(206) S9E49 {Interview ~ Taylor Storey} Communism's Bad Rap
Welcome back to the Fourth Wave Podcast. This episode is an interview slash discussion with Taylor Story, who is someone that I met in college and I have followed for a long time now. I appreciate Taylor's perspective because I know his background, I know his heart, I know he's well read, and I know that he has lived in and loved so many other cultures. This episode is going to take us away from anything that you're likely to hear from most evangelicals and something that you're not likely to hear from other Christian anarchists or, you know, kind of those sorts of ideologies. Because today, we're gonna explore the merits of communism.
Derek:Now, I need to make this very clear beforehand, but I am not at all going to be arguing that communism is a political or economic system that we should adopt. Hopefully, you've listened to this podcast, this season at least, and understand that that very well. I do not advocate that type of thing. So, what am I trying to do here? Why am I having an episode on it if I'm not really advocating it?
Derek:Well, most people who I talk to about government tend to have a big hang up with conflating politics and morality. They think that they need to run the world in order to do good and to prevent evil. And they think that when they're in charge, they do this really well. And in fact, they're willing to justify their position even if it has great evils, so long as they think it's the lesser of two evils. So people have this huge hang up with this consequentialist ethic and this idea that politics is the way that we control morality.
Derek:So in our culture, and in my group in particular, that means that we have to advance a conservative agenda and we have to quash communism or socialism. That's the worst enemy that you could think of. And communism is really the age old enemy that we invoke to justify our grasping at and lording of power over others, at least here in the West and specifically in The United States, probably more specifically The United States in the last hundred and fifty years or so. I am continually amazed at how often I find this invocation to happen. Of course, Marxism and communism are invoked today in my community if someone brings up something like racial reconciliation or anything along racial lines.
Derek:If you care about and think that racism exists and that there are systemic issues, you must be a Marxist. And Martin Luther King Jr. Faced similar charges of of being a communist. I'd I'd really recommend, you know, as I was kind of researching some of of King's views, the book called The Radical King is fantastic and and there's some specific essays that that King has where he addresses the charge about him being a communist. But the book is just so good, just his his thoughts and a compilation of some of his best works.
Derek:But yeah, Martin Luther King Junior, he faced the charge that he was a communist. But today, was actually reading another book and lo and behold, communism reared its head as a charge again. But what really surprised me about this was this was a charge like decades before the turn of the twentieth century. It was already used in a pejorative way. So I was listening to the book Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and it's about the history of Native Americans in The States.
Derek:Now, you can probably guess that the history was pretty horrendous in terms of their mistreatment and all the lies that they were told and everything. But for today's episode, what's of particular interest is, Standing and and his community. So Standing Bear and his people were taken advantage of and subdued and they were eventually placed in a reservation. Now, Standing Bear's son was in the throes of death, he asked his father to bury him in his homeland because they had been moved far far away from from where, you know, their ancestral lands were. So Standing Bear fulfilled his son's wish by taking his body back but because he left the reservation to do this, he ended up being charged and arrested with a crime.
Derek:Now the prosecution ruled at this time that Indians weren't considered persons under the law. However, amazingly, the courts at this time overruled that decision and declared that Native Americans were indeed persons under law, particularly in light of the fourteenth amendment. So late eighteen hundreds, after slavery, I mean, right in the wake of the fourteenth amendment. So yeah, I I could see. I was kinda shocked that they ruled for native Americans, but at the same time, I guess the timing of it was was good for them at that point.
Derek:Nevertheless, Standing Beard and his community continued to have conflict with their oppressors and of course, this wasn't really upheld in practice by the people who were oppressing them, this idea that they were persons under the law. De jure, sure, de facto, no. So this continued and Standing Bear and his group, they wanted to hunt, they wanted to use horses like they did, I mean, like their community did. But the army would plow their pastures, take their horses, they build roads on their hunting ground and they'd try to force them to live in a particular way like the white man, a specific way that the white man wanted them to live, know, as farmers get an education, become like we are or like we want you to be, to be ideal citizens. Now one of the leaders of this particular reservation ended up writing a complaint because these Native Americans just kept on defying orders and things and complaining.
Derek:And he said, you know, these Native Americans or these Indians, they were he said that they were communists who didn't want to work, they were lazy, right? And it's not that they didn't want to work at all, it's that their circumstances were that they were being oppressed and there was injustice and they couldn't be who they were really supposed to be and wanted to be and there was just injustice, like there was no motivation to do things the way that they wanted, the reservation wanted them done, right? And you know, how amazing is it that these largely illiterate Native Americans, and I don't know when, this was I guess probably the late 1870s, 1880s and Marx I think died in like the early 80s. So it's amazing that very shortly after Marx, you know, became famous, these largely illiterate native Americans became Marxists, became and communists and whatever else, right? Obviously, it's it's just untrue, it's just something that was kind of leveled at somebody at this group as a pejorative quip and it was done in order to push an agenda of injustice and to justify a list of stereotypes.
Derek:So right off the bat, communism, Marxism, all that stuff is gonna be the boogeyman and it's a boogeyman that has been invoked over and over and over again. Specifically, when it comes to people trying to overturn injustices. A very common thread and one that makes you think twice. Every time I hear somebody calls somebody else a communist from my group, I'm like, there's probably legitimate injustice going on there that my group doesn't want to face. Anyway, so I see communism used the same way today, over and over and over again.
Derek:Now, that doesn't at all mean that I think communism is a fantastic system. Lording power over others is never good. However, communism isn't this great evil that warrants our implementation of some other just as ghastly system of injustice. And that truth hit me when I read Negroes with Guns and discovered that some African Americans had escaped to communist Cuba during to and prior to the civil rights movement and found communist Cuba more just than their capitalistic democratic homeland of The United States. They were treated better in communist Cuba than they were in The United States.
Derek:Or when I read how Europe underdeveloped Africa and hurt an African who ended up being assassinated for his views in the end, talk about how capitalistic and democratic empires had ravaged Africa, while communist nations like Cuba were fighting for human rights there, or building bridges and stuff, being altruistic. And as I learned more about how the Empire of the United States has overthrown democratically elected leaders in places like Iran and a number of countries in South America, installing tyrannical pro western leaders in large part to exploit good trade deals and prices for things that we want to buy. I mean, I just began to realize that while communism may be a monster, so is our system. So in this episode, we'll talk a little bit about Taylor's experiences and understanding of communism, as well as some of the demerits of capitalism. My goal for you at the end is to see how our empire indoctrinates us just as much as any communistic empire.
Derek:And this was something that hit home just the other day as my wife Catalina, she was substitute teaching for for, I guess, a social studies teacher, and they they were watching this video on on China, and they were just saying how, yes, you know, in in China they indoctrinate their children in in state sponsored schools, they, you know, they have to recite the I don't think they use the word pledges, but, you know, like, their their anthems or their their country's mottos or whatever. And this of course is just after starting the day, having all of the kids stand and put their hand over their heart and pledge their allegiance, these these minors pledging their allegiance to our country. It's just just insane. And then and then we go and teach them, indoctrinate them about how terrible communism is and how wonderful capitalism and democracy are. So it's amazing how we, like, we see other countries' indoctrination and we see what other countries do, but we don't recognize where we're indoctrinated and where we ourselves indoctrinate.
Derek:So at the end of this, I hope you can realize that all empires are evil and use propaganda to try to moralize a certain set of choices that they want you to make to feed their system. For us in the West, that's rejecting the nationalization of resources by any country we feed off of for resources and trade, right? We have to reject that, and that's what communism does. If we're exploiting somebody, we can't let them nationalize those resources in order that they can then charge fair market prices to us. Those sacrificial countries sacrificing for us and slave laborers sacrificing for us feed the empire while we are taught to consume more and more and more and more to feed the beast.
Derek:When there's an economic crisis, buy more, spend more, feed the beast. And that's why communism is so appalling. It doesn't feed the beast that we've created. And not to mention, the beast, The United States, Babylon, we need these other sacrificial victims like Iran. Why did we overthrow their dictator?
Derek:You know, they were trying to nationalize their oil and we can't have that because that'll make our oil prices go up. Same thing with a bunch of other countries. When when they start talking about nationalization, if it's a, you know, vassal state essentially of The United States or the West, then we can't have that. And that's why communism is such a threat to us. It's not that communism is inherently worse of an empire than our system, it's that it prevents us from exploiting other people as much.
Derek:It tries to gain some independence, independence from our empire that tries to control them. Anyway, I I need to be careful or I'll go on and have like a 100 different rabbit trails, so we'll stop here. This episode is gonna be a bit long anyway, so I've given some timestamps of the major topics that we're gonna discuss, and I do wanna note that Taylor does give a pretty long introduction, and if you're not into introduction type things and and you kinda find that a waste of space, you can skip that, look for the timestamp. But you might also find it helpful to hear how he has come to some of the conclusions that he has, especially if if you aren't familiar with this type of discussion and you just can't fathom how somebody can be sympathetic towards communism. It might be helpful to hear his story.
Derek:So anyway, here it is. I hope you enjoy the episode. So yeah, thanks for thanks for agreeing to this, And, like you said, you were bringing up, our college years, and, I don't know what your what your perception is, but, like, when I think back and and how, immature I was, and and just stupid things. Not bad things, just stupid things. And and you were a part of that for for a bit at least.
Derek:I mean, I my perception of both of us is that we were we were really goofy. And so to to be sitting here and and having like an intellectual conversation about things, I mean, like, if if you'd go back and you'd look at all the guys in our hall, I don't think we'd be two of the people that that would have stood out. I don't know. Do do you have a different perception than I do?
Taylor:Well, I I do remember, yeah, some of the wacky I mean, we you were, like, men's night. Right? We did men's night and, like, had, like, Cheetos all over ourselves and did push ups in the girls dorm. Was that you? Was that only me?
Derek:No. If it if it was push ups, it probably wasn't me.
Taylor:Oh, yeah. It's like a particular thing that you did that was called the bulldog, I think.
Derek:Greyhound. Yeah.
Taylor:The Greyhound. The Greyhound. That's right. So, yeah, I mean, but I do remember also, like, water balloon launchers and john Bardachie. Do you remember it?
Taylor:That? Is that Yeah. So, yeah, a lot of wacky stuff. Yeah. I was sophomore class chaplain, so I like to think I had a little bit of the, like, intellectual side.
Taylor:And and I did take my studies pretty seriously. But I also took having fun seriously as well.
Derek:Yeah. Well Good. It's good to have yeah. So I I'm sure I just didn't know you super well, so I'm sure that that was probably just a misperception on my part. But I know that that that changed for me when, I don't remember how many years out of college it was, but when I was I was looking on Facebook and I'd see I think you were in Iraq, you were in I mean, you were in a lot of different places, and not even normal places, but just places where I was kind of taken aback.
Derek:And I started to read some of the things that you wrote and were saying, and yeah, just I realized that your perspective was it wasn't just what you were saying, but it's also the perspective that you had that I thought was helpful, and especially as I've kind of been pushed away from nationalism and political idolatry, and in my camp, the, I've you know, the evangelical appreciated your perspective. So I would love for you to introduce yourself, and maybe even just, in a brief way, mention some of the the places that you've been or things that have been particularly influential for you.
Taylor:Sure. So I am I'm from Southern California, which is a little bit weird to some people sometimes because they perceive it as a very progressive or blue liberal state or whatever. But I always remind people that we've had two presidents from California, it's Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon. They're like, you know, the two most conservative presidents in, you know, recent memory. And there's actually more Trump voters in California than any other place in The United States, mostly just because we have a huge population.
Taylor:But I think there's, 6,000,000 Trump voters, like, 11,000,000 voted for Biden. But but 6,000,000 is more than any more than Texas. I think Texas was, like, five and a half million or something. So whatever. All that to say that I grew up very conservative in California.
Taylor:Was homeschooled kindergarten through twelfth grade and went to Cedarville. Cedarville University in Ohio, and that was kind of Cody Fisher was also from my area as was Rebecca Wolf. If you do you remember them? Cody Fisher was probably
Derek:Yeah. I remember Cody, not Rebecca so much.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were actually dating, which is funny. And, like so I think that they they broke up maybe right before they went to Cedarville.
Taylor:Really weird, random, super random. But so I kind of followed Cody out there because he was a youth ministry person, and I wanted to be a youth ministry person. So I sort of followed him. And my freshman year, he was my roommate. He was a senior in the RA of our hall, I think.
Taylor:So I went to Cedarville, and, yeah, it was cool. I mean, I guess just thinking about Cedarville, I was I went to Cedarville. I was looking at Point Loma in San Diego. And the reason I thought for sure I would go to Point Loma, which is, like, right on the beach. It's also a Christian school, Point Loma Nazarene.
Taylor:And, like, my thing was I wanted to study youth ministry just because I wanted to be youth minister. So I figured youth ministry is the thing to study if you wanna be a youth pastor. I really had no idea what I was doing. I was choosing college. But I went to Cedarville, the chapel, and I thought it was just gonna be like visiting, you know.
Taylor:But when I was comparing Cedarville and Point Loma, I chose Cedarville because people there seem to take things much more seriously than at Point Loma. Like, when I went to chapel at Point Loma, the group in front of me was doing their homework, and the and the people behind me were asleep in chapel. I was just like, man, this feels like you guys don't really care that much. And I started asking people like, so why are you here? And they're like, oh, because I mean, the beach is right there.
Taylor:And I was like, I mean, I like the beach, but I want to take this seriously, you know? And then I went to Cedarville, and I think there was this guy, Lou. Do you remember Lou? He was much more intellectual or, you know
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. Strongly
Taylor:conservative. And he ended up writing a book, something about rhinos. It's like republican in name only. So he was, like, strongly republican. I can't remember his last name, but I remember having a conversation with Lou and with Mugabe, the basketball player.
Taylor:And I was just like, if this is what this is like, I want to be in these conversations. So that's kinda why I ended up at Cedarville because I thought people took it way more seriously there. And then I did a year. It was cool and came back for the second year, and it was cool. But I was also kind of like, people here even more can like, I actually agreed with basically everything that's happening at Cedarville.
Taylor:Like, I'm trying to think of, like, some of the crazy things. I mean, people were I didn't think women should be in ministry. And I remember people would, like, boycott chapel if a woman was speaking in chapel. But I was just kinda like, everybody thinks the same as me, and it's kinda weird. Like, I I kinda want, like, a bigger experience.
Taylor:I want, like, you know, universe itty, you know, university. So, like, I wanted, like, a bigger ideas. I wanted more ideas, more kind of weird lifestyles. I wanted to interact with people who shared crazy different views than me, and that just wasn't happening in Cedarville. It was also very cold.
Taylor:So I did come back after my sophomore year. And it was kind of like I said it was the cold, but it was also just kind of like, I just everybody's the same as me, and it
Taylor:just felt weird. So
Taylor:I worked for a church for a year, which was cool. And it kinda like was weird a little bit because it just sort of fell flat. They actually gave me a lot of leeway to do whatever I wanted. And I started, like, a college group, and it was really well attended at first. But then it just kinda quickly became, like, people don't need another church service.
Taylor:And I was kinda like, it's kinda weird. Like, what are we doing here, actually? And I just didn't see a lot of progress. So I was kinda like disillusioned a little bit, but I ended up going to Azusa Pacific University, which is kind of like the most progressive conservative school there is. Like, it's still we still had chapel three times a week.
Taylor:And Francis Chan spoke every semester. So I guess Francis Chan was like slightly a little bit, but I mean, it's still like strongly, like, if you don't pray this a certain prayer, then you're gonna burn hell for eternity. If you were gay, then you would get kicked out of the school. Recently, they kinda changed that rule for, like, two weeks. And then I think some some of their donors freaked out and they said, okay, that's not happening anymore.
Taylor:So like, it was okay to be gay at APU for about two weeks. There was a gay club on campus, which is funny, like, it was a poetry club. And I went one night to their thing, and my friend was like, dude, you know, is the gay club, right?
Derek:And I
Taylor:was like, what? What are
Taylor:you talking about? And then, like, I started to look around, I realized, oh, gosh, I'm pretty sure all these like, it's like poetry was like their thing that they said, you know but then in actuality, it was like the gay the gay club. And AP was cool. I had a lot of fun. There wasn't really people didn't take it as seriously.
Taylor:I mean and, like, to be honest, this is California. People love fun. Fun. Fun. Fun.
Taylor:Just fun. You know? So I finished APU, and I really wanted to go abroad at that point. I wanted to work for missionaries. But what kind of that was 02/2010, kind of right when, like, I think a lot of the financial crisis was hitting hard, and I was ended up being a communication major.
Taylor:But at APU, like Cedarville, I was I was the only student in my two years there who got to speak in chapel, which was like this insane honor that, like, I can't believe I was given. But I was really active in helping plan student chat or chapels in general. And, and they didn't do the first year I was there because the year before I was there, their student speaker, like, went off the rails and I think maybe said a cuss word or something like that. And so they were like, okay. No.
Taylor:This isn't gonna happen. So it didn't happen my junior year. And then my senior year, I got a call, like, it was really funny the way it all came together. I probably skipped this because I'll keep it shorter. But but they they said, hey, we would like a student to speak in chapel, we thought of you.
Taylor:And I was like, wow, that's cool. So so I did. I got to speak for, like, you know, twenty minutes in front of 5,000 students, which was incredible, and it went incredible. And I think, like, a month later, I was at a baseball Padres San Diego Padres baseball game, walking down, like, some nachos or something, and somebody else, that's the guy who spoke in chapel. And I look over, and it's people I'd never seen in my I was just like, that and that sort of thing was happening a lot just because it went so well.
Taylor:Anyways, after that, I got a job at a church in Santa Cruz, California with a pastor named Dan Kimble, who started the emerging church movement. Or he's the first one to say that word, and he brought Mark Driscoll, Rob Bell, Doug Doug Padgett, Tony Jones. I don't know, like all these people together. And And he was actually extremely conservative. But and he thought he's like, we're just like adding painting in church, right?
Taylor:You know, we're just like more candles and a little bit more like liturgical things. And, and so when, like, Tony Jones and Doug Padgett, I don't really know them that well, actually, we're saying no, we're actually talking about a little bit different theology. Like, we're not conservative theologically anymore. Then, like, Dan was like, oh my gosh, cut ties. Like, it's not me.
Taylor:But everybody associated Dan Kimball with this, like, progressive thing or this, like, very mildly outside the box of evangelicalism thing. I guess, you know, they started to change some perspectives. We're there for two years. And I would say it was very similar to Cedarville, very similar to some of the first church I worked at, very similar to APU. In that, it just kind of fell flat, I guess.
Taylor:And I was like because I I read the bible every day from when I was 16 years old until I was 26, and it's not like I don't read the bible. If read the bible every day for ten years, you know, I've hidden God's word in my heart. And so it's not like like I think of the bible constantly. And I still read the bible probably, I don't know, every three days, probably something like that. But I just wasn't seeing the good news actually good.
Taylor:And I also started playing soccer on a Salvadorian soccer team. I was the only white guy. Like, there was, like, 10 Hispanic teams and, like, two white guy teams, which is kinda funny. But so I was on the Salvadorian team, which is only one Salvadorian team, but they just were the people that live near me. So I I played with these guys, and they're all, like, immigrants.
Taylor:Half of them spoke English, maybe, but we spoke all Spanish to each other. I lived in Mexico for one semester and studied Spanish and then, like, just played soccer with people, Spanish speaking people, like, basically my whole life. So I was playing with these Salvadorian guys and just starting to, like, learn about their lives. And I was just like, man, this is crazy. And, like, my kind of I was doing youth group, but it was so separate.
Taylor:Know, I had this like very white upper middle class, like, hip church that I was a part of working at, you know, trying to save souls, etcetera. And then I had this Salvadorian soccer team that I was playing at. And I was like, you know, the only thing they have is the Catholic church, really. I mean, there's also, like, a little bit of Pentecostal stuff. And, like, our white upper middle class theology that we had developed just kinda shit on the Catholic church.
Taylor:Excuse my language. As I got to know them, I was like, this is weird. And we have, like, influence in our town. We are not using it at all for, like, the immigrant community. And I got, like, a couple of these guys to come to church with me, and it was like it was it was bad because people were just like, who's that guy over there?
Taylor:Like, what's you know, what's what was that guy? And, like, one like, he didn't speak English that good. And so I was kind of, like, helping him translate stuff, but I was just realizing, like, man, there's something something weird about this disconnect. You know? And I would bring it up every so often in church, and they would just kinda, like, set it aside.
Taylor:And I was kinda like I was just really disappointed. At the same time that was happening, this kid started coming to youth group. His name's Dylan. And parents started coming up to me like, oh my gosh. Dylan Dylan's coming to youth group.
Taylor:I'm like, oh, yeah. Cool. Like, what's what's the deal? And they're like, his mom is, like, the most crazy atheist lady in the whole town. And I'm like, really?
Taylor:Like, yeah. Anytime, like, anything barely Christian happens anywhere, she's, like, on the phone calling, like, freaking out that they had, like, prayer in school and all this stuff. And they're like, just be really careful around her because she is, you know, insane, very anti Christian, militant atheist. I was like, okay. Okay.
Taylor:Okay. Well, keep that in mind. You know? It's like, just gonna do, you know, do my do the work. And and so I Dylan plays soccer with a couple of the other kids at youth group.
Taylor:So I end up going to their soccer game and just walking up there, and I see Dylan's mom. I know who she is because people have, like, pointed out out to me and stuff. I'm like, oh my gosh. It's Dylan's mom. I was like, you know what?
Taylor:Full armor of God right now. Like, I'm gonna pray pray this through. I'm gonna go I'm gonna talk to Dylan's mom. Just like base hit, you know, just very chill conversation. Just like make a connection.
Taylor:Very chill. And so I walked up there and I see her and I'm like, hey, you're Dylan's mom. Oh, hi. You know, like, very nice, cordial. And then she's like, yeah, I heard so much about you.
Taylor:You do youth group stuff. I'm like, oh, yeah, do. This and that. She's like, and here's a soccer game. Do you play soccer?
Taylor:And I was like, yeah, yeah, I do play soccer. I play with these Salvadorians, actually. Team speaks Spanish. She's like, oh my gosh, that's so cool. She's like, I've been volunteering with this organization that helps immigrants integrate into The United States.
Taylor:And I've read actually about the Salvadorian people that are leaving. And I was just like, wait, what? And I so I started talking to her, and she just had like she's kind of like the Christian that I was looking for, except she wasn't a Christian. That was just because I remember walking up that hill thinking, it's Dylan's mom. Put on the full armor of God.
Taylor:I'm praying as I walk up the thing. And I feel like all the little guys in my battle station are, like, you know, ready with their guns and things, ready to, like, destroy the enemy or something if it comes, you know, whatever, spiritual warfare. And then there she is, and she's like the answer that I was kind of looking for, when it came to immigrants. I was just like, that was the weirdest conversation. And I end up leaving and just feeling like I just had the one of the most Christian conversations I'd ever had because of the compassion and empathy understanding that she had for these people.
Taylor:And it was around that time that I was just, like, realizing that the church wasn't gonna answer my questions. Like, especially, like, what's the deal with Catholicism? And, like, when were these Salvadorian people supposed to, like, hear the gospel the way we present it? You know? Like, it is just not it's not there.
Taylor:It's there's not a possibility. Where at they can go to the Catholic church. And I just saw so I started interacting with more parents of the youth group. And I started to see that so many of the people that I've been trained to be against were more Christian than the people that I was trained to be. I'm a part of this.
Taylor:You know? Like and so that was just super disorienting. At the same time, I had two friends whose they didn't know each other, but it was the father of one and the mother of the other committed suicide. Both of them super strong, dedicated Christian people. Both of these guys, super strong, dedicated Christian guys.
Taylor:And I had a front row seat to it to both of them. You know? And I was also in seminary and oh, it was like a gospel coalition seminary, Western Seminary, it's called. So, like, Mark Driscoll actually went there. This was in San Jose.
Taylor:That one's up in Portland where he went. But there was just a bunch of times where I was like, oh my gosh, this is so intellectually irresponsible. One of them was a church history class. We're talking about the the history of the Sunday morning service. And our book had, like, four chapters on acts, and then it had, like, three pages from, like, the end of Acts until Martin Luther.
Taylor:I kid you not. It was this is, like, you know, fourteen hundred years or something. And it had, like, four chapters on, like, the Reformation. It was a, like, okay. Like, a little bit of, like, displace the blame here.
Taylor:It was about the Sunday service. So it wasn't, like, how the Sunday service developed. It wasn't exactly church history. But but basically, what they said is that there was a liturgical era. And then that lasted all the same until Martin Luther.
Taylor:So like, I don't know, in like the one hun I mean, I think it must have said I should get that book again. But it must have said, you know, like, between one hundred and four hundred, like developed like this, like, more high church liturgical Catholic style model. And that didn't change until Martin Luther. And I just remember looking at that and then, like, four chapters on the Protestant Reformation, four four chapters on the Puritans, and then, like, two or three chapters on, like, modern evangelicalism since Billy Graham or something. You know?
Taylor:And I was just like, three pages? You know? And and so I raised my I, like, worked up the courage because everybody was just kind of, like, sheeping it up, you know, like, the professor says. I, like, took a little bit of courage because I was like, this seems crazy. It seems like the emperor is wearing no clothes here.
Taylor:You know? Raised my hand and said, you know, what's so how come we only have three pages? You know? Like, you know, whatever for, like, this, like, fourteen hundred year period or something. And he just looks at me and goes, not that much changed during that time period.
Taylor:Anyways, when Martin Luther came on the scene, I was just like I was like, this seems really irresponsible. And what does that say about our god as well? I was like, so if you're born in, like, the July, just like, hey, man. Like, light that candle, and that's the best you got. You know?
Taylor:Like, I was just like, this is, like, says something bad about our god that what he doesn't care about the people, like, for fourteen hundred years or, you know, what? I just so it was that kind of thing was happening. Yeah. And nobody would talk about it. You know?
Taylor:I would bring it up to, like, the senior pastor, you
Derek:and he'd
Taylor:be like, yeah. You know, it's great that you're doing seminaries. Like, That's really cool. You're going to learn so much. I was like, But how What's the deal?
Taylor:And he's like, Oh, that'll come later. And it sounds like there should be take a different class. They do offer a church history class, I think. I wonder, maybe that's only once every other semester that one's offered. Was that kind of he wouldn't actually engage with the question.
Taylor:He would just kind of like so that sort of thing was happening over and over and over. And then and I felt again, like my youth ministry, like, there was a bunch of, you know, just the typical, like, church business things that you're like, oh my gosh, that's a mess. That situation that's not a there's no spirituality, Christianity, biblical. That's not there. That's like Starbucks.
Taylor:That's like organizational management, what is being done in this situation. You know? And so I was just I had this dream to go study in Jerusalem. So luckily, one of the professors actually had a connection to this place called Jerusalem University College. And I couldn't get it out of my head.
Taylor:I had to I was just like, I have to get out of here. I have to get out of this, like, upper middle class white evangelical where everybody's the same. And like, I sort of believe it, but it just keeps falling flat. And so I went to Jerusalem, and it was the first time I had had a non Christian professor. I had some Jewish professors, some secular ones, some orthodox ones.
Taylor:We took a history of I took a history of ancient Israel class. And actually, all the students were American mostly, 95% US American students from conservative evangelical universities in The United States that would spend one semester there. And so I show up and we have this, like, secular Jewish guy who's, like, just insane biblical archaeologist. Crazy, crazy. Like, you know, has done everything for the last, like, thirty years.
Taylor:He's been super close to all everything that's happened last thirty years archaeologically in Israel. And he goes, okay. So basically, we're just gonna go through the Bible and, like, talk about archaeological things that are connected to these stories. And he's like, okay. So Adam and Eve, no expectation.
Taylor:I mean, it's like a garden. There's gonna be a flood that happens. Everything is you know, so there's we have no expectation of finding anything related to Adam and Eve. It's like Abraham, same. He's like a wandering nomad.
Taylor:Let's skip the flood. I forget what he said about the flood. He just talked about how there was flood stories in all these civilizations and some definitely archaeological evidence for, like, localized floods and kinda moved past it. Then he gets to Moses and he's like, okay, Moses. The bible says 400,000 slaves lead Egypt and he pulls 400,000 men, men only, not including women, children, livestock.
Taylor:So he's like, basically, we're looking at probably like a million people here. A million people from this time period supposed to have left, crossed the Red Sea, all this other stuff. And he's like, no evidence. Nothing. He's like, here's the possible here's the thing that people say that are possible evidence.
Taylor:And he, like, walks through, like, there's this thing, you know, like, there's these Hyksos people that are possibly related, but he's like, they can't be it because of this, this, this. And he's like, and there's this other one that's, like, possibly it. And it's not and it's this, this, this. And, like, I brought up the, like, red the chariot wheels and the Red Sea and stuff. You know that one?
Taylor:And he's like it was like the class we'd taken a break, and he's, like, smoking a cigarette outside in Jerusalem. You know? And and I'm like, so I heard this thing like that there's chariot wheels in the Red Sea or something that they find it. And he's like he's like, that's probably this guy Ron Wyatt. And I'm like, I don't I don't know.
Taylor:I mean, I learned it from Kent Hovind and Ken Ham or something, you know? And he's like, he's like, yeah, Ron Wyatt. He's he's also found the Ark of the Covenant. He found Noah's Ark. He found Jesus' cross.
Taylor:He found and he just, like, runs through, like, every biblical thing. And he's like, but he can't reproduce any of it. And he's like, he also doesn't have a license. People on the dig with him are like, we didn't find anything like this. We're not sure what he's talking about.
Taylor:And so he's like, he can't he's like, that guy can't get a license. And he's not really he's not a real archaeologist. He can't he can't do it. Know, it's look him up. He's like, if there's all his stuff, he can't show any of it.
Taylor:And so then, like, I think the rest of that class period, I was just like, on my computer, like, googling Ron Wyatt. And basically, everything he said is true. Then Ron Wyatt, even like, I think Ken Ham or somebody major was like, we have to stop using Ron Wyatt because he's not like, if none of it is actually true. But they were so excited. And like all the churches in The United States would like invite this guy to speak.
Taylor:There's even like a funny a comedy made about him, but they don't connect his name. I it's called like John Bardeen or something like that. I don't know. I can look it up and send you a link later. But it's it's like by the people that did Napoleon Dynamite and they have like they did a a video a movie about this guy.
Taylor:So Israel and then I had like an evangelical professor who took us around Israel. And when I was at Jericho in particular, she explained like, yeah, basically, we would expect for this to be the case archaeologically, but she's like, there's basically nobody in Jericho for the, like, six hundred year period. It's like an uninhabited place when when supposedly Joshua happened. And she's like, now there's some interesting things about that. You know, that means also that most of the, like, and god killed every man, woman, and child, and everything that had breath.
Taylor:She's like so that is probably a literary style. In fact, she's like, you see that repeated everywhere else. It's like saying that, like, the the Chicago Bulls destroyed the Phoenix Suns. You know? We would know what that means.
Taylor:It does not mean that, like, a male cow destroyed a celestial thing. No, it means that Michael Jordan beat Magic Johnson's basketball team. Won a basketball game. There's no destruction happening. So when it says that in the text, that's probably what it means.
Taylor:So that semester just blew everything apart for me. That was 02/2012. And it was so weird because it happened biblically. And and then I also was I met with a Benedictine monk every Wednesday. This guy who had taught at the Vatican, he taught New Testament and patristics for thirty years.
Taylor:And he was just dropping so much biblical and historical information when I met with him every Wednesday that I was just everything that I had been told about Catholics in particular, actually. Because Catholics, oh, they don't really care about the Bible. And then I meet like a Benedictine monk who's like taught the Bible and Christian history for thirty years. And I was like, oh my gosh, like, I've somewhere I missed something, you know, like, or it was not provided for me. So then that was 02/2012, like I said, and that kind of launched like, holy, what is going on?
Taylor:I need to rethink everything. And I, like definitely, I returned to, like, the conservative people, and they just kinda got angry at me that I wasn't being positive or that I wasn't listening to them. And I was kind of like, sorry, Ron Wyatt is like, he's a quack. Like, look him up, you know? And but they wouldn't they would just get really angry, basically, when I kind of brought that stuff up.
Taylor:And I started also to wonder, like, well, I mean, there's just a million things. Went to China for a year. Well, first, I lived in San Diego with, like, these super Christian guys, which was, like, kind of insane because one of them in particular was really excited to want to hear everything about everything I had learned in Jerusalem. And I was like, well, you know, it's not really, like, what you want to hear. And so eventually I did.
Taylor:And then like, I overheard him talking to another roommate, like about me saying, like, man, we need to pray for Taylor, because I don't know, like, how his salvation is like in jeopardy and like, all this stuff. Yeah, they didn't know I was home. They like walked in and one guy was like, he's like, dude, I had lunch with Taylor the other day. He's like, Oh, yeah? He's like, Yeah, man.
Taylor:Not what I expected. And he's like, really? He's like, yeah, man. I mean, he he, like, kinda, like, maybe took the I don't remember what he said, but it got to the point where the guy was like, is he saved? And he's like, I think he is, but we need to be praying for him.
Taylor:And I was just like, oh god. I gotta get out of here, you know, because and no like, that was the thing is that nobody was willing to, like, address these questions. And these were like these are straight out of the bible kinds of questions about the bible, about biblical history, about even why conservative Christianity kept falling flat, I guess. It just I just it's like, this is not really great good news. Like, the Salvadorians don't receive it that way.
Taylor:Like, just general secular people than hippie neighbors next door, they don't receive it as good news. And I feel like we're saying that like 95 of the world is gonna burn in hell. That's not good news. I just did not see like, women caught in adultery that wanted to hang out with us. You know, I didn't see Samaritan, bad theology people that wanted to hang out with us.
Taylor:I didn't see I didn't see that. You know? So I had to look elsewhere. And, like, believe me, I was asking like crazy. I've I've had serious conversations with every single denomination there is.
Taylor:And then Jerusalem expanded that to Catholic, Orthodox. And then in the subsequent years, every tradition you can imagine, one of which the most excited one for me was the Assyrian Church of the East, which is they still speak the same language that Jesus did, Aramaic. And it's a Christian community. It's, like, centered in Iraq. And the area that I was, I got to, like, hang out with them and have a real long conversation with, like, one of the serious, like, leaders there.
Taylor:It was, like, really, really incredible. But I'm, like, going a little quick. This was supposed to just be introduction. Right? But
Derek:Yeah. It's okay.
Taylor:So then I did China for a year, and that was kind of what I think I told somebody I wasn't a Christian then, which was kind of a crazy thing for me. But I was just that was I was trying to catch up with, like, all the, like, secular reading that I'd never done. You know, like, read Catcher in the Rye and, like, The Fault in Our Stars, like, all the kind of young adult fiction. And I was just kind of yeah. I was traveling a lot.
Taylor:I went to Vietnam. That's that was something I was gonna bring up. Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Japan. Yeah. So China.
Taylor:And then after China, I did two years working solar. In the middle of that, I was in Nicaragua for two months. And then afterwards, I got contacted by Samaritan's Purse, actually. And it was I was at a wedding, and this guy I sat next to at this wedding from a roommate from Azusa Pacific. So I sat next to this guy, and he I was telling about Israel and Nicaragua and China.
Taylor:And he was like, oh my gosh. We have, a team of people that we send to disasters around the world, and you sound like you'd be a perfect fit for it. And I was really hesitant when he said Samaritan's Purse because, like, I don't really agree with, like, hardly anything about Samaritan's Purse. But he's like, we'll pay you a bunch of money and just send you in there with, like, helicopters and, like, unlimited supply of, like, you just go and, like, do good in a place. And I was like, that sounds pretty awesome.
Taylor:So they flew me out to North Carolina. Went went through this, like, minor training. I think it was really just, like, they're trying to know if they can trust me to not freak out if I'm in the middle of nowhere or something like I think that's what they were most concerned with. And then, like, a little bit of, like, kind of indoctrination. But, honestly, the indoctrination that I, like, kinda went through is more like you're humanitarian, not a missionary.
Taylor:Because Samaritan's Purse got kicked out of Indonesia for being too much missionary. And so they're like, you can kinda pray with people individually, but, like, on a public level, you're a humanitarian aid worker. And so we help in Jesus' name, but we don't like proselytize explicitly. But you do think that being gay is like a sin, and you do think that abortion is murder, and you do think that and basically, they only hire very Republican people. So I knew I knew how to answer the questions, though, and like the way that they wanted to.
Taylor:So I just kinda I did. I sort of danced around those topics a little bit. Because by then, I had like, well, I just I guess I just thought that the conservative, like, punish everybody for not being like us was not effective and didn't reflect God or Jesus or whatever. So they sent me to Haiti. I was there for a month.
Taylor:And I thought that was going be the end. I did. They wanted me to stay longer. But I was like, basically, like, I can't do this, like, me being a super conservative Christian thing, because we did Bible studies every morning. And like, basically, like, if you question any of it, then it's like, you just can't do that.
Taylor:So so I just wanted I wanted as 30, that's enough. And they pay you good. It's like $175 a day or something. They're all paid. It's because it's humanitarian work.
Taylor:So like, they actually get money from the United Nations, from like, the government from Congress from it's not all private donations, it's international side of things. And then I went straight from there to the American Academy of Religion Society of Biblical Literature Conference, which I've now been to twice. That's like where like Harvard, Yale, you know, basically all the big universities send all the Bible people to this. And it that is like, it's incredible. I mean, are there are some conservative people there as well.
Taylor:But but I got to hear like Bart Ehrman speak. Do you know Bart Ehrman?
Derek:Yeah. Yeah.
Taylor:And they had the guy who so he wrote a book called How Jesus Became God. Yeah. And then someone wrote this Australian guy, Michael Bird, wrote a rebuttal to him called How God Became Jesus. And they're dealing with, like, all the historical stuff that I kinda studied in Jerusalem. So, like, I went packed room, you know.
Taylor:And to be honest, Bart Ehrman just tore this guy apart. It was the amount of reading that Ehrman had done and study and reference to obscure Greek manuscripts and all this stuff. The Michael Bird guy couldn't keep up. And he had to admit, Bird was honest too. He was like, I haven't looked into that.
Taylor:And he's like, I think that you'd find the answer if you would look at this, this, this, and this. And he's like, no, that makes some more sense or what, know. And so I actually texted Dan Kimball and I because I had I met with all the pastors that I worked for and just said like, hey, these are the reasons why, like, I'm I basically don't agree with stuff that we had said before. Dan was really interested in particular. And we had this back and forth going for a little while, very friendly.
Taylor:I was just kind of like I texted him. I was like, it's not about your coffee shop or like your sales techniques. I was like, it what really matters is like, you're not addressing like the real biblical conversation. And everybody, all the pastors I worked for, they all said like, oh, yeah, I'm gonna get back
Derek:to you.
Taylor:I'm gonna get back to you on this. None of them ever did on any of this stuff. And in particular, would bring up Bart Ehrman in particular. Was you've got to respond to this. I was in a room with 300 Christian leaders and Bart Ehrman wiped the floor with Michael Bird.
Taylor:And I don't think anybody doubts that who was in that room. Basically all your best leaders are picking this stuff up and then realizing the way we believe the Bible is untenable, basically. And both of them are like, oh, Bart Ehrman, you know, like, I've been looking into his stuff, and we're gonna, like, address that in this way or that way. I'm gonna write a blog post about it. I was like, okay.
Taylor:Okay. But it just it just never comes. And I think it's because they I don't know. I mean, it it never comes.
Derek:So so where would you where would you say you land now? Would you consider yourself a Christian? And what what would you mean by that?
Taylor:I would I mean, it's weird because I think what Christian meant to me I'll say before I was 30. I don't identify with that pretty much at all. But, like, more than ever, I feel like I'm more Christian than I've ever been. But when you say that word to anybody, they typically mean what I thought before I was 30. I'm just kind of like
Derek:Yeah. So I I guess I would say if if you would if you would stick to the I guess what you consider the basic tenants, you know, like Jesus was human and divine. I mean, like the most basic, the three to five most basic things.
Taylor:Yeah.
Taylor:Yeah. And I think when you put a historical lens on some of this stuff, it changes things. So one of the craziest ones is, like, Jesus being the son of God. Because at the time, there was coins everywhere that said Caesar Augustus, son of
Taylor:God on them.
Taylor:If you went to a marketplace, it says like, I think it's like Philius Deus or something like that, you know, like the brother or the son of God somehow. And it was, I guess, because of his father. When his father died, there was this emperor cult, right? And so there was some meteor and they said, Oh, he went back to the heavens. And so Caesar Augustus is the son of God.
Taylor:And so when we look at the biblical text, it's almost always there's it's only he's only called son of God a few times. And it's a Roman person who calls him son of God. And it's like, basically, he's saying, you're bringing a new kingdom, and it's not like a Roman imperial kingdom. It's a it's a different kind of kingdom. Now we think of God in, like, this European way, but not in, like, a first century century way.
Taylor:And so I think of Jesus as the son of God, and I think of him like divine for sure. But I don't think of him in like a, I guess, twentieth century empirical, European idea of God, God. I do think of him as yes, like, I do think of him as divine, but divinity has changed for me. So it's not the same as what the typical person. But then when I talked to the Benedictine monk, and I would bring that up, he's like, oh, yeah, that's what John Cashion said.
Taylor:That's what Origen kind of claimed this sort of thing. And he's like, this is what he like, he'd name off all these church fathers that basically I he's like, you know, that perspective is like totally within Christianity. That's Yeah.
Derek:And that that's that's one of the things that, you know, I'm coming to realize more and more, which is, I think, I appreciate that about Catholicism, it's way more broad. I mean, yeah, because their idea of hell, I mean, you could be an annihilationist. You even have I remember reading Gregory of Nyssa, and I was like, He sounds like a universalist, but he can't be because he was a Christian. And so Yeah. Well, come to find out that there were actually I mean, it was a minority, but they were definitely universalists.
Derek:Like some major like Gregory of Nyssa, nobody would throw him out of of Christianity. Yeah. So some of these things, it's like, man, we we've really boxed ourselves in. We the the church that I grew up in, that I attended Christian school at for my life, they wouldn't consider supporting us because we didn't, we couldn't say that Israel was gonna be, like the Israel in Revelation was gonna be the literal Israel reinstated, like the physical geographical Israel. Like, really?
Derek:That's like that's kind of a sticking point for you? And we just like, we we make our box so small. It's crazy.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, like and I I like I would say it fell flat first, And then I started looking outside and then just realizing, especially that there's like, when we look at these things with a historical lens, the meaning of what God is means a lot of different things to a lot of different people and people that like Gregor Bnissa that's like, absolutely is a Christian. And then you're like, I think he's a universalist.
Taylor:Like, well, they don't even know who that is. Right? Most evangelicals, like, it's
Derek:Yeah, like I said, I mean, honestly, so so I joined part of the reason that I went reformed was because it was it was very refreshing to me that they took church history Or I thought they did. Yeah. Because, I mean, what I grew up with was just fluff. Like it was just, I mean, Billy Graham was as far back as we could go. Yeah.
Derek:But what I've learned about the reformed believers is basically it's, like I said, you got Paul, Augustine, maybe a little bit of Aquinas, and then it's Luther Calvin. So yeah, you just don't know anything about about anybody other than Augustine. Augustine Augustine
Taylor:is Yeah. And, like, actually, it was weird. I read, like, some people kind of knocking Augustine before I read people that loved him. No. I read, like, Francis Schaeffer, I guess.
Taylor:And Francis Schaeffer, like, spent some time with Augustine. And he was like, how should we then live? Video series, I think. But I read I read a book that, like, basically, you know, kind of tore apart his, like, original sin idea or whatever. I mean, it's it's weird.
Taylor:Like, seems this feels like a rabbit trail. But yeah, Augustine. Yeah.
Derek:Okay. So
Taylor:I've dealt with him a little bit, but not a lot.
Derek:So speaking of rabbit trails, let's that was like an hour long introduction. So which is good. It's good. It was interesting.
Taylor:Well, now yeah. You know the backstory to, all the political stuff, I guess, that we'll talk about now.
Derek:Yeah. And then all the conservatives can stop listening to you because they know you're not. Yeah. But anyway
Taylor:I feel like I'm a biblical literalist, though, for so many reasons, but not like this. You know, I I feel like my take on son of god because it's referencing the first century, like, what that meant in that context. So I feel like I'm a biblical literalist because of that. You know?
Derek:Right. Yeah. Whereas yeah. We and import things, for sure. Yeah.
Derek:So but what I what I really want your expertise on is talking about, yeah, talking about something else. So so let me, let me kind of tell you where like, this is supposed to release, like, over a year from now. I'm kind of I kind of get in these spurts and and plan ahead. And so I've just done a lot of a lot of thinking, about about government, because 2016 threw me off. It was it was great.
Derek:It helped me to kind of rethink things, And, actually, one of the things that I came to first was was pacifism. And, so pacifism for me had some significant implications because if if I'm not to do violence, and basically the state bears the sword, and legislation is violence, I mean, when you legislate something, like a speeding ticket, I mean, if you don't pay it, you get a warrant for your arrest. If you refuse to go, they they forcefully take you to jail. So like, legislation is violence. So figuring out how do I how do I consistently live out politics with a belief in pacifism?
Derek:And then also seeing that, well, conservatives are terrible, liberals are terrible. Because it sounds like maybe you're you're okay with abortion. For me, that is killing an innocent human life. So I I can't I can't get on board with that, but I can't get on board with legislating abortion either, and just, you know, stoning the adulterers. So I just it's it's all a problem.
Taylor:Yeah.
Derek:So and and with talking talking with you a lot, I know that that I think you have a similar view of the church that I do, about it it really being the prophetic voice. So our job isn't to legislate abortion. Our job isn't to, you know, legislate immigration, but we're to be a prophetic voice when we see evils happening. We're supposed to come alongside people and love them, and but we can still call evil evil and say that it shouldn't be done. But what what I'm finding, so talking about politics with people, especially our group or the group that that we grew up with, is conservatives have a really difficult time divorcing empire from morality.
Derek:So like, you know, when you think of anarchism or or whatnot, and you think of no government, you think, well then there's chaos, there's evil, there's raping, there's murder. And so they they see empire as as kind of morality, or the tool for morality. So what what I wanna do with you is I wanna ask you some questions and and maybe hear some of your thoughts, because I want to kind of undermine that idea that empire is morality, because especially in The States, democracy is moral and capitalism is moral. Like that's that's what makes our government moral, because we are providing flourishing for our people, and we are giving our people a voice. And so the the antithesis of that in our minds is is communism.
Derek:You know, communism is evil because it's the opposite of of capitalism, and the opposite of of democracy because it's kind of government force. So I don't like either. I don't like communism, but I don't like capitalism. And I I know those are economic systems too, and and but that that tends to blend with with politics. So I want you to kind of help us think through maybe helping us to see how how communism isn't as bad as people make it out to be.
Derek:So maybe taking away the demonization, but then also showing how capitalism is evil in ways that that people don't tend to see. And my point isn't to say that communism or capitalism is good, but to point out that because both of these things are our issues, that empire is bad. I guess that's and maybe you disagree with that.
Taylor:But No. No. Empire is bad.
Derek:Okay.
Taylor:Well, empire is opposite of you know, it's Babylon, I guess. Like, like Jews still lived in Babylon, you know, and it like sort of function for them from time to time. But it's like, ultimately, it's not Jerusalem, you know, it's not. It's not what we're called to, I guess. So I think I think maybe I'll start.
Taylor:Do you know Jay Gresham Machen? Do know who that is? He wrote a book called Christianity and Liberalism.
Derek:Wasn't he, like, one of the the founders of was it Westminster? Or
Taylor:Yes. Yes. Yes. So he was at Princeton, and then Princeton got a little bit too liberal for him, and so they left. I don't know if he got kicked out or if
Taylor:he left on his own accord.
Taylor:I don't know. But he started, yes, Westminster Seminary or whatever. And he wrote a book, kind of small book called Christianity and Liberalism. And he in the beginning he says this was written, I think it's in 1923, and he says, we have to protect individual rights because, there's a creeping socialism that is infringing upon our individual rights in 1923. And being a student of history, I know that women got the right to vote in 1919, I think.
Taylor:It was 1919 or 1920. It was, like, 01/01/1920. You know, like, that was the the moment, whatever. But and so I was like, that seems like a big win for individual rights. You know?
Taylor:Like, women have individual rights now. And I was like, so if he's for individual rights, he should be pro women's suffrage then. Right? I look it up. No.
Taylor:He was not. He was against women's suffrage because that's creeping socialism. It infringed upon his individual rights. Other things that were happening at that time, black people were starting to enter society a little bit in the 1920s. In particular, at Princeton, I found out they had the first black people in the dorms.
Taylor:So he as a champion of individual rights, he should be thrilled, right? Because, like, black people are finally getting individual rights, right? Nope. He there's letters that he wrote to his mom saying how angry he was that they were allowing black people to come and infringe on his individual rights. And so then this kind of changed a lot for me.
Taylor:Know? Like, I started to realize, okay, this creeping socialism thing and this whole, like, individual rights thing, whose rights are you talking about here? Because it looks to me like people are gaining individual rights with all the things that they're calling socialism. I mean, they called Martin Luther King a communist, and actually, he did. He he did, like, have friendly relations with communist people with Rosa Parks was active in communist groups.
Taylor:Nelson Mandela was in jail for being a communist. Nelson Mandela, the guy who ended apartheid. Now he tried to kind of, I mean, he Have you read about Nelson Mandela? Because there is like a little bit of an asterisk on that. Like he said, I was never like fully a communist, then like, we're pretty sure you were.
Taylor:And the things that he was involved in that put him in jail were things that communists were involved in. So he tried to say he was never really a communist. But Jerry Falwell got really upset. Like, he called Desmond Tutu a phony because he was working with Nelson Mandela, who's a communist. But then I'm like, look.
Taylor:People are gaining individual rights here. So, like, maybe from our perspective, from the perspective of Jay Gresham Machen, he is his losing of this insane privilege is like he feels like he's losing his individual rights because now he has to compete with black people. He has to work with women. So that's I think that the idea that socialism, communism is against rights is a little bit off for that reason because you have to ask who. And then well, yeah.
Taylor:Does that make sense to you at all? Or
Derek:Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense to me.
Derek:Yeah. And, I think
Taylor:Did that answer the question? I can't remember the question exactly. Oh, like, de de demonize socialism communism a little bit.
Derek:Yeah. So what, you told me a couple stories. So first story you told me was, I think you're at a you're at a bar, and you met this communist in Germany. And could you talk a little bit about that conversation and how that sort of changed your perspective?
Taylor:Yeah. And then maybe the big one was Nicaragua, but then and like, it's because in Nicaragua, you go all over the place and there are political billboards that say Christian, socialist, solidarity. And I remember seeing that. I was like, what? What what is this?
Taylor:And and everywhere I'd go, like, people be like, oh, where are you from? And I'd say, oh, I'm from The US. And they, like, kinda look at me and like, that's okay. We know that you guys have changed so much since Ronald Reagan. We know that you have changed so much.
Taylor:We know that you're not Ronald Reagan. And I was just kinda like, actually, his ranch is fifteen minute drive that way, the Ronald Reagan ranch, and everybody in this town loves Ronald Reagan. And I was just like, what are you what are you guys so I finally kinda asked somebody. Was like, so what's the deal with Ronald Reagan? They're like, oh, well, you know, like, just all the military and oppression that he brought on Nicaragua.
Taylor:And I was like, no, I don't know what you're talking about. And so then they started to tell me basically the story of Nicaragua is it was run by, like, American backed dictator, and it provided us, like, beef, super cheap, and, a bunch of different resources, super cheap. And but that was, like it was a nasty right wing dictator. And so they overthrew that dictator via socialism. Well, I mean, they used the terms, but their socialism was was Christian socialism.
Taylor:It was, like, very strongly Christian. One of the main people is Ernesto Cardenal. He's, a Catholic priest, liberation theology.
Derek:And was he the guy that got gotten No,
Taylor:that was a little it was the same time period. There was like nine priests in the 80s that were killed by US sponsored things. And one of them is this guy named Oscar Romero who was killed while he was doing mass. And it was a squad, a Salvadorian squad, death squad, they call it, the battalion or something. And they had just come from training in North Carolina.
Taylor:The first thing they did is they went to this church and shot a priest, killed him. And so they started telling me but the way they talked about Reagan was like he was Hitler. Because the Christian socialists overthrew the, like, right wing his name was Samosa. You can look it up. They overthrew him.
Taylor:But that meant that socialism now had, a foothold in the Western Hemisphere, which is like the Monroe Doctrine is basically anytime anything kind of socialist happened, The United States like went and intervened. And so I think something like he couldn't directly intervene or whatever. So what he did actually, he illegally sold weapons to Iran and then basically took that money and funded these Hondurans to terrorize the Christian socialists in Nicaragua. And so I stayed with these people and they they told me, oh, yeah. You know, like, every we lived in the woods for ten years during the eighties because every year, people would come from Honduras and attack our village.
Taylor:We didn't know when it would happen, but every year it happened for, like, basically all the eighties because Ronald Reagan was, like, paying the Hondurans to come. They wanted to, like, reinstate this dictator so that The United States could get, like, the cheap beef, the cheap, like, resources and stuff, and they didn't want socialism. So we'd have that conversation. I'd stay with these people for, like, two or three nights, and we'd have that conversation. And then we'd also have the Christian conversation where they had Christian everything, everywhere in the house, and they're praying all the time and doing this full on, very Christian.
Taylor:And for them, what socialism meant is that he ran the co op for the community. Everybody took all their extra vegetables and you could just go and basically exchange vegetables. It was very idyllic. They were poor, of course, but manicured, old school. They didn't have running water, but it was, like, a beautiful little ranchito.
Taylor:You know? Coffee farmers. Like I mean, I'm sure I saw the best of it. I'm sure they had problems as well. But just a beautiful community, strongly Christian, strongly socialist.
Taylor:And socialist for them just meant that they shared their excess resources and that nobody had exploitative economic relations. If it was That didn't fly.
Derek:If it was voluntary, then what where did the government come into that? Why did it matter what the government did?
Taylor:It was more like, you know, we say government, but what it really meant was more like community. So they were friends with all the other ranchers. And I'm sure, like, you know, probably there was some rancher that, like, wanted to, I mean, maybe somebody wanted to return back to the Samosa days, you know, the days when they that dictator was in charge because there were some people getting wealthy off of that. You know? It wasn't like whatever.
Taylor:And so, like, when they overthrew it, it was it's really it's a government of the people, by the people, and for the people, at least in that particular context. Don't think especially now. And actually Ernesto Cardenal, like, ended up flipping on this guy Daniel Ortega has been the leader for, twenty five years or something like that. And that particular priest that I was mentioning, he was pro Ortega in the early nineties. And then I think it was, like, in the mid two thousands, he was like, this is it's not it's not what this isn't, like, what the revolution was about.
Taylor:Like, you're becoming a little bit too oppressive or you know? And so recently, they've had some issues. And maybe Ortega, you know, the the absolute power got to his head. But it's also like, I think in that particular region, Esteli is the name of the little town that I was in, Mirafloor. I don't know that he has particularly a lot of power there.
Taylor:It's like, it's much more community run. So like the government is the community, you know, it's like the farmers in the area get together. I'm sure like if you want to have an if you want to exploit somebody, like, you're if you can't get it past, like, the community board or whatever, you're probably not gonna be well received, you know? So, I mean, I can imagine how it could be oppressive. But in that situation, like, it it didn't seem like it to me.
Taylor:I'm sure, like, it's possible. But then, like, to, like, have all these, like, they were very pious people. And my my my friend that I was with was from Israel. And they were so fascinated with him because, like, oh my gosh, you're from the Holy Land. Like, tell us about the holy Land.
Taylor:Like, we have a picture of Jerusalem right here. You know, we read the Bible every day. And so we're reading about where you're from and, like, tell us everything about it. And and we did. Like, at night, was a translator, you know, speaking Spanish and, like, we were translating the things he was saying about Israel.
Taylor:And so it's like they were not faking their Christianity. And for them, like socialism was really all about the food co op, pretty much. The food co op and like not exploitative labor relations, which is, like, what existed before. Like, it was basically a a lord and sir. It was a right wing thing.
Taylor:You had plantation owners that, like, you know, they paid the people nothing. And if they rebelled, they would just kill the people or whatever. So they they it was like, you know, Karl Marx said workers of the world unite. And so that's what happened. It's like the plantation people united.
Taylor:They overthrew. They're like exploitative people. And then they like basically redistributed the land. But it's also not like Another funny myth about communism or whatever is that it's anti ownership. These people definitely own their ranches, you know.
Taylor:And I was just reading actually home ownership in Cuba because we were talking like in the background, we're talking about Cuba. Home ownership in Cuba is over 90%. 90% over 90% of people there own their homes. Another thing that I also read about the Soviet Union is that, like, not long after the their revolution, They broke up the land into small farms and gave ownership to people. And I haven't gone deep into this, but I think the anti private property thing in the Communist Manifesto is more about like, the means of production.
Taylor:Right? So like a factory, that should not be privately owned. That should be owned by the workers is like is is what they're what they're talking about. They're not talking about like your house. You know, now if you own 3,000 houses or something, that would be an issue.
Taylor:Yeah. And there's also the other thing that like kind of reframed everything is that there's not like one single communism. Like, it's definitely communisms and socialisms. There's, like, many versions. So in Nicaragua, you at least at some part some part of Nicaragua, you had a Christian socialism that's and it's still is that in name.
Taylor:I don't know. They currently have different kinds of problems than they did twenty years ago, even when I was there five years ago.
Derek:Yeah, there was I wish I had it in front of me right now, but there was a great quote in John Perkins. John Perkins has a book. He was like, he was a black leader during civil rights and stuff. And he has a great quote where he's talking about how like, basically, like when he went to get a job and he was offered lower than he could, than he thought was fair, he's like, Well, what was I gonna do about it? Because, you know, he had the means of work and the work available.
Derek:So he's like, I couldn't barter with him. Like I just couldn't do
Taylor:it. Right.
Derek:And, you know, that was under that was under capitalism. Yeah, for sure. So there are, there are three experiences that started me rethinking how bad communism is. And so I know that everybody points to like Venezuela or, you know, Soviet Russia, and how that's really terrible. And we can maybe talk about that later.
Derek:But so going to Romania, you know, I started to ask people, you know, like, so what did what did you think of communism? And I was I was just like shocked by the amount of old people. It was usually older people, like 50, and they'd be like, oh, we miss it. You know, they hate the degradation of the society, like their kids, and like their materialism and all that stuff, and how they don't like take care of things, like pick up trash and stuff, because it's, you know, it's it's not theirs. They and they said, Well, at least under communism, I we had, like, I didn't have to worry about where I was gonna live, and I didn't have to worry about having a job.
Derek:And so that's
Taylor:hard for
Derek:me to stomach because I also know that under communism, there were people like Richard Wormbrand being, tortured and like, there were horrendous things. But it was it was still shocking to me that that people would rather live under communism. Another another, thing that kinda started me thinking was, I was reading reading a book called Negroes with Guns, and this guy who's a who's a really good friend with Rosa Parks, I forget his name off the top of my head, but he basically just like defended his community. He's like, we're white people are gonna come and attack us. We're gonna defend ourselves.
Derek:And they didn't even shoot any white people. They just shot towards them to scare them away, while all of a sudden the FBI is coming after him. And where does he escape? But he escapes to Cuba, and he's like, hey, was treated really well in Cuba. And I was like, what?
Derek:Cuba? I thought they were like, I mean, horrible people. And so that Yeah. That kind of got me thinking again. And then I was reading a third book, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa, and it was written by this African guy.
Derek:Forget which country. And of course, he ended up being assassinated because then everybody who espouses socialism against empire ends up being assassinated. So this guy, he was just given kind of a history of Africa and, you know, all these companies like, I think it was Michelin or Goodyear, but, like, all these companies that basically got big from taking rubber, taking all these plants, you know, all these resources out of Africa. And he was talking about, I think it was apartheid South Africa, but he was talking about how the Cubans actually sent like tens of thousands of soldiers to help was it Angola? Fighting Angola?
Derek:It was something, but Cubans were sending people to defend, against the the, like I don't know, the oppressive regime. You're like, man, that's like, Cuba is not is not what I like, they're fighting for human rights. They are accepting black people, and, you know, embracing human rights. People are saying that they actually miss communism in this place where it used to be. And then Yeah.
Derek:And then your experience. So so I want that to lead into your experience, and you told me that on one of your trips, you met some people from Cuba.
Taylor:Oh, yeah. And I just like also second that it's funny because in Nicaragua, like, I wasn't even, like, asking, and they were like, oh, we know that you're not like Ronald Reagan. It's okay. It's okay. You know, like, we're not upset at you.
Taylor:You're not wrong. You know, like, and I was not like, bring up anything. It's just as soon as I said United States, we know that you're
Taylor:not like Ronald Reagan.
Taylor:Okay. And in Germany, I live in East Germany. And I feel like whenever to ask somebody, oh, yeah, like, how old are you? Or they are like, I don't know, somehow, like, East Germany would come up. And then immediately they would go into the like, is it better now?
Taylor:Was it better then? And they'd be like, if they were young, they'd be like, I think it's better now. But, you know, there was no homeless people back then. And like another friend was like, was telling me she's like, you know how everybody's all about this whole organic thing, everything that you want it to be organic and locally farmed and all this stuff. She's like, do you know what we had under communism?
Taylor:All locally farmed organic food. She's like, we didn't have bananas. But we had like everything else was like, that was the thing like in Germany that they were like shipping bananas into West Berlin in particular. So East Germans were like, man, wish we had a banana. But like the government, the community, the government, whatever, decided that they wouldn't spend money for bananas.
Taylor:So yes, a lot of people in East Germany, they also say the same thing. Like, it's kinda maybe better under communism, which was mind blowing to me. Mind blowing. But when I was working in the humanitarian field, I think it was in Dominica and Haiti in particular. Dominica is like an island.
Taylor:It's sort of near Venezuela. Ton a ton of Cuban doctors and a bunch of the Haitian, like, higher level Haitian people that I met. Many there was like I met like two or three Haitian doctors. And I was like, oh, so like, where'd you go to like, where'd you go to med school? Like, Cuba.
Taylor:And I'm like, what do you and they're like, yeah, yeah, you can like, we can go to Cuba and, like, you know, they sponsor people to go to their colleges to to especially health, you know, medicine and study this stuff. And I'm just like, what the heck? And then, yeah, like, there'd be a truckload of nurses and doctors that are on their way to some hospital, and there's a little Cuban flag on the side. You're like, oh, it's the Cubans. And you're like, the Cubans are here.
Taylor:And I read somewhere also, I think it was a Chilean, I think it might have been like Pinochet actually, that said something about this human rights discourse is really just a Marxist ploy to get into the government or something. And I was like, I started to see this thing differently because also the communists they started to meet were like all about human rights, you know, and all about when I met especially like socialists, I guess, in the Berlin context, they were all about human oh, it would be like, okay. So they're upset at liberals. They don't like liberals. Socialists, communists, they don't like liberals.
Taylor:Because liberals, what they'll say is like, okay. You just want like a female bomber pilot or, you know, a gay person in charge of the police or something. And so you take like these identity issues and this like socialist don't like these identity issues because like Cornel West will often say like, it's not about having like black faces in high places. So like, sure, Obama was like a big symbolic victory, but was he actually for the people? And especially Cornel West is very critical of Obama.
Taylor:But like socialists and communists in general, for them Obama was just like many say worse. I think Noam Chomsky in particular, who's an anarchist, says that Obama was worse than Bush. I don't think he's he doesn't he definitely does not identify as a Marxist. He's but he's a he's an anarchist, I believe. I believe.
Taylor:Chomsky is.
Derek:I've heard him called
Taylor:something I
Taylor:found a lot of camaraderie with
Derek:Yeah. I think I think he my friend said he's a minarchist or don't I know. There was some, like, combination of stuff that he said he was. I don't remember.
Taylor:Okay. Okay. Yeah. It's kind of like it gets so niche. It's like it really is.
Taylor:Like, I think it it comes down to, like, I guess, socialism in particular means workers owning the means of production, which as I started to dig into it more, that's, like, also, like, family owned and operated businesses. Socialist. Like, socialist people like that. They don't like the Walton family who has, like, exploitative labor relations, whose workers have to, like, get or can get government subsistence, they would say no. Like, Walmart shouldn't exist.
Taylor:It should be like we might have to take some steps back. You know, we might have to we might not be able to have, like, Amazon or something. We might have to go to local farming so that we don't have these, like, exploitative labor relations. But they would much rather go that way than they would into any kind of like exploitative
Derek:that's labor relations. Where it becomes an issue for me because, you know, when you're talking about systems, it's like, okay, but you're not talking about Nicaragua. Well, okay, they're gonna redistribute the land, but now somebody's gotta go and basically take that by force. Or, well, Waltons shouldn't have their business to that extent, or Amazon shouldn't. So somebody's gotta legislate or go take that by force.
Derek:And, you know, as opposed to a free market where, well, I choose to work for Amazon, or I choose and I know it's more complex than that because obviously, like some of these businesses, they get as big as they are because they get these tax breaks, and they get subsidies, and they so it's much more of a mess than the free market. And I think that's what
Taylor:some
Derek:some of my one of my friends is helping me to see is that, so the story that he tells is, he's like, okay, well, after 09:11, you've got you've got airline subsidies, because the government doesn't want these airlines to go out of business, they provide jobs. Well, in Atlanta, which is a big hub for Delta, that subsidy was about to run up and, run out. And Delta says, hey, don't let that subsidy run out for us, because if you do, we're out of here. Well, so then the government continues that subsidy, but they do so only for Delta, and now other airlines go out of business because so Delta gets bigger because they absorb some of the other airlines, and they're able to have lower prices, which which isn't real market value. And, so like that's a lot of what we see.
Derek:So I understand that it's more complex than that, but my issue with communism or socialism is then, like, who's gonna go take it?
Taylor:Force. Yeah. Yeah. How do you feel about George Washington?
Derek:I I mean, I I disagree with George Washington. No. Disagree with the American. Oh, yeah. For sure.
Taylor:Okay. Yeah.
Derek:Yeah. 100%.
Taylor:And then the other thing would be like ending slavery. You know, slaves were property, and it was it took violence to end that.
Derek:Yeah. But see, would I would disagree with that too. So reading reading some of the CRT stuff, you know, they're like, look, legislation obviously doesn't change things. Like, it changes things on the surface. So, okay, violence got rid of slavery, but why why were they willing to have a war at that point?
Derek:Well, because, I mean, England was already abolishing slavery because they had found substitute plants and and things that like the markets were changing, the industries were changing with factories, you needed more manual labor. You know, some of these things were kind of cotton gin was coming up, so you're getting machines that were able to supplement, so they could afford to lose slavery. But what did they do? They ended up basically keeping slavery through sharecropping. Well, okay, you eventually give give Blacks the right to vote, but what do you do?
Derek:You disenfranchise the vote by having the war on drugs, and by cutting cutting mental health support, so that now you can throw drug addicts and mental health patients in in jail, and then you disenfranchise their vote. So, like, time and time again, you see that where there's legislation that seems to do some good, you have this counter thing where it undermines that, or the trend was already going up anyway, and legislation just kind of comes so that the government appears to be the savior. So I don't I mean, I think slavery would have gone out anyway. It might have taken a little bit longer, but maybe you then wouldn't have had, the sharecropping and all that stuff.
Taylor:Yeah. I I've read that, like, in the Reconstruction era, like, the Northern army was still occupying the South, and that was kind of keeping things like the Reconstruction was sort of happening, I guess, for, like, I want to say until like 1876 or something. So it's like 1863 was that when the Emancipation Proclamation. The '64, I think, the war kind of ended mostly. So, like, for twelve years, you had, like, a northern army occupation of the South.
Taylor:But then there was some kind of stalemate in, like, the voting. And so the North agreed to pull the military out of the South. And so then that allowed, like Reconstruction basically ended at that point. I don't know what I'm saying, but I I'm guessing I'm saying, like, that maybe the it was kind of the violence that kept it on track for a little while.
Derek:Yeah. I guess I guess I wouldn't I wouldn't disagree with that. I would just say that, I mean, we're one hundred and fifty years past that, and we're still dealing with things. Now maybe we would have anyway.
Taylor:Right.
Derek:But and I don't know that much history about England, but their slavery dissipated more organically. They started to institute that, and I don't think you have seen near the problems that you see in our culture. So, okay, we end it by violence maybe sooner than it would have ended, but if we would have ended it more organically by the people, would that have influenced long term? And I mean, I don't know the answer to that, but I think critical race theory is kind of identifying that legislation doesn't do, violence doesn't do what what people think that it does because we keep having these problems even after all these stages of legislation.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. And there's I mean, yeah. Yeah. And I I guess I would the other question I would say, like, with regards to violence, I mean, like, I do think that nonviolence is the better way.
Taylor:And especially, like, if you have a nonviolent revolution, then it means like, because the American nation I was gonna say empire or whatever. But because we were founded on violence, it means that, like, violence is basically an acceptable way. You know? Like, you're rare, I think, saying that George Washington you know, that you don't agree with George Washington. Like so then that means that, like, if somebody's pissed off, if there's taxation without representation, then it is okay to, like, freaking revolt, you know, just like the founding fathers did.
Taylor:But if you found on Jesus a nonviolent revolutionary, then you don't have to agree with the George Washington. You know? And if we had a nation that was overthrown nonviolently, then we would say, no, we are like a we are a genuinely peace loving nation. Like, we don't even a revolution, we don't even do violence, you know? So I'm with I'm I'm with you on that, but I also think that it's it's kind of in the it's the powerful people that decide whether or not they're gonna allow a peaceful change or not.
Taylor:You know? And JFK said that. He said, those who make peaceful revolution impossible make violent revolution inevitable. Yeah. So I did was there a question?
Taylor:I can't remember where how we got
Taylor:how I got to that.
Derek:But Yeah. I don't know. I I think it'll be
Taylor:Legislating legislation is fine.
Derek:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Communists, you know, I I don't like the the aspect of communist, like
Taylor:Who's gonna take Yeah.
Derek:Or or force that viewpoint.
Taylor:Gonna go take the land.
Derek:Yeah. And and who determines how much is too much land and who determines, what's exploitative?
Taylor:I was just about to say Bill Gates is the he owns more farmland than anybody else in the world. Like, this is, like, just happened last year. I think he went on a buying spree. He started buying a whole bunch of land. So, yeah, he owns more farms than anybody in
Taylor:the world. No. It's kind of
Taylor:a weird thing. Computer guy, I mean, kind of farmland.
Derek:So, let me switch. So we talked a little bit about about communism and how it, you know, it it maybe isn't the demon that everybody paints it out to be in. And we could maybe talk about some of the specific examples later that people like to throw around. But what about so let's talk a little bit about capitalism now. So communism might be better than people think it is, but capitalism isn't the same, I don't think, that people think it is.
Derek:So now I've heard I've heard people talk about when when I say that capitalism is messed up. Like, it it's really bad. What they say is that, no, it's not really capitalism. Like I was giving the the point about Delta and the subsidies. They'd say, it's not capitalism that's decision.
Derek:It's not the free market. What it is, is the government intervention in the free market. When the banks screwed up, the government should have let the banks go. When the the auto industry screwed up and overextended, the government should have let them fail. So what we really have is a pandering to the wealthy and government propping up things.
Derek:If we had a truly free market, no subsidies, would be good. And when you when you add on top of this the Keynesian economic system, which is we have to always buy more and consume and consume, I mean, that leads to, I mean, just really bad habits, but also exploitation where you're trying to take people for as much as you can. So what would you say? Do you think that capitalism free market is bad in and of itself and communism's a good alternative, or do you think that a free market is the best thing?
Taylor:Yeah. I don't think the free market I don't think the free market has what it needs to reform itself. And the reason I say that is mostly I mean, I was a libertarian for ten years, basically. Actually, when I went to Cedarville, don't know, like somebody pointed out what you're saying, you know, like Republicans are bigger government than Democrats, even especially with military spending and stuff. Is like, we say we're against big government, but we're just dumped.
Taylor:Know, Republicans are bigger than Democrats in many cases. And so, like, it took about, like, you know, two conversations. It was like, I'm a libertarian, you know, like, I'm Ron Paul or whatever. I did that for ten years. And then I started to see, I guess, the way Amazon was and Walmart were just running rampant over small businesses.
Taylor:And how many like, I I love bookstores. Right? I love being able to go to a local bookstore. And basically everywhere I was going, all the bookstores were closed now because they couldn't compete with the online of Amazon. Or same thing like Walmart, you know?
Taylor:Then people would go then they have to get these, like, kinda crappy jobs that don't quite pay enough. Then I'm like, what is the libertarian gonna do regarding Jeff Bezos? Nothing. You know? Like, let him let him do whatever he wants.
Taylor:And then then recently, I came across the, like, Haymarket affair. Do you know about the Haymarket affair? Haymarket riot? So Cyrus J. McCormick, senior, start senior.
Taylor:He started the cotton harvesting, a harvester. I it was cotton, but he generated one of these things. And then he brought all these work. He, you know, started selling them all over the place. Everybody loved him.
Taylor:This was in the 1870s, 80s, maybe early, maybe 60s. Became really successful selling them all over the place. He sent his son to Princeton to study economics, and things were going great. His son came back like, hey, man. Yeah.
Taylor:Efficiency, let's, like, make this better and all this stuff. And the workers got so good that they basically they were working six days a week, ten hours a day. It was in the eighteen eighties. And they started to say, hey. Why don't we have a eight hour workday instead of a ten hour workday?
Taylor:Because we don't, like, we can accomplish everything in eight hours. We're we're good now. We're fast. Like, we know what we're doing. We're just cranking these things out.
Taylor:And McCormick senior was like, well, you know, we'll talk about it. Maybe just like whatever. He didn't change anything. He died, I think it was 1884, and then it was 1886 that Cyrus Court Junior, you know, they were like starting to make more of a fuss. Like, hey, eight hours, eight hours, eight hours.
Taylor:Like, let's not do this ten hour thing anymore. We don't need all like, we could go home, be with our families. We could, like, invest in the community or whatever. And McCormick was like, we could do that, or I could fire half of you and more profit for me. And so that's what he did.
Taylor:He fired half of them, and the other half, he dropped their pay by 10% because he's like, you're lucky you have a job. So I'm gonna pay you less. In a year that he made a big profit the year before, you know, he totally could pay the ten hours, six days a week, whatever. He he totally could pay that. He's making all this money and now but now he's making more money.
Taylor:And so the the people freaked out. Like, this is not right. This should not be allowed. And but McCormick was wealthy, and so he just, like, paid the people he needed to. He told the people in the newspaper.
Taylor:He's like, yeah. These are just angry workers. This is just the way it is. Free market. You know?
Taylor:This is just the way it is. I'm sorry. What you guys feel entitled to me? You know, he all the same arguments that we hear today. And so then and, like, they were, you know, making a fuss, and I think the half, they ended up quitting.
Taylor:They said, we're not gonna work for you because this is ridiculous, and they're striking. They had strike breakers coming in. There's, a little violence here and there. And so McCormick basically told his friends of the police that, hey. These guys are troublemakers, whatever.
Taylor:And so they started, like, the protest. They would come in and they they like, 05/03/1886. So May 1 was International Day of the Worker, and that that's, like, you know, May Day or whatever. And that's what this was all about, actually related to this moment even. But they had a following protesters.
Taylor:So many people, I can't remember the numbers, but a lot of people in Chicago. Eighteen eighty three. No. It's '18 86. May 3.
Taylor:Police come shoot like four people. Following day, they meet up and they're like, okay. Some people were like, bring your guns. People like, no, we're doing this nonviolent. Not like, whatever.
Taylor:And so they had, like, these talks and these talks. The police came in to end the protest. Somebody threw a bomb. Policeman died. They rounded up.
Taylor:They knew who the leaders were of, like, the workers. Rounded up the eight leaders, hung four of them immediately. Seven of them were not even at the event. Hung four of them immediately. The other four sat in prison for, like, seven years or something.
Taylor:And, meanwhile, Cyrus McCormack junior is like, man, the town hates me. I need to, like, do something about this. Who's that pre Dwight Moody? Come on over here. I want to sponsor you.
Taylor:You want a bible institute? Bam. Done. I just want you to go around. I want you to train like Christian workers.
Taylor:And so Dwight Moody's like, cool. Christian workers? Great. And he's like, yeah. Yeah.
Taylor:Like, I've been blessed by God. He's like, you've been blessed by God. You have money. You've been blessed by God. So yeah.
Taylor:And I can't believe these loud angry workers. There's you're right. Though they are ungrateful and just bad. Look at how, like, disruptive they are. You know?
Taylor:I can't believe they're so disruptive. And so then that's how what Moody Bible Institute got started was by Cyrus and Kormick junior trying to rehabilitate his image. And every time Moody spoke, he had all the wealthy businessmen behind him, and he would like it was basically like, if you work hard and live a moral life and do what I say, you could be like them because God has blessed them. And so this is something I wanna write about with my master's degree, but who's gonna rein in Cyrus McCormick junior? Because when labor gets better, you'd want to give them more agency, but what ends up happening is, you know, we have this desire to cut the cost of labor.
Taylor:And so who's going to, like if and, actually, he the people he rehired, he gave them an eight hour workday. McCormick junior, he decided, okay. Fine. The next group that I hire, I'll give them an eight hour workday. So the old people, they did not get it.
Taylor:In fact, a lot of them got killed. And like, this was also like how Chicago in many ways started to go downhill at this point because all of a sudden you had all these people out of jobs. And he wasn't the only one doing it, McCormick Junior. It was all kinds of industrialist people. And it wasn't until really like the new deal, Franklin Roosevelt, that anything changed.
Taylor:Yeah. So that's the thing is, like, it's not natural for us to care about the labor. It's just the bottom line for the owners. So you like, we're supposed to rely on, like, human nature, which is funny because I'm like, this is why people told me, oh, Marx, you didn't think about human nature. And it's like, I think I'm not a capitalist because of we're not thinking about human nature.
Taylor:I mean, human nature of this, like, top 1%. You know?
Derek:Yeah. That's that's how I feel about government too. Like, you know, being reformed. I mean, a lot of people don't know that, or don't think about the Reformation was like, my group is called the Magisterial Reformers, and Magisterium is just like, you know, basically politics. And so it was this marrying of church and state.
Derek:And so I'm thinking, so we believe that people are totally depraved, and so what we do is we give depraved people power of the sword. Like, you know, we're gonna give this group of depraved people extreme, extreme power over all of these other people. And it's like, yeah, like you said, I mean, you say you you say that the other side doesn't consider human nature, but it seems like we do just as bad stuff with it or just as oblivious.
Taylor:Yeah. I don't have you there's a one talk that really helped me with Richard Wolff's Socialism for Dummies. And he explains that Marx and company really liked the French Revolution, which was liberty, equality, fraternity. But then they were like, this system that we have now where we just let the wealthiest people decide what happens, they're like, that's not gonna bring us liberty, equality, fraternity. And we're gonna have to basically, we're gonna have to get to the point where workers own the means of production.
Taylor:You know? Like, every the everything is a worker owned co op, basically, you know, in today's language. That's what we're gonna have to get to. And in order
Taylor:to do that, we're gonna have
Taylor:to do all this stuff. But but they were like they realized that this the system was isolating people. And so they said, what should we call this new system? We should call it socialism, a belief in society. Like, we prioritize society.
Taylor:And the current one, what it's doing is it's prioritizing private wealth. It's saying that, like, whoever has the most accumulated wealth, we trust you. We believe in you. But he's, like, saying, like, we're gonna have to switch it, and we're gonna have to believe in society. We're gonna have to believe in all people.
Taylor:So even the person who said of the people by the people for the people, Abraham Lincoln, he's quoting this guy, Theodore Parker. Theodore Parker is like a serious reader of Hagel, which is where Marx gets a lot of his ideas. So even the American version of of the people by the people for the people, that's kind of it's a Hegelian idea. It's a Marxist idea. But it was an American, not Karl Marx who was saying this.
Taylor:An American who probably had some affinities with Karl Marx, but he's also the person who said, The moral arc of the universe is long, but it bends towards justice.
Derek:So Martin Luther
Taylor:King was quoting Theodore Parker.
Derek:I didn't know that. Okay. So so maybe kind of to to round this out a little bit, I know that one of the one of the common things that you hear is, I mean, I see this all the time, just about, look how look how good communism or socialism works out. And they point to Venezuela, they point to, the Soviet Union. What you know, it's like everywhere communism is tried, socialism is tried, it's found wanting.
Derek:Like, it just screws up society. And I think even, I don't remember if it was Marx himself that said it in the communist manifesto manifesto or whatever. But, like, communism, essentially, it has to be preceded by capitalism. Right? So you have to build up the capital for communism or socialism to work, which seems kind of kind of hypocritical to say, well, capitalism's a bad thing, but we're gonna we're gonna kind of ride on its its coattails.
Derek:So, anyway, talk talk about, yeah, all of the bad examples we see.
Taylor:Yeah. So, I guess there's three things that immediately come to mind. I didn't super prepare for this, but, obviously, it's a question that, like, I had myself. Because like I said, I was a libertarian for ten years, and before that, I was just, like, conservative Republican in doctrine. All Democrats are totalitarian.
Taylor:I also thought Marx and Hitler were the same thing, which now I can't believe that that was that I like, that people actually think that. But those three things. The one first, fast, easy one, maybe not the main one, but it's like these are nations and they have, like, normal problems. You know? Like, just because all of a sudden you're socialist or capitalist doesn't mean that you're like you know, if you have a lawn mowing business and your lawn mower breaks, it doesn't have anything to with your labor relations.
Taylor:You know? Like, but they're you know? So there those those kind of issues, from time to time. That's a small thing, but just something to remember that, like, whatever system you have, you're still gonna have, like, natural disasters that have it, like, issues. The second thing is that, and I'm, like, forgetting, like, what were the three that I set up.
Taylor:But the second thing and the biggest one in Latin America in particular, but also like African nations, basically any developing nation have this issue. Like Cuba, they've had an embargo from The United States, same as Venezuela. United States has basically told, like, any country, like, we will not if you work with Cuba, we will also not work with you. So people are like, okay. We can either work with The United States or we can work with Cuba.
Taylor:We're working with United States. You know, it's, like, way more advantageous. Like, we get Apple computers. We get, you know, all kinds of benefits from The United from trading with United States, and their stipulation is don't work with Cuba. So I think I read just something recently that, like well, Cuba can't get a whole bunch of, like they they have a ton of doctors.
Taylor:Right? They're, like, what they did is, like, they super invested in the things that everybody uses. So health care, education, and food. Actually, they have, like, food rations, like, nobody goes hungry. And, like, housing, they also have, like, everybody's housed.
Taylor:No homeless people in Cuba.
Derek:Yeah. And their their infant mortality rate is, like, insanely low. Yeah. And The US is is actually pretty high.
Taylor:Yeah. I actually just saw a stat. I did a little bit of research today. A hundred and seventy seven people per, like, hundred thousand or something die of cancer in The United States. In The in Cuba, it's a hundred and forty four.
Taylor:It's lower. Basically, all their, like, health care stats are better in The United States. And then they're like, people always talk about, like, the Cuban literacy rate is like before before the revolution, hardly anybody could read. After the revolution, everybody can read. Like, they just dumped money into education and said, hey.
Taylor:You know, this this kind of a cheap thing to, like, get people busy reading. And we you you can do that. So they did that. They launched a literacy campaign. And and I think, like, it's funny, like, and Bernie Sanders and stuff.
Taylor:Like they said, yeah, you know, like Cuba, like, their literacy rate shot to the roof. And then, like, all these people are like, oh my gosh. You're a communist? You know, like, freaking out. And they're like, can we not,
Derek:like Well, so
Taylor:reading it. Okay.
Derek:So why why are so many people trying to leave Cuba? Why do you have people who are willing to leave on a raft to get to Florida?
Taylor:So because of the embargo, because they're not able to trade with anybody. And so Cuba did want to trade with The United States and did say like, hey, let's, you know, work together or whatever. But The United States said, no. We're not gonna work with you, and we're going to penalize anyone who does work with you. So even like Puerto Rico, who has, like, traditionally been connected to Cuba, is basically not allowed to work with Cuba anymore.
Taylor:So they're totally cut off from the rest of the world. That's why they reached out to the Soviet Union. And, I mean, they had affinities anyways because of their political model was similar. But they started trading with Soviet Union, and then The United States really freaked out because that means the Soviet Union could, like, put missiles on queue queue the island of Cuba, which is only 90 miles from Miami. So The United States, like, has just cut them off.
Taylor:I think after, like, Barack Obama restored relations with them, they were like, hey. Why don't we put, like, a big cable under the ocean so that we can have Internet, you know, and, like, our people can have Internet, a better Internet, all this stuff. And The United States is like, no. We're not gonna do it. Like, we won't allow this or whatever.
Taylor:And then turns around to criticize them saying, look at Cuba. They don't have Internet. You know? Like, they're trying to do you know? It's not like they're not trying.
Taylor:You know? But it's like, you know and the same thing with Venezuela is, like, The United States won't allow anybody to work with Venezuela. And so Venezuela was also having issues with, like, their oil stuff because United States, like, would penalize anyone who took Venezuela oil. Like, okay. You know, we're not gonna work with work with you.
Taylor:I think with with Cuba, I just read that they said that any ship that has docked in Cuba over the last six months cannot dock in The United States. That's like a rule that they have. So they're trying to starve off communism with these like embargo things. And this is the case in all of Latin America, but then also like, you know, Saddam Hussein in Iraq. I think the real issue was that Saddam Hussein wanted to nationalize their oil.
Taylor:So he's basically unionizing their oil saying, like, no. You don't get to work with, like, a few rich families, like, in Saudi Arabia. You have like, the whole nation of Iraq is we're gonna decide at what, like, rate we're gonna sell you oil. And The United States is like, well, if you do that, then, like, Saudi Arabia might do that and Iran might Kuwait might do like, they might get some ideas. And so this is, like, a project for, especially, the Bushes who are, like, oil family.
Taylor:They were like, we're going to blow you up now because because you wanted your oil to work for the for a bigger know, you wanted to unionize your oil. So Yeah.
Derek:Because it's it's insane. Like, Chomsky Chomsky and, like, for for whether you hate Chomsky or love Chomsky, you can you can verify a lot of the things that he says. And so I remember he said some of the things about like, we were friends with Saddam Hussein, like, right before we went in and attacked him. And like, sure enough, you can see like Bush senior praising him, you can see them like going to meet him, and like buddy buddy, and then all of a sudden, they're not. Like we sell them things, we give them things, and then we go kill them.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah,
Derek:it's just it's insane. And you mentioned the missiles, like, you know, Russia being able to bring missiles into Cuba. Also learned it's like, well, part of how we were able to back Russia off is we had missiles in Turkey aimed at Russia. And so we were able to so it's not fair for them to have missiles close to us, Right. But, like, we put our stuff right in their back door right across the Black Sea.
Derek:Yeah. It's just insane how hypocritical we are. Yeah.
Taylor:Yeah. I see, like, these pictures of, like, Iran in particular. So Iran, they're like, and they say, like, why did Iran put their country so close to all our military bases? You know? Because, like, if you look at Iran and US military bases, you're surrounded with US military bases.
Taylor:You know? And I think Richard Wolff, like, anybody can go like, look him up on YouTube because he responds to this in much more detail, and he says something about, like, Soviet Union was invaded, like, several times by the Western powers. They never invaded. Like, they were not the aggressor. The aggressor we were the aggressor.
Taylor:And he, you know, he says it like Chomsky. He names it like a little more factual. Like, I I haven't, like, memorized the the facts of all this stuff. But the Nicaragua thing, I looked into pretty pretty seriously, and that was, I mean, that was a pretty big disenchanted moment. I feel like, you know, people always told in the conservative world, they always told me, like, yeah.
Taylor:You know, you gotta read and do your research. And then I, like, started and, like, you know, travel and talk to people and, like, broaden your horizon. And then, like, I did that. And I'm like, I'm a freaking communist now. You know?
Taylor:I mean, I'm and that's I think the difference between socialist and communist is is a little bit funky, but I think it was in the, like, nineteen twenties Germany that this like, the distinction became serious. And the distinction was the communists were willing to be violent or work illegally, and the socialists wanted to work within the system. But they have, like, the same basic thing. And, of course, the Nazis were antisocialist, anticommunist. Martin Niemoller, he has the poem, first, they came for the I was not them.
Taylor:I didn't do anything, and then they came for me. It's first they came for the socialists, which was, like, a mind bender for me because I thought that it was national socialism. I was always told it's national socialism. You know? But that was a word at the time.
Taylor:It's kinda like democracy is now that, like, everybody says it's democracy. Like, you have Jay Gresham Machen saying, I'm all about democracy and individual rights. And then you're like, but whose individual rights? Oh, only yours. That's totalitarianism.
Taylor:You know? Like, not democracy. So I forgot how we got there also, but
Derek:Yeah. I think Russia. You know, something else I I realized after reading how Europe underdeveloped Africa. I started to realize this whole capitalism versus communism thing. So the embargo thing was definitely a big deal.
Derek:Well, you basically cut off the life support of all these other countries. Of course they're going to go be poor, because everybody wants to trade with you. But the other thing is, I mean, if you think about it, like for three hundred years ago, Europeans, we basically came into this land flowing with milk and honey. We just gobbled up all of these resources, and then we imported slaves and resources from these other people that we could exploit. We economically exploited South Americans and all kinds of stuff.
Derek:So basically, would be like me moving into a mansion, and having everybody in the town where the mansion is bring all their crap and put it inside my house, and then like freeze time and say, All right guys, look how good I'm doing. My system works. Now you guys go ahead, and why are you doing so poorly? Yeah. And so because we think that capitalism, our system is just like this huge work ethic, like we just did all this good stuff, but we don't realize we snatched up a mansion, and we we sucked dry these other places.
Derek:And I I just don't think it's a fair comparison
Taylor:at Yeah. Yeah. Like, I was gonna, like, I was gonna say, like, I think well, Eugene Debs, who's kind of, like, the main American socialist there ever was back in, like, the nineteen tens, nineteen twenties, he was asked one time, what is socialism? Or he was actually just giving a speech. He said, what is socialism?
Taylor:Merely Christianity in action. And so it's like my Christian values are what, like, make me a socialist. And and I mean, this the main socialist organization in The United States is called the Democratic Socialist America, and they put democratic in the name to signal that they're opposing authoritarian socialism. So it's like this idea that, like, socialism is the government doing something is like and the other thing I didn't say about, but the bar that bar in in Potsdam, Germany, in East Germany that, like, totally, like, was like, what? I'd found I can't remember if I learned it was a communist bar or what, but it it was a bar and it had this huge banner across the top of it.
Taylor:It said, never trust the government. I was like, wait a minute. I thought communism was the government, you know? And so then I had to like, basically have conversations with a whole bunch of people and do a lot of, like, you know, reading and stuff and starting to realize that, like, communists were actually like, the the French revolution. Like, they love the French revolution.
Taylor:They love the, like, liberty. They Marx loved that, like, Lincoln ended slavery. Loved it because he was about the workers having agency. You know? Like, he's about regular people having rights.
Taylor:He's saying that, like, under the capitalist system, Cyrus McCormick junior, Jeff Bezos can do whatever they want with their labor, but then we're gonna create a system that, like, the workers own the means of production. It's worker owned coops. Today, you know, that's what it looks like. Even Reagan, like, had great things to say about worker owned coops. And in that sense, like, United States is more socialist than most places because I think it has more worker owned coops, not that many, but has more than many other places.
Taylor:So most of us, I think, are actually socialists. We just don't realize it. And this whole, like, I wanna, you know, like, I I don't wanna work and have the government take my money. It's like, well, do you want to work and have Jeff Bezos take your money then? Or because that's what's happening, you know, like, you're working and you're having your, like, employer take your money, you know?
Derek:Yeah. But but I I give it to him. I wanna order stuff on Amazon.
Taylor:Oh, yeah. We like Amazon. And it's cool. You know, like that's the other thing is like, no, like, keep Amazon, but like, work around Amazon, you know, and maybe, okay, maybe it wouldn't be as efficient, but it's like, I would take human rights over efficiency. I don't care if my chair that I ordered takes ten days to get here instead of two.
Taylor:I'll deal with that. Let's let the workers be a little more respected, you know? Yeah. Let's
Derek:Well, I mean, I I think that's the problem. We're we're consumerists
Taylor:Yeah.
Derek:And materialists. And so, yeah, I choose convenience and price oftentimes over.
Taylor:Yeah. Yeah. So it's even
Derek:Okay. Last last
Taylor:Oh, Go ahead.
Derek:Go for it.
Taylor:Well, was just gonna say, like Amazon and like most of these things are cool and fine. We just want those labor relations to be better. And, basically, we just say, like, okay. Jeff Bezos, like, how many how many how much money do you need? How about, like, let's cap you at, $999,999,999.
Taylor:How about that? And you can have, like, three houses wherever you want. How about that? And then the rest goes to your workers, you know?
Derek:But isn't that passing off responsibility? Because it so it seems seems kinda cheap to say Jeff Bezos Bezos should control himself on how much he earns and spends. Whereas, why shouldn't we as people, as individuals, make those small choices and just say, I'm not gonna buy from him. I'm not gonna buy that from him. Why don't I take the moral responsibility to do the right thing rather than saying, I just can't control myself to buy from Amazon.
Derek:So he, as an individual, should control himself.
Taylor:Because he will always find people that are willing to exploit. You know? I was just talking about somebody about Nazi Germany, and they were saying, like, you know, the it wasn't the German army that was really the problem. It was called the Wehrmacht. Wehrmacht wasn't really the the problem.
Taylor:It was the SS. So, like, they separated their standing army, which was just kind of like, you know, whatever. And probably, like, if they told somebody in the standing army, okay. Now we're gonna have you guys just go murder all those Jews. Like, probably the standing army would have said that's wrong.
Taylor:We're not gonna do it. I mean, they probably would have much more problems. And so they established the SS to do the dirty work. So you had this standing army that, like, didn't even realize really what was happening to SS, or it was like a don't ask, don't tell. You know?
Taylor:Like, I don't wanna know. Don't tell me. We're just gonna do these general soldier things, which are, you know, horrible enough. But people in many communities, they claimed and I think I mean, I think they're probably I think they're I believe them that they didn't know various concentration camps were happening, what's happening, the way it was happening. And it wasn't till 1941 that they actually did the whole, like, the full on, like, gassing of people.
Taylor:I mean, it was horrible, but it, like, in 1933, they started deporting people. And you go in Germany and they have these, like, little they're called stumbling stones, but they're, like, these little gold, you know, not actual gold, but, like, right outside. And it says, you know, Gershom Sholem lived here. He was deported in 1933, murdered in Auschwitz in 1941. And so, like like, everywhere you go in Berlin, they're everywhere where all the Jewish people live and it says the name of the person and it says deported, murdered.
Taylor:Or some of them is only deported. You know, some of them were only deported. But my point is is that there there's like a separation between the, like, sort of more reasonable things and then the dirty work thing. So Jeff Bezos, I think he can he can always find people that are willing to exploit. And the other like, also Nazis, way they did it, like, they didn't know who was killing who.
Taylor:They actually designed it that way. So, like, in Sachsenhausen, the constitution camp near Berlin, they would march the people in and they would like actually take the people's like height and weight. And the people think that they're just in for like a little checkup or whatever. The prisoners think they're in for just a little checkup. And then they stand on the wall to get measured, and there's a little slit in the wall, and someone is there with a gun, shoots him in the head.
Taylor:And they have three people in the room that trade off, so nobody knows who killed who. Nobody knows. Like, they they developed a way to not know what they were doing. You know? So I think that, like, McCormick junior, you know, he can also develop ways, and then he can hire Christian people like Dwight Moody to give the, like, historical Christian backing to what he's doing.
Taylor:You know? So he he he there's a conscience even, I think, that, like, needs that. And that's why it's not enough to just say, like, okay. I'm not gonna buy from Amazon because we can trick ourselves. People did it with slavery too.
Taylor:I mean, that that was one of the most eye opening things for me. I was reading like biblical justifications of slavery. They're like, it says, slaves be obedient to your masters. You are the one not following the Bible. I'm following the Bible.
Taylor:It says slaves be obedient to your masters. I'm the biblical Christian. You're not. In fact, we're gonna start our own convention of people that is biblical. We're gonna call out the Southern Baptist Convention.
Taylor:It it's pro slavery. It's 1845. They separated from the rest of the Baptist because the Southern Baptists are pro slavery. Southern they mean we are we are pro slavery. We are biblical Christian.
Taylor:It says slaves be obedient to masters. God said it. That settles it. I believe it. Done.
Taylor:You know? The exodus is slaves disobeying their masters. You know?
Derek:Yeah.
Taylor:So I just don't think it's I don't think because of human nature is why, like, I can't be a free market because we will find a way to justify our exploitation.
Derek:Yeah. But don't don't you think that with human nature, people the power to determine who's exploiting I mean, like, so take Mao in China.
Taylor:Yeah.
Derek:Right? He's like, the intellectuals, the wealthy, like, I mean, he got to determine who the bad people were. So I just and maybe that's why I lean towards, or I would say that if I had to land somewhere, I'm landing on anarchism, which is like Christian anarchism, no king but Christ. Like, the church is the is the ethic for the world, I'm gonna invest my time and resources there, and be an alternative kingdom to live by example. I'm not going to seek to legislate abortion, I mean, whatever.
Derek:But we're going to try to provide through love for mothers so that abortion doesn't even cross her mind because, our community will provide for her and for her kid. Right. That's my ideal. Yeah. So yeah, like I said, I'm not communism, not capitalism, for me, but I I don't know if you'd have a response if if you're pro communism, if if you think that empire can control communism well or or human nature can control it well.
Taylor:Yeah. Well, I think I mean, I would say, I guess, power corrupts absolutely. Like, I I do think that when somebody's given too much power, it it's easy for that to become exploitative. And so within a socialist or communist system, that it's easy for that to become exploitative. And I think, like, Berlin Wall is also another good good example.
Taylor:From what I understand, you know, it was like a Cuba. Like, they were training medical doctors for free and all this stuff and dumping money in education. And what was happening was all the people were like, okay. We'll do our education in East Germany, and then we'll go to West Germany where the Marshall Plan is happening. The economic miracle, like The United States is dumping money in there.
Taylor:And so we'll get trained in East Germany, and then we'll go to West Germany. Bam. We're, like, rich in West Germany. So, like, East Germany had this problem that we're just losing all their people. And United States was turning West Berlin into like just this playground.
Taylor:If you got across, they would give you like a bank account with like hundreds of dollars in it already. Like, you know, they were like, hey, we want people to move to West Berlin. Just come to West Berlin, we'll, like, dump money on you, and we're flying in chocolate and bananas and all the sort. They're making this place. It was like Pinocchio.
Taylor:You know? Like, people were leaving communist East Germany to go to this, like, wonderland that turns out wasn't as wonderland as they imagined. And so East Germany basically had no option except to build a wall and say nobody can go over there, you know, which is not a good option. But they had kind of, like, in a way, before they even built the wall, they had already lost because they can't compete with exploitation. Like, what you were saying about, like, the underdevelopment or, you know, like, the mansion and then, like, man, you guys are poor.
Taylor:You must suck. You know? It's like, no. No. You can't exploitation is a great gig for the people at the top.
Taylor:You know? It's real it is really good. Slavery was like a 700% return on it was just a crazy return on investment. You know? Like, somebody invests a little bit of money in slavery and bam.
Taylor:And all like, you know, it's a way to get rich quick. And it worked. You know? But, you know, I would say that slavery is not a good thing. And I would say that the way we treat workers in a, quote, free market system, I mean, is also not it's not a good thing.
Taylor:So I think we should set up and there's, like, biblical. I mean, Leviticus 25, you know, the jubilee year. This is, like, kinda a pretty biblical thing. I just listened to this economist, Michael Hudson, basically claiming that most Middle Eastern cultures realized that if they didn't, like, cancel the debt every fifty years or so, the inequality would just get too crazy. So that was the Hebrew way of doing it.
Taylor:Now did they ever achieve that? Probably not. But, I mean, I'm okay with, like, biblical economy. Wipe out the debt every fifty years. That seems good to me.
Taylor:So am I a biblical literalist? You know?
Derek:Yeah. Well, I I do think it is funny. So just a little bit of push it's it's interesting how, my group would take the homosexuality as bad from the Old Testament because they're biblical literalists, but not the Jubilee. I think you'd probably do the opposite.
Taylor:Yeah. And I mean, I think, like, I go with Paul, like, he's like the spirit it's the spirit of the law, not the letter of the law. Spirit letter kills, the spirit gives life. And I think, like, acts 10 is a good example of, like, that's Peter. He has the, like, dream about eating unclean meat.
Taylor:And he's like he tells God, no. I'm a good Jew. Like, I don't eat pigs. You know? And but God, like, tells him, no.
Taylor:No. Eat pigs. You know? Like so this is a crazy reversal that happened. And I think that you have historical reasons for certain things.
Taylor:And I think that, like, the, Levitical you know, there's, what, six verses against gay people, and I think a lot of them come down to exploitation, actually. Maybe a whole, but yeah. Because I think the the way they saw it was different than the way we saw it. But I also see in Jesus, like, a pattern where he he forgives the woman caught in adultery. He does say go go and sin no more.
Taylor:And I think that, like, it's easier to agree with, like, adultery as a sin when I see, like, you know, I call them healthy, monogamous, homosexual relationships. I don't think they're hurting anybody. The other weird thing is, like, it doesn't really affect me. I I don't know. We don't need to go too, like, too far into that.
Taylor:But Yeah.
Derek:No, no, it's good. I mean, but I do Yeah, I do find it really interesting that we have we won't my group, our I don't know, our group, the group you used to be in, whatever, they will not be able to hear somebody like Matthew Vines on anything whatsoever, because, you know, he's a practicing homosexual, and therefore, like, he can't be a Christian, because you can't be living in sin knowingly and going through that. But then we'll look up to Whitfield and Edwards who were slave owners, and we're like, Well, you know, they were men of their times, and they were I'm like, give me give me a break. Like, what a double standard.
Taylor:Yeah. Rocky Vines, did he have a man of his time then? Well,
Derek:no. He can't be because it's clear that homosexuality is wrong. It wasn't clear that slavery was wrong. And then, yeah, it's just, I mean, the lengths that we'll go to, to just we don't like living in that ambiguity. We don't like, like, we like our categories and we like comfortability.
Derek:And to be like, You know what? I don't know. Maybe those slave owners weren't Christians because they were living in abhorrent sin. Or maybe people are sinners and we can listen to them, but then we can also listen to Matthew Vines, even if we think homosexuality is wrong.
Taylor:But,
Derek:yeah, that is that is a bit off topic.
Taylor:Yeah. I think yeah. It's and it's weird. I think, like, ideally, like, a socialism cares about everyone who is hungry, thirsty, naked, a stranger, person in prison, you know, math 25. And it doesn't it says blessed are the poor in spirit.
Taylor:Or if you wanna go to Luke six, blessed are the poor, for there is the kingdom of heaven. Like so it's not like blessed are the poor as long as they have the right theology or blessed are the poor, you know, as long as they're not caught in adultery, it's like, no. Actually so, yeah, I I I guess I I go with that. That that is like the the sermon on the mount is like the defining principle, and and that's and that's what led me to socialism is that the Bible. So then people say, like, I'm not a Christian or something, but I'm like, or and I don't know the legislation thing.
Taylor:But then, like, you're saying anarchism, like, makes sense to me. And I think the way Chomsky explained it is he says, if a law doesn't serve the people, then it's out. Or, like, if it's if the unjust I don't know. That's more of a contentious way. Are you familiar with like the way he describes things?
Taylor:Because I I like once you get to the nuance of things and I feel like the like left wing stuff and even like AOC and Bernie Sanders in The United States, it's like, can we give people a job to make their energy more self sufficient? Can we do you know, like, that's this is, like, actually kind of a mild thing. Or can we, like, tax Wall Street to make college available to everyone in The United States? You know, tuition free college. Germany does this.
Taylor:Is Germany socialist? Most of Europe does this. Are they social Mexico, I think, even does this. Like, are they socialist? Like, it's not really, like, that crazy of an idea just to, like, put, like, a 1% tax on Wall Street, and then all your public colleges are tuition free.
Taylor:And we don't have bankruptcy. We give people agency. You know, like, we give people individual rights by not putting them in mountains of debt. You know? We build public we build a housing that's like affordable.
Taylor:Developers won't invest in affordable housing because it doesn't have a good return on investment. So are poor people just like out of luck? I mean, do we care? You know, I guess that's the, like, biggest question that I have, like, for conservative Christian people is, like, do we care? Because looking at history, you know, the Southern Baptist Convention is founded on slavery.
Taylor:Do they care? And I say, like, same thing with Moody Bible Institute. Like, it's founded on Cyrus J. McCormick junior. And the question is, do you care?
Taylor:Like, do you care about the workers that were, like, killed unjustly? It was like some governor, like, seven years later, basically, like, reopened the case and pardoned like the four people that were still in prison. But the four the first four guys, they were killed and actually, like, when they died, they said like, long live anarchy and then like, you know, the the hangman's noose or whatever. Like, they were not repentant about what they did against Cyrus McCormick junior. So that's the question is, like, do we care?
Taylor:Phil Fisher had a great little video. Did you see this one about I think it's called what is an evangelical? Phil Fischer, the guy who did, VeggieTales?
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. I saw that.
Taylor:And he, like I thought he did a great job of kinda, like, walking through, like, systemic racism. Like, it's not about you smiling at the black person or whatever. It's, like, about redlining. It's about Jim Crow laws. It's about an excessive amount of policing in particular areas.
Taylor:And and he ended. He's, like, I just have we just have one question. Do you care? And I thought that was a great because, like, everybody wants to know, okay, what is the practical example of what you want me to act? Like, I want you to care and then, like, let an action flow from that, you know?
Taylor:And Jesus said, it's not about, like, who says Lord, Lord. It's about who did the will of the father. Another one that I just came across was Matthew, like, 19, I think, was the people will come, he says, like, from east and west to eat at my table while those who I mean, it's like maybe even like the parable of virgins. It's also in, like, Matthew 25 or twenty four, twenty three, something like that. But about, like, the people that we expected to be there are not the ones that are there.
Taylor:It's like people we didn't expect are the ones that like, inhabit the kingdom of heaven. And I think that well, even the pope pope freaking said communists are actually Christians. They just don't know. Pope Francis, you know, people don't like him because he's a little bit too caring apparently. But so who's gonna care about Jay Gresham Machen's individual rights?
Taylor:He has to, like, include women and black people now. This is, man, real assault on his on the individual rights that black people and women get a chance nowadays.
Derek:Yeah. You know? Yeah. I guess that's just where that that's a lot of what's been eating at me too. I mean, like we were talking about before 2016, just seeing I mean, a lot happened with 2015 on with politics and seeing hypocrisy a lot I mean, with Black Lives Matter coming out.
Derek:I mean, was just a lot that I started thinking through. And ultimately, honestly, it was what primed me for it was working on our church's diaconate, and seeing the way that we mishandled poor people. I mean, just having like a questionnaire to go through, alright, we'll give you money once, but don't let it happen again, or, you know, you basically get one shot. Yeah. We'll, we didn't walk with them through anything.
Derek:It was, yeah, it was just gross. Yeah. And so that yeah. That that was like, that's not that's not the Bible at all. And then, Bible project videos were coming out on the prophets, and you're seeing what Ezekiel says about, you know, this is the sin of your sister Sodom, that she was overfed and unconcerned.
Derek:Like, no, it wasn't. That wasn't the sin of
Taylor:Sodom. I listened to, like, Charles Spurgeon. I know what the sin of Sodom is, Ezekiel.
Derek:Yeah. Yeah. So, man, it was just realizing that, yeah, this it's a Christian industrial complex, and it's in bed with the Republican Party, in bed with big money, in bed with comfort. It's just gross, because we don't care. So, yeah, answer to your question, we don't care.
Derek:And that's what but I don't think government cares either. And people don't care. Like, people are pursuing their own best interest their own interest. And so for me, anarchism makes sense because it is saying, like, the problem with my group right now, by and large, political idolatry. They're looking to the state as savior.
Derek:I think we need to pull out of that and say, There is no king but Christ. You guys take your saviors, but we're gonna show you what the big K kingdom looks like. And we do that by being a separate, distinct kingdom. And so we're going to care and love. Not by force, but but, I mean, by example, because we do care.
Taylor:Yeah. Man, and like, I I keep it's it's, like, kind of on the back burner, but, like, to maybe, like, actually join a monastery, like, actually maybe become a monk. And it's for basically, that reason that it's, like, I would like to be a part of something that is genuinely, like, giving towards other people. And because, you know, you can't find it. I mean, where does that exist?
Taylor:It's it's super like, in my community, that basically can't exist. You have to, like, exploit people in order to be able to afford a house. You know? That's the way it is in this community where I live. And But
Derek:how do you how do you do the monk thing without without withdrawing? Like and and maybe I don't really know what monks do. I just imagine, like, vows of silence and
Taylor:Mhmm. Well, I think, you know, and in a way, like, in POTSM, I've sort of done this. Like, I I was a student and I had subsidized housing because they have housing that's built for students, right, dorms, you know. And those dorms are super cheap. So I was paying $270 a month for a room.
Taylor:Like, I have a two bedroom apartment. There's another student in the other room. He pays $2.70. I pay $2.70. It was a great little apartment.
Taylor:And it's way out in middle of nowhere. So, like, I'm kinda like, this is like a monastery. It's like a monastery, but there's no community. There's no, like, practices. There's no, like, whatever.
Taylor:But I think that's sort of yeah. So, I mean but I think, like, the anarchist thing, actually, like, it works. Like and, I mean, it's just the question really is, like, do you care? Because I don't think that we're not we're just not caring. And that's why, like, I left evangelicals and pretty much just because I couldn't find anybody that cared.
Taylor:But then the weird thing is I go to a Democratic Socialist of America meeting, people there care. And they talk about, like, systemic issues. Now they're not, like, powerful enough to really change anything, but, like and there are anarchists that are involved in the DSA. It's not a perfect organization. There's a whole bunch of liberals in DSA, which, like, kinda screw it up because they're all about identity politics.
Taylor:And, like, I think it's sort of a good rule of thumb given the history of United States and European stuff, but but identity politics is not gonna save us. You know? It's not going to do anything good. I mean, you know, of course, yes, governments are not gonna save us. But Martin Luther King saved a lot of people, I think.
Taylor:And he did that through kind of social protest. And same with Nelson Mandela. You know, Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, those people, they save people. And so I think that that method is effective, but also the church method is effective. And that's why I I said I call myself, like, an interreligious socialist.
Taylor:So I do think that like and Paul Tillich actually just read an autobiographical essay that he wrote. He's like, there's nothing beyond religious socialism. And so, yeah, I think that Christianity is socialism actually. And but socialism is is is a very, very, very broad term. So I think within socialism, you have a whole bunch of anarchist people.
Taylor:And that sounds weird to us because we associate socialism with the government, but but then if you read socialist literature, they're 90 actually, pretty much I pretty much all of them are anti government and some of them in more recent years are more Keynesian, you know, like you said, which is like, let's let's build a little bit of welfare system into our community.
