then I could because you were hearing what Sean Hannity and Donald Trump was calling anarchy with all these riots and stuff. I was like, that's not anarchy. So I could call myself an anarchist. And then they would look at, you know, they'd flinch because they thought you were supporting what these folks were doing out there.

I was like, no, that's not anarchy. But depending on the audience or who I'm speaking to, if I'm speaking to Christian, I use the term voluntarious more now than anarchy because they can understand that a little bit better. If I'm talking to a non Christian, I'll use anarchy or I interchange them. And it's funny, you know, I've almost with everything going on, there's just a lot going on with a bunch of anarchists right now that's been really frustrating for me. I've almost, I've been toying with the idea of just dropping the label altogether and just calling myself a Christian because I didn't become an anarchist before I was a Christian.

I was already a Christian. I became an anarchist because I'm a Christian. You know? And they should be synonymous with each other, the two words, but they're not sometimes. And it's just, I'm getting really irritated with a bunch of Christians or not young Christians and Christian anarchists too, because they're toying, they're reverting back to statism and it dilutes the message.

I'm, it just may, it just confuses the situation, but I'm gonna hold on to it for now.

See Yeah. How

know. It

I I get that because, you know, if you say Christian, then rather than than kind of picturing Christ, a lot of people picture, you know, the mainstream Christians that they see in the media who are supposedly emulating Christ. But, you know, like you said, when you go back to the early church, it looks so different than what you're seeing in our culture, for sure.

It's become really fascinated with the early church longer this project's going on because I didn't know anything about them really before this project. And I wanna learn more about them. We call ourselves bad Romans. You know, We need to go back and see what was going on back then and how the church was being persecuted and stuff and the more I read about them, man, it's just, it's a very, it's fascinating. Then, the way they, the way they interacted with the state is nothing like we see today.

This we see the church doing today. The the church is so entangled with it right now, and it's just it's it's just it's disrupting the message of Christ for sure.

Yeah. So I I think one of the one of the biggest issues that people tend to have, like, when they hear anarchism, they have all of these stereotypes. But beyond this, if you can get past the stereotypes of, you know, people throwing Molotov cocktails and that kind of stuff, I think the next stereotype that people have is that, okay, well, what happens if you get your way? And I think the image that I would have in my mind would be, you know, if you remember Hurricane Katrina, you got the superdome. That that seems like anarchy to me.

You've got, I don't know, 50,000, 100,000 people in that superdome. There's there's no law or order. There's no government around, and people were getting raped and robbed and murdered. And it was just it was nuts. Yeah.

So why would why would somebody want to embrace anarchy if that's what anarchy is without law and order?

I think if folks hadn't been become so reliant on the state, we wouldn't have seen that happen. What happened after Hurricane Katrina, because if we were working with the voluntary as a voluntary society, we would already have things in place for a catastrophe like that, you know? And I just don't think that we would see that. Now I understand that it's a scary concept without having the police, but we could still have all of that. I don't know if you've ever read You know who Robert Murphy is?

No.

He's got a book called Chaos Theory. And it's basically what a libertarian society would look like or voluntary society would look like and how that would work. You know, we would still have a police force, a fire department, medical services, all this stuff, it would be privatized. It wouldn't be funded through stolen funds. You see what I'm saying?

They'd be more accountable to us if it was privatized. I know it sounds like a leap. I mean, I get it. It's not something that we're seek happen overnight, But I do believe that the state can't sustain itself at the rate it's going. And we need to be prepared for that.

We need to be ready for that to happen because it's gonna happen. I don't know when. We may not see it in our lifetime. I also believe that I won't ever see a full or an anarchist society on a grand scale in my lifetime, but I think it's something we can start working towards for our children and their children's stuff, because the state's not always gonna be there. Yeah.

And there's always gonna be bad people. I mean, I understand that. I understand that argument, but they wouldn't be able to marshal the the tools and the money like the state has. You know, we're putting all these bad people in office and they're stolen all these taking all these stolen funds and using it to kill people. If they, if they you know, they always talk about welfare.

If they wanted to do that, if they were actually doing that, I'd probably be more cool with it, but they're not. They're taking that money and they're using it to murder people. The state is way more chaotic than what we've seen, what we saw on after Hurricane Katrina.

Yeah. So a bad day at the Superdome would be a good day in Afghanistan for an Afghani, you know, because you have a couple people die in the Superdome, but in Afghanistan, you you've got a lot of people dying and disorder and stuff that we create in part, at least.

Yeah. Mean, if you ever look at the situation in Yemen, it's awful, man. It breaks my heart and it's all at the hands of our government. I mean, there's no way around that. We would that wouldn't be happening if in an anarchist society.

Yeah. So, yeah, as you can probably tell, you know, I didn't know about chaos theory. My reading has not extended into the Christian anarchism realm yet. I've I've been just looking at at government and theology to this point. So that's that's my next there's a book called Anarchism by Kristinopoulos or something something like that.

I don't know. I'm not familiar. Okay.

Alright. Well, that's that's the next one on my list. But so out of out of I know that you're a Christian anarchist, but I'm sure if you're like me, like, I'm committed to nonviolence, but there are some days or moments or things that I see like, there was a video the other day about a girl, 11 year old girl who's gonna get kidnapped, and she fought back and got away. And I was like, Man, you know, if I had an 11 year old and she had access to a baseball bat or a knife or something, I 100% would want her to use that and get away. So there are moments or days or situations where I think twice about nonviolence.

For a moment, what's like the one or two arguments that gives you the most pause in regard to anarchism? If it was going to convince you that anarchism wasn't correct, what might persuade you away from it? Or what are the most convincing arguments?

I don't know that I have any anymore. You know, when I first started, there were some, just like the stuff you mentioned. But

Okay. What what what would for somebody else what do you think the one or two biggest ones?

Well, okay. I hear this all the time. If in a in a society where there's no no kind of structure or government structure, they're gonna use it they they they viewed it as like, have you ever seen Mad Max?

Yeah.

Something like that. Somebody's gonna take over at some point. I understand that argument, but I just don't think it's true because it's in everybody's best interest to live peacefully with each other. But there's still always gonna be bad people no matter if we have a government or not. I just don't see there's any way around it at this point because I just believe it's a better situation than what we're in right now.

Yeah. I just, I don't know. I just don't see those arguments anymore. I used to, and I get the same arguments quite a bit from folks, but I don't know. It just doesn't resonate with me.

I could not see I see the state for what it is. It's violent. It's coercive. It's a monster that is bigger than anything we've ever seen that we'd ever see on a scale on a small scale of anarchism.

So why why do you think why do you jump straight from, you know, voting Republican or Libertarian to no government at all? Do you think that it's do you think that it's a leap to kind of jump to no government? I mean, what about what about a different form of government or advocating for a different party? Why can't we nuance this a little bit? Why do you have to go to the extreme?

I guess I just don't believe that we've tried that. We've tried. There's been political other political parties throughout history and we've, we've tried all of it and it's getting worse. Now you got the Democrats and Republicans. They're the two main ones that they'll know there won't ever be a third party to overtake either one of them.

Not at this point. We're too far gone as a country and people are so ingrained and tribalist side of it with being a Democrat or Republican. You know, it's like Scott Horton told me, he said, because I this question come up quite a bit too. And he said, the best thing we can hope for as a libertarian presidential candidate is a good speaking tour. Like Harry Brown back in the day.

And he said in like with Ron Paul. So that's the best the best thing they can hope for is libertarians. They're not gonna get elected. I mean, it's let's just be real. I don't I don't I don't think it's I don't think it's something to push for.

It's it's a lost cause. We should start pushing for a free society. That does include the state. Yeah, it is a leap. You're right.

You know, I didn't stop voting in 2016, but I didn't turn straight into anarchy either. It took me a couple years. There's that joke. What's the difference between a libertarian and anarchist? It's about six months.

It took me about two years to finally latch onto it.

So you mentioned, you know, the Libertarian Party and such. And I know on your show you mentioned, I think it's Ron Paul, you mentioned a lot as somebody who I mean, I think you kind of look up to him a bit, like even if you disagree with him.

Well, I do now. No, I wasn't like most Libertarians, how they kind of came around to their way of thinking because of Ron Paul. You know, when he was on stage in the Republican debates, I was booting him. I was one the ones booting because I thought I thought he was unpatriotic. He wasn't supporting the military.

And looking back on the things he was saying, was right. You know, he's he was right all along. He called well, he talked about blowback. You know, the blowback like we saw in 09/11. That's because we've been attacking these countries for decades.

You know, they're fighting back. We should expect them to fight back. I mean, what what would we do if they were walking down our streets, their tanks were walking down, you know, driving through our streets? We wanna fight back. And it's the same thing.

But when yeah. With Ron Paul, he makes a lot of sense to me now. But back in the day, I was booing him off the stage.

So if if Ron Paul was running for president, even if you consider yourself a a Christian anarchist, do you think that you would you would vote for him?

No.

Okay.

No. I'm I'm I'm done with all that. I'm I'm a Christian, and it's not something I'm gonna entangle myself with anymore. I Christians shouldn't be involved with the state in any any any fashion because it's we're we're we have Christ. That's who we're supposed to be following.

If you read first Samuel eight, God was very clear when the Israelites demanded a king. He he was saying they were rejecting him by doing that. We should take that seriously as as Christians. If we're seeking another king or we're supporting a political party, we ought to take that very seriously what God said because we're rejecting Christ in that fashion. I don't think people understand that enough, non anarchists or people that are still entangled with it.

But Christian anarchists should understand that better than anybody.

Yeah. I think, you know, it seems like you should be able to have God and Caesar, right? King David and Jesus. And I think one of the things that makes people think that way, and maybe you could speak to this, is that so let's say you have a couple of the Christians like Ron Paul, who you think is pretty consistent and, you know, fairly moral. What What would happen if they all left politics?

Like, wouldn't we basically if you think it's bad now with all of the Christians in politics, what would giving control to the ungodly do to the world? And and that's something that, you know, I get pushed back on a lot.

Oh, I get I yeah. I trust you. I've heard that quite a bit. I think if these Christians that are that are running for office, so they if if they were actually promoting the kingdom of God, they wouldn't be distracted by the state. You know, I don't think we've there's evidence that Christians being in office has changed anything.

Know, things are still getting worse. We still have professing Christians in office. You know, it's it's still getting bad. It's still getting worse. It's not changing anything.

We're just, well, let's refocus. Let's refocus and and follow Christ.

Yeah. And, to kind of piggyback on that. So I I was interested when I when I put that last question down, I was interested to know, well, what percentage of of congressmen and women are Christians? And so according to Pew Research, right, and whenever the one hundred and sixteenth Congress was, I don't know if it was like a year or two ago, but 86% of the Congress were Protestant Catholic or Orthodox Christians. So in the United States Congress

We have it. Yeah. You just proved your point. I mean, because if there's 86% of them are professing Christians, they're probably making things worse than by being in office because it's getting bad. So get out of there.

Yeah. And I mean, to think that I bet if you'd go back fifty years, it would be close a lot closer to 100% because you couldn't say you weren't a like, for politics, you had to say you were a Christian. And so, yeah, it seems to me like like Christianity has been co opted by the state as opposed to the state co opted by Christians Yep. And and that corrupting influence.

So Absolutely.

Okay. So this this next question, is gonna require a a little bit of setup. So hopefully hopefully, you can follow it because hopefully, I I kind of, explain it well enough. But there there are kind of a couple pieces to it. So when when COVID first happened, when COVID first came out, like, you know, a year and a half ago, I was really frustrated with conservative Christians because they wouldn't listen to the medical personnel, they wouldn't listen to anybody, and they just immediately said, Well, this is just the flu.

And I was like, Maybe it is, maybe it is, but we don't know. And so and of course, on the other side, everybody was saying this is like the worst thing ever. And so I found that I just it was so hard to listen to anybody. And at the same time, I I struggled because as a Christian so what my group, my conservative Christians, saying is that the government is trying to trick us, and the government's bad. And I'm like, yes, I believe that.

But I also know that conspiracy theories are hard to pull off. And one of one of the best examples, Chuck Swindoll, you know, he's a part of Watergate, and he said, look, if you have more than one person involved in in something big, he's like, it's gonna get ratted out, like, you're gonna find out. And in fact, one of one of the big explanations for the resurrection or the defenses is that, hey, look, if you have 12 guys who claim to see something, and none of them recant under torture and death, like, then, like, you know that it's true. Because when you have conspiracies, the more people involved, the less of a chance a conspiracy has to go forward. So my conservative group was telling me that this whole COVID thing is a conspiracy, and it's not real, or it's overblown.

And I was like, I'm gonna struggle with that because I believe Jesus resurrected from the dead because conspiracy theories are hard to pull off. And you're telling me that, like, tens of thousands of people are involved in a conspiracy that nobody knows about. But at the same time, just just a couple months ago are you familiar with the Wall Street Bets?

I don't I don't think so.

Okay. So a couple months ago, there was there was a Reddit group that that just like, they were able to get GameStop stock to, like, rise exponentially, like, from $5 to, like, $400.

Oh, wait. I think I did hear something about that.

Yeah. So so basically, what they did is, like, through the Reddit, they were able to get a lot of people to come on board and buy the stock and hold it. And so they were telling everybody hold, hold, hold, like, buy more, and and so they could keep making the stock price go up. Well, I was I was in that Reddit group, and I was watching what they were saying, and then I started to see on Fox, NBC, like, all these news sources, they were saying the opposite of what they were saying on the Reddit. They were saying, Hey, this, you know, the WallStreetBets subreddit, they're saying to go buy this stock, or to, you know, do this, whatever.

They weren't saying it. And so like in real time, I could pull up all these news sources, every news source, like Kokatu or whatever, GameSpot, like anything. They were all saying something that was not true, like I was seeing it in real time. And I was like, holy cow, every single media source, every single one is lying in real time. Like, I can see it happen.

And that was was kind of a turning point for me in seeing that conspiracy theories conspiracies can be pulled off. So I'm really struggling at the moment. When I think about anarchism and a distrust of the state, I 100% believe that human nature is terrible. You give them power, they're even worse. So I I hate the state, and I know that they're terrible.

But at the same time, there's a lot of my reality, including my Christian reality, that kind of hinges on conspiracy theories being hard to pull off. And I I sort of feel like it's difficult to discern what's true now. So how do you, like, with your worldview at this point and your distrust for government, but you're also a Christian, how do you how do you sift through what's true and when to submit to the government, and when when it's something that you need to push back against?

Well, I don't watch mainstream media at all. I refuse to watch it. The only time I ever see it is when I'm at work on break and one of the TVs is on Fox News. But the volume turned down, thankfully. But other than that, I don't pay attention to what they have to say.

I think they're all government channels. If I need to try to find out some truth, I could go listen to a podcast, a podcast that I trust. You know, with the COVID stuff, I don't know if it was a conspiracy or not. Because you've seen so much suppression by social media and stuff of people trying to get, get stuff out that they've learned about all this and they get kicked off of Twitter. They get kicked off of Facebook, You know?

So we don't there's information out there, but we don't know how much we're missing because it's being suppressed. You know, you can't hardly put anything up on Facebook anymore without them tagging it with the COVID-nineteen something or other. Mean, it could be a joke, a total joke, and they're gonna tag

it. Yeah.

So I don't know. I mean, I just don't I don't follow mainstream media, but I will check out some podcasts that I know are covering this stuff and get my information from them. I've learned a ton about listening to listening to podcasts.

So how do you how do you avoid that becoming the same thing as, like, you know, my my uncle or grandpa who sits in front of Fox News and gets one source? How do you avoid if you only listen to people who think like you? Which maybe that's not what you do, but how do how do you know that that's truth then?

Well, because the message seems to be very consistent among all the podcasts from what I'm you know, it's funny I'll get led to another podcast that I never heard of or and it just leads me down a rabbit hole of other podcasts, you know? But the messaging that they're getting out there about the COVID stuff has been very consistent until, so to me, it's easier if it's consistent. If it's a consistent message, there's certainly, there's gotta be some proof to it. Mainstream media, there's nothing consistent about what they're talking about. They'll flip their view on things the next day, depending on what the popular idea is, you know, depending on whoever they're supporting.

Fox News supports the right and CNN all of a sudden support the left, you know? So but if it doesn't help the ratings, they're gonna they can flip the script pretty quick. Completely inconsistent, so I don't follow it.

Yeah. We're, you know, we wear masks and stuff to because we're good with, trying to just if it makes other people feel comfortable, whatever. But there are some things that have made me start to kind of feel like maybe there is some pushback that needs to happen. Like, you know, one of the things that I've I've seen through your discussion group is, you know, they're telling you to wear masks to protect other people, but now you get the vaccine. And and I said that they can take off the mask, but you have a lot of people advocating not taking off the masks.

It's like, well, it's not the masks aren't to protect you. You've said that they're not to protect you. They're to protect other people. So and I I had somebody the other day. I don't know if this is true at all, but it's one of those things that makes makes perfect sense to me.

But we're talking about how on the the Pennsylvania Turnpike, they're get getting rid of tollbooths because they've got, like, these cameras that can just snag your license plate easy. And I remember a couple years ago, I was watching the Jim Jefferies show from Comedy Central, and he was he was talking about the social capital that they have in China, where they can, like, detect pretty much everybody every Chinese person's face, they can detect. And so if you litter, you go down in social points. And they actually have, like, dating apps and things that that shows you the amount of points that somebody has. And so so it's nuts.

You should you should go watch it because Jim Jefferies at least makes it funny.

I really hope that's I hope that's true.

That that is true. That is true. China is is nuts in terms of their what they're doing with their their cameras, and this was just a couple years ago. But somebody said something to me, because in in the Jim Jefferies show, they talk about how many cameras they actually have in The United States. And this was this was several years ago.

And so you know that they have tons and tons of them here. We just don't really have that social capital system. But somebody mentioned to me, he said, yeah, you know why they're having us wear masks. Right? Because cameras don't do well detecting people just from their eyes, like you need their whole face.

So if you get everybody to wear masks, they're going to be able to get their scanning system down a lot.

I actually heard that. I heard that the very beginning, heard something like that. I don't know. I don't know if I'm buying into that or not. Wouldn't surprise me though, I mean, if it was going on.

Yeah. Well, that's the thing. Knowing what's going on in China, it's like, makes perfect sense.

Yeah. Go ahead.

And that's what's hard for me to discern, is that I think COVID is real. I think it has a significant impact. I think it's worse than the flu. I think masks probably do help to prevent some of the spread. I think vaccines probably are more helpful than harmful.

But I also know that the government uses those kinds of things to do terrible stuff. And that's what's so hard for me, knowing where to push back and where not to.

Well, you know, the mask situation, I've had to push back on it because it's not an option for me. I'm severely claustrophobic. And so I cannot wear a mask. I've been carrying a doctor's note around since August that I could show work because work wasn't really enforcing it. And then they started enforcing it.

I was like, I can't do it. And they tried to bring a face shield out. And I said, I can't do I said, you don't understand claustrophobia. Apparently I said, I can't, it's I can't have that in my face. And so I've had to push back.

And the HR lady, she's like, well, how do you go to stores and how do you, how do you move around with all this? I said, just like normal, I said, there's some stores are, are not unfortunate. I said, if I have to go grocery shopping, I can do it online and they'll bring it out to my truck. You know, there's ways around it, but I'm glad to see that kind of going away, the masker falling off. It's just I wanna see people smiling again.

People have been so sad lately with all this stuff. I've said from the get go, think COVID is real. I've never downplayed that at all. I think it's a harsher version of the flu is what I think, because I think we see it every year, man, when people be like, man, that bug going around is really nasty. Yeah.

And so we see it all the time. So I just, the hysteria behind that is what gave me pause. You know, that's why I was like, there's something wrong here. But now they're trying to enforce these vaccines and stuff, force those on people, gonna limit your travel if you don't get a vaccine. Come on.

I mean, there used to be a time in this country where people would say, you can't do that. This is America. You don't hear it anymore. People are just so compliant to the state now. It's sad to see.

It goes away. I bought a house, moved out a little further away from Memphis and it's a different mindset out here. It's more like a small town mindset and people just, they don't care if you're wearing it or not. Some people do. But you go to Memphis, man, if you don't have one on, man, the dirty looks.

I got hollered at in the doctor's office by this lady. They weren't wearing one. Yeah. You know, I hate how this has taken such control over people. You know, people are still wearing them, you know, even like you said, even though they've been told they don't have to, they've been conditioned now.

They don't know how to live without that mask anymore because they're still afraid. There's still this fear aspect behind it. I've just, what I've done with it. And like I said, I can't wear a mask without what I've done, when I haven't been sick this whole time. And I know I'll probably come in contact with folks, but because some guys that work at it, but I just increased my vitamins, you know, started taking more supplements to boost my immune system, the stuff that, this is stuff that was coming out that people weren't hearing about, you know, vitamin D and stuff.

They were saying this from the beginning, take this stuff and help fight this stuff off. And I added a couple other things to it. I've, I've been fine. Yeah. Sorry if we got off track there.

No, no. It's good. We'll make this the last question here. And I'm sure there'll be more that'll come to me later. But, you know, if you could recommend two or three resources, whether that's books or podcasts, you know, and you can plug your own there at the end too, but if you other than yours, which I'll link in the show notes, if you can plug two or three other resources or books.

Like I said, I'm really fascinated by the early church and what I've learned from the writings. And there's a book, it's called The Early Christians in Their Own Words. It's a fascinating book. I mean, you could go through and they got different sections and there's a specific section about the state and how they responded to the state. Called, the author is Everhart Arnold, I think is what his name is.

It's a great book. Podcast wise, I mean, if you're looking for more Christian Anarchist stuff, there's always Anarchal Christian. Steven does a great job with that show. God Arky with Mike Maharry. Chris Polk had one.

He runs out of time because he's so busy with work, but he's had one called Unbeliever, but hopefully he gets back on track with that. I would check those, check those three out for sure.

Okay. And then do you wanna talk a little bit about yours?

Sure. It's Bad Roman Project. We have a website at thebadroman.com. You can find all of our podcasts there, or you can find our podcasts wherever you listen to podcasts. We're all over the place.

We've got a blog on the website as well that's growing. We invite listeners to the show to come on and write for us. And that's been become one of my, maybe my favorite part of the project is how people have offered to do that, to write for us. Because when we first started, my producer, she said, we're gonna have to start a website. And was like, well, I just wanna get behind them.

I needed somebody to help me get started with a podcast. I found her on Upwork and she goes, well, we need a website. We're gonna have to write a blog. I'm like, oh, hang on a second. I just wanna get behind a microphone and holler at Christians.

That's all I wanna do. But she was right. But the blog is growing. We have a lot of stuff in the works to publish. We try to publish one every other week.

That's opposite week of our podcast. That's been a lot of fun to watch, people reaching out and wanting to write for us. Because I didn't know how we were gonna do it. At first, we had a couple people. I asked some people to come on and write and help get it started.

But I didn't know how we I didn't wanna I couldn't keep everybody so busy with it. People are so busy right now. But so I asked my producer, I said, Hey, what do you think about just inviting the listeners to write for us if they wanted to? I kind of got the idea from Scott Horton by listening to him because if you listen to a lot of the folks he talks to, they write for antiwar.com, you know? And that's who he's interviewed on the show quite a bit.

So I was like, Well, that's cool. I can get them to write, and then I'll get them back to get them on the show too and talk to them a little bit about it.

Alright. Well, I think that kind of exhausts all of the questions that I had that I think were in your wheelhouse that you could hit pretty well.

I hope I was able to answer everything.

Yeah. And, I mean, for me, it's still just like with the nonviolence thing, I mean, there are aspects where or even with Christianity, like, the problem of evil. I think that's always going to nag at me, and it's never going to be 100% satisfactory. And I think that's what a lot of people require of pacifists or anarchists. They require that 100% certainty to be able to switch.

And, you know, I try to emphasize that, Hey, look, it's a cumulative case. If I make a 51% case, then you're more reasonable to switch sides. But they hold us to too high of a standard, I think.

Yeah, I think so too. You know, pacifism, it took me a while to get to that because but when it was explained to me, don't know if you're familiar with Brexit KV, You probably heard Abby Klectner on our show. They both said something. If you talk to pacifists, they use a lot of the same language and they talk about how you're actively working towards peace. And once it was explained to me like that, because I had this image of a passive just sitting around, not doing anything, hoping things get better.

No, they're actually actively working towards peace. They're actually doing more work than people that are trying you know, keep the violent side of it. I understand the arguments against, for self defense and stuff too. Get it. I just, there's gotta a better way than, because it always jumps to trying to kill somebody.

And that's another thing about the early church that was universal among them was that they were all pacifists. It was universal among them, about being, no need for the state. It universal. There was no qualms. They may have had some discussions about it like we do, but man, it was almost a 100%, if not Yeah.

A 100

And I know you've said it a couple times, but I'll emphasize it again, that the early church was the tipping point for me for nonviolence. Because when I started to research, the theological aspect, it really is hard because when you look at the Old Testament, there's a lot of explaining to do there. Yeah. But and in the New Testament, it's like, well, I mean, you know, the Sermon on the Mount, you can yeah. There there's some work that you need to do on top of the the purely theological to kind of flesh things out.

And and I started to read some books by you know, about moral violence, where you have soldiers who come out and they talk about how they they just have struggled with with the violence that they've done. And so hearing testimonies, anecdotal testimonies, hearing research about how nonviolent action is is statistically far more effective than violent action. So all of that stuff, it was like, it was great. But and I was like, Yeah, but if it's not a part of the church, if it's not really what Jesus meant, then as a Christian, that's not for me. Right.

But you go and look at the early church and I didn't think you'd find anything. Like, what are they gonna talk about that for? And it's just all over the place.

Yeah. There's a lot of, there's a lot. And it's something I'm trying to get into myself when work starting to slow down, but I really wanna do a pretty deep study on the early church and write something up on it and see how that goes.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for, for, taking your time and because I know you have to get up early. And so, thanks for keeping this appointment even though that your schedule has changed.

Yeah, man. I had a lot of fun. I really appreciate you having me on.

Yeah. Thank you.