Ep. 95: Dave Smith vs. Douglas Murray: The Important Lesson on History, Power, and Truth

Jacob Winograd [00:00:00]:
History isn’t just about the past. It’s about power. It’s about who gets to tell the story. And as Christians, especially Christians who care about liberty, we ought to be the most skeptical people when it comes to the official narratives. Because if Christ is king, Caesar isn’t, and he might be a liar. Probably is.

Knowledgeable Narrator [00:00:27]:
If Christ is king, how should the Christian consider the kingdoms of this world? What does the Bible teach us about human authority and what it means to love our neighbors and our enemies? Before we render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, let’s know what it means to render unto God what is God’s. This is the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, the modern prophetic voice against war and empire.

Jacob Winograd [00:00:59]:
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the Biblical Anarchy podcast, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty network. I am your host, Jacob Winograd. So last week’s episode was a solo episode where I continue to work through a series I’ve been doing tackling objections to biblical anarchy and libertarian thought after I sort of did a soft relaunch of the biblical anarchy project with my episode 89, What is Biblical Anarchy Redux? We’ve been getting into big questions about economics, property rights, justice, and how a free society could function without the state acting as a monopolistic holder of power and authority and provider of law and order. If you haven’t checked that out yet, I’d recommend going back and giving a listen from episode 89 up to current especially, if you’re new to this show because it lays out a good foundation of what I believe and where I’m coming from and, why I believe what I believe. But today, I wanna shift gears and focus in on something that’s, timely and also something I’ve touched on in previous episodes, particularly back in episode 58, where I talk about the importance of understanding history. Because if we don’t understand history, if we don’t understand how evil regimes come to power, then we aren’t going to have the wisdom or the foresight to prevent history from repeating itself. And what sparked today’s episode is the recent conversation or quasi debate that occurred between Dave Smith and Douglas Murray on the Joe Rogan experience.

Jacob Winograd [00:02:49]:
I’ve got a lot of thoughts about what they talked about, and I’m gonna use that exchange as a foil, as a springboard to unpack some of these really important themes that I’ve been wrestling with and thinking about for a while. Because what we saw in that debate wasn’t just two guys arguing about foreign policy or September 11 or Israel and Palestine. I think what’s really at the heart is a conversation about narrative control and about power. It’s about again, as I said in my little opening there, it’s about who gets to tell the story. And as Christians, especially, you know, Christians who believe that Christ is king and that I think that means that Caesar is not, we should be deeply skeptical of official narratives handed down to us by the powers of this world. So here’s where we’re headed. First, we’re going to touch on this idea of revisionist history and why calling something revisionist history or conspiracy theory isn’t an argument. It’s world of power play.

Jacob Winograd [00:03:57]:
We’re going to explain what the causes of evil are, oftentimes when we’re talk talking about historical events and foreign policy and why explaining the causes of evil isn’t excusing it, but rather learning how to prevent it, why collectivism, especially the kinds that would collectivize entire groups of people like the Palestinians as being terrorists, is utterly opposed to the gospel, why criticizing and identifying certain agendas such as the neoconservative agenda or even pointing out things such as a, you know, Zionist lobby isn’t antisemitic, And then most importantly, we’ll end on how the Christian and convergent libertarian worldviews give us the tools we need to navigate all of this with clarity, humility, and courage. So let me set the stage for those of you who didn’t catch the debate or the conversation between Douglas Murray and Dave Smith. This was on the Joe Rogan Experience, Joe Rogan’s podcast, and it was basically a debate over foreign policy, history, September 11, Israel and Palestine, and more broadly, just the entirety of US interventionism, especially World War two and beyond and and afterwards. And listen, I I like Douglas Murray in some context. I remember listening to him. I think the first time I was introduced to him was when he did those, there was like a like a four part, conversation debate sort of thing that happened between Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris. The first two were moderated by, Brett Weinstein, and then the second two were sort of moderated by Douglas Murray. And I’ve read some of his stuff.

Jacob Winograd [00:05:47]:
I think he’s sharp and brings some value to the table when he’s criticizing, wokeism and the insanity of modern culture and even providing some, you know, defense of Christianity in this growingly secular world that we live in. But this debate was frustrating to watch because the way Murray approached the conversation is frankly the way that most of the establishment approaches it. And it wasn’t, in my opinion, an honest engagement with Dave’s points about blowback and how US foreign policy has created these cycles of violence and how Israel’s government has, at times, directly empowered groups like Hamas to maintain their own political power. Instead, Murray’s approach was basically, oh, well, that sounds like revisionist history, and that’s a conspiracy theory. And that’s, you know, the kinds of things that the people who hate the West say. And that’s I wanna camp out on this first, so this idea of questioning history. Questioning history isn’t revisionism. Rather, I think it’s necessary and wise.

Jacob Winograd [00:07:01]:
I’ve talked about this before. Again, go back to episode 58 where I unpacked a lot of this. But when people start calling things revisionist history as a way to shut down conversation again, I I keep, repeating this line. It’s not about protecting the truth. Rather, it’s about control. It’s about saying that this is the official version of events. This is what the good guys believe. And if you question it, well, you must be on the side of the bad guys.

Jacob Winograd [00:07:29]:
And that’s dangerous because history is always told from a particular perspective. And as I said before, history I’ve I’ve said this before. History is written by the victors. That doesn’t mean that everything that’s written down is false, but it does mean you have to approach it all with some critical thinking and not just outsource what you believe to just what you’ve learned in public school or what the, the news or the media or the experts tell you, and we’re gonna touch on that later in this episode as well. But listen, you know who loves controlling the narrative? People in power and people who have something to hide. And that’s not just like an occasional flaw in the system. That is a recurring pattern. And we see this not just in history, but in scripture too.

Jacob Winograd [00:08:17]:
So let me give you some biblical examples of narrative control. Let’s start with David. David, who is a man after God’s own heart, as we all have heard that phrase, he sins with Bathsheba, you know, really against Bathsheba as well, and, gets her pregnant. And what does he do? He tries to cover it up. He sends, her husband, Uriah, home hoping he’ll sleep with his wife and think the baby is his, and then that doesn’t work. And so then he escalates, sends Uriah to the front lines to be killed, all to protect his image and to control the story and avoid the consequences of his sin. That ultimately doesn’t work out and that blows up and really destroys his family, and it it it long lasting consequences for that. Then there’s Saul.

Jacob Winograd [00:09:11]:
And, like, at first, there’s multiple instances of Saul, doing this, but in first Samuel 15 is one such example. God gives him a direct command, and then Saul disobeys. And And then when, Samuel confronts him, he he spins the truth and says, I did obey. The people took the spoils, but I was going to sacrifice you know, I was gonna sacrifice them to god. Again, it’s narrative manipulation. People will either outright lie or they’ll present half truths and twist the truth, the dodge responsibility and to preserve their power or to preserve relationships. We get to the new testament. It’s the same story again, in Matthew twenty six fifty nine through 61 during Jesus’ trial.

Jacob Winograd [00:09:58]:
What do the religious elites do? Well, quote here from that passage. The chief priests in the whole Sanhedrin were looking for false evidence against Jesus so that they could put him to death. They twist his words saying this man claimed he could destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, trying to make him sound like a violent revolutionary. That’s narrative warfare. Jesus wasn’t threatening physical destruction. He was talking about, really, ultimately, his own resurrection, but they distorted his message to justify, murdering him. There’s Herod the Great at Matthew chapter two where he tells the Magi, go and search carefully for the child so that I may too go and worship him. But in reality, he wanted to kill Jesus.

Jacob Winograd [00:10:44]:
This is what tyrants do. They seek peace. They plot bloodshed. I’m sorry. They speak peace, but they plot bloodshed. And listen. This is is not just ancient history. This has happened again and again, and, you know, you could look at examples of different empires and kingdoms throughout history, but we can even see this in America and on our own foreign policy as well as domestic policy.

Jacob Winograd [00:11:10]:
Again, many examples, but let me just pick two. And I think these are the two that are the least controversial. These are the least tinfoil hat. You know, there’s not gonna be much dispute, I think, about these narratives being false. One famous one from history going back to 1898, the the sinking of the USS Maine in the Havana Harbor, the newspapers ran with the slogan, remember to remember the Maine, to hell with Spain, and that became the rallying cry of the Spanish American War. The problem being, we now know the cause of the explosion that sank the the Maine, is disputed, and we’re we’re pretty confident it was not an attack from Spain. I I guess there’s, like, a slight chance maybe it was, but it it’s much more likely based on a lot of investigations that were done at the time and historical, studies and researchers, you know, since then have concluded that it was more likely an accident, you know, some kind of, you know, leak or something causing, an explosion that, that sank the Maine. But then, you know, by the time anyone had done this, that narrative about Spain doing it had already been sewn, and the narrative had already done its job.

Jacob Winograd [00:12:28]:
It whipped up war fever, and it gave the US government a blank check to expand its empire to invade Cuba, The Philippines, and Puerto Rico, leading to thousands dying, all because people in power know if you control the story, then you can you can control, what people will allow you to do. And ultimately, in this case, you can wage a war, expand your power and your your control. History repeats this pattern, and we see this even in in my own lifetime. This was formative for me in my childhood after nine eleven. In 02/2002 and 02/2003, the US government told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. They said he was hiding nuclear programs, stockpiling chemical weapons, and he was a grave threat to world peace. And he had even been, you know, basically cohorts with in in the those who operated nine, nine eleven, right, trying to link Iraq to Al Qaeda at nine eleven. What happened? We invaded.

Jacob Winograd [00:13:36]:
We bombed them. We have, you know, hundreds of thousands dead in Iraq over the, you know, entire period of time that America’s been meddling there. And when the dust settled, we see, oh, no weapons of mass destruction. No nukes. No evidence of anything. It was all a lie. And It was not a mistake. It was the crafting of a narrative crafted to justify an unjust war, an unjust intervention.

Jacob Winograd [00:14:04]:
This matters for Christians. This is not fringe stuff I’m talking about here. We’re not talking about, you know, wild speculation or conspiracy theories. We’re talking about two of the most well documented examples in American history where the official narrative turned out to be false, and it wasn’t even hidden for long. Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction, this was a lie, and many even admitted that it was a lie, that they didn’t have good evidence, but that, you know, it was it was just something they felt was necessary to do to capitalize on the energy and the support from the American people after nine eleven to carry out a lot of the regime change that a lot of the neocon establishment and and thinkers had already been planning on doing and wanting to do. And a lot of this was on best of Israel, which, you know, that that’s a whole history I don’t have time to get into. I recommend that book right there, Enough Already by Scott Horton, to go into that history. And, again, remember the Maine, a war cry built on a story we now know, is is false.

Jacob Winograd [00:15:12]:
So, and if this is what empires admit to doing when the truth finally comes out, how much more cautious should we be when new narratives get pushed on us in real time? And this is why as Christians, we can’t blindly accept the official stories. A good scripture to bring up here is Proverbs eighteen seventeen, which says, the one who states his case first seems right until the other comes and examines him. And Paul tells us in first, Thessalonians five twenty one sorry. Paul tells us in, yeah, first Thessalonians five twenty one to test all things, hold fast to what is good. If we believe Christ is king and that his kingdom is not of this world, then we can’t just blindly trust the kingdoms of this world to tell the truth, especially when their power and their interests are on the line. From Herod, the Sanhedrin, to Saul, to David, to the Bush administration, and really, I mean, heck, even think about COVID. Right? The COVID regime, both the Trump and Biden administrations and and lies that we’re told. The playbook hasn’t changed.

Jacob Winograd [00:16:23]:
Power lies to protect itself, and Christians, of all people, should be the ones who are willing to call that out and to to examine claims that are being made. And that brings me to the next thing that came up in this debate, and it’s something I’ve seen a lot in these conversations. The accusation that if you explain like, one of the things that we talk about is the consequences of foreign policy of America and that being blowback. And there’s this accusation that when you’re explaining blowback or you point to the sins of US foreign policy or you highlight wrongs that the Israeli government has done, that you’re somehow justifying evil. That saying America’s intervention created the conditions for September 11, is the same thing as saying that September 11 was good or deserved, and that’s absurd. So let’s talk about that because understanding cause and effect is not the same thing as excusing sin. It’s actually talking about preventing it. Explaining evil isn’t defending it.

Jacob Winograd [00:17:28]:
It’s wisdom. It’s responsibility. So, again, in this debate between Dave Smith and and and Douglas Murray, and, honestly, I see it all the time in these sorts of conversations. We talk about blowback and US foreign policy and all of this. There’s this accusation about that you’re somehow justifying it. You’re saying that the, the, you know, bin Laden was right. This is really, I think, just emotional manipulation. If we look at the Bible, right, I would start the Bible, obviously, and explaining judgment is not the same thing as justifying evil.

Jacob Winograd [00:18:08]:
Like, in the God constantly sends prophets to warn his people that if you do these things, judgment is coming. If you oppress the poor, if you shed innocent blood, if you trust in idols and foreign powers, this is what will happen. Jeremiah warned Judah that Babylon was coming. Isaiah warned Israel that Syria was coming. Habakkuk hope I’m saying that right. Habakkuk. I love the memes. Like, turn to Habakkuk, you know, chapter two, verse whatever, immediately starts reading, and then it’s, Boromir from Lord of the Rings.

Jacob Winograd [00:18:45]:
Like, give him a moment for pity’s sake. Anyway, the book of Ask God how he could even use a wicked nation like Babylon to punish his people. So does that mean that God was justifying these evil kingdoms, right, these e these evil empires and calling what they did good? Not at all. God condemned them too, but just cause and effect is real. Actions have consequences. In the biblical worldview, nations that commit injustice, bloodshed, and oppression invite judgment often at the hands of other wicked nations or wicked groups. Now let me be clear about something here. In the old testament, when God sent four nations like Assyria or Babylon against Israel, that was divine judgment within the old covenant context.

Jacob Winograd [00:19:35]:
That was God disciplining his covenant people for their rebellion. America is not, old covenant Israel. Right? I don’t wanna make that kind of conflation. No modern nation, not America or modern Israel, is in the same sort of context as old covenant Israel. But even outside that covenant context, the world still operates on cause and effect. Actions have consequences is what I like to say. When nations practice injustice, when they oppress, exploit, wage aggressive war, they invite conflict. They create enemies, and they sow the seeds of violence.

Jacob Winograd [00:20:18]:
Not always because God is directly enacting judgment like he did in the old testament, but because God has ordered his world with moral cause and effect. Let me put it this way. Okay? If you disobey god’s ways, you set yourself on a path where evil men rise up against you. If you wage unjust war, don’t be surprised when war comes back to your doorstep. If you sow violence, you will reap it. You know, Jesus himself makes this kind of point, I think, in Luke 19. He weeps over Jerusalem, says, would would that you, even you, had known on this day the things that make for peace, but now they are hidden from your eyes. He warns them that their rejection of him and their trust in in violence and rebellion is going to lead their to their destruction.

Jacob Winograd [00:21:11]:
And forty years later, Jerusalem was destroyed by Rome. Does that mean Jesus wanted it to happen? Of course not. Does that mean that Rome was good? Of course not. But truth demands that we recognize why evil happens if we want to prevent it. And of course, the ultimate cause of evil is sin. Right? So I’m not trying to diminish that or to suggest we can always prevent evil, but we can certainly create conditions that make sin abound or that make sin less likely, or at least the worst types of sins less likely. Let’s talk about blowback in modern history. So let’s bring up bin Laden in September 11.

Jacob Winograd [00:21:58]:
Bin Laden’s grievances weren’t just religious fanaticism out of nowhere. Right? Like, I I I I’m stealing this from Dave Smith, but it’s just it’s too good not to just copy where you see he has this bit where he’s like, you know, the the the way that the neocons and the Republican party, you know, talked about bin Laden and Al Qaeda and why they, you know, attacked us on September 11. It’s as if, like, bin Laden’s walking through the desert, stumbled across, like, our bill of rights and goes, oh my god. They have freedom. They have they have the right to bear arms and free speech and, oh god, I got a, you know, religious freedom. We we have to go kill them all. Like, it’s you know what I mean? Like, no. There’s, listen, there’s some religion religious fanaticism that is in the in that soup.

Jacob Winograd [00:22:51]:
Right? But there’s a lot of grievances that led to not just bin Laden declaration of war, but how he was able to recruit so many people to his cause. He pointed to the US military bases in Saudi Arabia, Islam’s holiest land, that was being used to carry out sanctions on Iraq and bombing campaigns on Iraq that starved and killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis and many, many of those being children, and decades of US intervention and propping up brutal regimes in The Middle East and just endless settling in the affairs of the Muslim nations. Now is any of that those are, like, legitimate grievances. They don’t justify what bin Laden and and those who orchestrated nine eleven did. Right? Like, that’s that is responding to the evils of the American, military and government with more evil. Right? So we don’t call what bin Laden did and what Al Qaeda did good. There’s no justification for the terrorism, but this is an explanation. This is what happens when you poke the hornet’s nest over and over again.

Jacob Winograd [00:24:06]:
Actions have consequences. And this is why, as Christians, we have a responsibility to to examine these things, and we should care deeply about understanding the causes of evil. Because our job isn’t just to condemn these evils after they happen. We should be loving our neighbor and crafting societies where and and making it normal to be preventing these things before they happen. Right? Like loving our neighbor before disaster strikes, seeking peace before disaster strikes, preventing bloodshed from happening in the first place, not just mourning it after the fact. That, I think, is, you know, biblical wisdom. I think it’s what God expects of his people. Right? Like, we should we should be, you know, living righteously, seeking righteousness.

Jacob Winograd [00:25:02]:
So when when Dave Smith in this debate and other, you know, libertarians in other context, when we’re talking about blowback and non interventionism and when people bring up the ways that US foreign policy has sown violence around the world, that’s not anti American, that’s not justifying terrorism, it’s just biblical wisdom and a love for truth. And it’s an attempt to stop future evil before more innocent people die. And listen, this principle of blowback isn’t just true for America. It applies to every nation, including Israel, because act I’m gonna keep repeating it. Actions have consequences. That’s not antisemitic. That’s reality. So how did Hamas come to power? People forget or they were never told.

Jacob Winograd [00:25:49]:
You know, Hamas didn’t just appear out of nowhere. Hamas did not win an overwhelming democratic mandate in Gaza. They never have. They won one election in 02/2006 with less than a majority largely because and and to the extent that they got any support, it was because the Palestinian authority was already viewed as corrupt and compromised. Now since then, Hamas has ruled Gaza as an authoritarian regime, silencing dissent, jailing critics or or worse, and holding on to power by force. But here’s where the blowback comes in. For years, Israeli leaders have admitted both publicly and privately that they saw strategic value in keeping Hamas in power. Why? Because a divided Palestinian population split between Hamas and Gaza and the Palestinian Authority and the West Bank made it easier for Israel to avoid negotiating for a two state solution or some kind of binational state, or just giving the Palestinians their equal rights in the Israeli state.

Jacob Winograd [00:26:57]:
And this is documented Israeli policy. It’s not speculation. There’s a lot of really lame excuses out there and defenses for this, but they fall short. I we have we have it on record. Multiple I mean, many Israeli officials, including prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself, who have said things like anyone who wants to like, literally quote quoting this is Netanyahu in Herets. Anyone who wants to thwart the establishment of a Palestinian state must support bolstering Hamas and transferring money to Hamas. This is part of our strategy. It’s a it’s the idea that, you know, no one’s going to expect them to negotiate with a terrorist group.

Jacob Winograd [00:27:36]:
Like, we have no partner for peace. So for years, Israel allowed and directly facilitated funds from Qatar and other sources to flow into Gaza knowing, Hamas controlled the territory, knowing the funds were going to Hamas. At one point, Netanyahu was going to Qatar and begging them to restart the money flow when they stopped. Why? Because it kept Gaza isolated. It kept the Palestinian population fragmented, and it allowed Israel to say that, you know, they they love to negotiate peace, but they just can’t. Look who controls Gaza. So blowback isn’t just something that happens to America. It you know, Israel had their own September 11.

Jacob Winograd [00:28:19]:
What happened with their policies? October 7. On 10/07/2023, Hamas launched one of the deadliest attacks in Israeli history. I think the deadliest attack in Israeli history. It was horrific. It was evil. But we have to be honest. This is blowback. This is what happens when nations think they can manipulate evil actors for strategic gain and then act surprised when that evil turns against them, you know, just like America, you know, CIA, whatnot had supported Bin Laden and Mujahideen, against the Soviets.

Jacob Winograd [00:28:52]:
It doesn’t justify Hamas’s actions, but it explains how we got here. And if Christians, and if anyone, cares about preventing future bloodshed, we have to learn this lesson. A relevant passage here, Proverbs twenty six twenty seven. Whoever digs a pit will fall into it. If someone rolls a stone, it’ll roll back on them. Right? I mean, I think that’s just another way of saying what I’ve been saying. Actions have consequences. Right? Like, you cannot prop up wicked men thinking you can control them and then act shocked when the their violence spills over.

Jacob Winograd [00:29:26]:
God’s world does not work like that. If you sow injustice, you will reap injustice. If you sow violence, you will reap violence. Now I get the there there’s some pushback to this that I understand. People will hear this and go, okay. Maybe there were bad decisions in the past, but what do we do now? Right? Like so, like, do we just let Hamas run wild? Do we capitulate to terrorists? When does things like Russia invading Ukraine? Like, do we just let Russia take carve up parts of Ukraine and take it for them? So listen, these are fair questions and they deserve serious answers. But here’s the thing. You can’t solve a problem you refuse to understand.

Jacob Winograd [00:30:05]:
You don’t get to skip the part where we ask, how did we get here? What did we contribute to this mess? And what patterns of violence and intervention have created this cycle of blowback, and are we willing to stop it? Because until we’re willing to tell the truth about how we got here, every attempted and so called solution we come up with is just going to repeat the same cycle, aggression, retaliation, escalation, blow back, and just repeat and repeat. So, no, I’m not saying we do nothing in the face of evil, but I am saying before we rush to bomb the next city, arm the next regime, or cheer the next war, let’s start with truth. Let’s start with repentance. Let’s stop repeating the policies that brought us here in the first place, because that’s the only way forward that doesn’t end with even more innocent people being buried in the rubble. Then once we’ve taken that hard first step, we take we take each situation for what it is. We assess it with wisdom, with nuance, and with humility, and we pursue peaceful solutions as aggressively as we can. It won’t always be easy, and in fact, Jesus tells us it won’t be. The gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life.

Jacob Winograd [00:31:28]:
Right? Doing what’s right, especially in matters of war and peace and foreign policy and politics, it’s rarely the easy path. The gospel never promised us ease. It promised us the truth and salvation. It calls us to love our enemies, to seek peace, to choose the narrow road even when the broad road feels more satisfying in the moment. So that’s where we start. So let’s shift now from talking about the policies of governments to mindsets that shape public opinion and justify a lot of evil in the name of self defense. One of the most dangerous and deeply unbiblical trends we’re seeing right now, especially in discourse around Israel and Gaza, is this tendency to collapse entire people groups into their worst representatives. There’s this collectivist lie about Palestinians being the same as Hamas, right? This is the narrative.

Jacob Winograd [00:32:33]:
Gaza elected Hamas. They danced in the streets on October 7. They they hate the Jews. They want to exterminate them from the river to the sea. Therefore, there there are no innocent people in Gaza. I have heard this from political commentators. I’ve heard it from pastors, not mine, but from, you know, other pastors, that you hear online and just, you know, average everyday people. And listen, I’m not out to demonize these people and, I think they’re wrong.

Jacob Winograd [00:33:07]:
But let’s just be honest. This is collectivism. It’s propaganda, and it’s morally lazy. It’s it we this is antithetical to the gospel to just collectivize entire people. But let’s dive into a little bit of the details about this, which I’ve touched on a little bit, but I’m gonna get into more granular here. Again, Hamas won one election in 02/2006, not even a majority. And then after that, they took the power by force, ousting the Palestinian Authority in a very bloody coup in 02/2007. And since then, there hasn’t been another election.

Jacob Winograd [00:33:45]:
They control Gaza through fear, censorship, political imprisonment, and, you know, violence. Dissent is crushed, and protesting is dangerous. I mean, I think I just read this week about someone protesting Hamas and and being killed. It that that’s the truth. So this is not a democracy. Right? Like, everyone keeps on acting first of all, they’re using bin Laden laws. They’re like, well, if you voted for them, then you’re morally responsible, which is what bin Laden’s argument was where he was like, well, you voted for the people who, you know, did all these interventions in the Middle East, so you Americans, you’re responsible. So first of all, that’s garbage.

Jacob Winograd [00:34:22]:
Right? But but second of all, it’s not even accurate to just presume that the majority of of Gazans, the Palestinians, just support Hamas. And that it’s just like this you know, like, it’s like they keep like they keep voting in Hamas. Right? And I love the selective, like, when people go, oh, well, there’s these approval polls. It’s like, yeah. Right? Like, I’m sure the approval polls for Kim Jong Un or, for Putin are good too. Right? But it’s like, you know, we don’t trust those approval polls, but in Gaza, suddenly, we think, oh, of course, the high approval ratings. Right? You know, it’s like, I’m sure that was completely uncoerced. If you think the average Palestinian mother raising her children in a refugee camp under blockade without clean water, without freedom of movement is morally indistinguishable from a Hamas terrorist, you’re just not thinking biblically.

Jacob Winograd [00:35:17]:
You’re thinking tribally. And Israel has a role as I’ve touched on already in keeping Hamas in power. And this is where the conversation gets uncomfortable, but truth matters. And for nearly two decades, the Israeli government has tolerated and quietly supported Hamas’s rule in Gaza to make the peace process, you know, as they the phrasing was, to put it in formaldehyde. And who’s paying the price for that now? I mean, everyone there. The the Palestinians and the people who died on October 7 as well. So it is not accurate to say that there’s no distinction between the Palestinians and and Hamas. Let’s go back to scripture again because the bible explicitly rejects this kind of collective judgment.

Jacob Winograd [00:36:04]:
Ezekiel 18 is a good passage for this. It’s crystal clear. The son shall not bear the guilt of the father nor the father the guilt of the son. The soul who sins shall die. God doesn’t judge people based on what tribe or ethnicity they belong to. He judges judges individuals by their own actions. That’s biblical justice. Now there is some biblical warfare in the old Mosaic covenant that does seem to be dispensing collective judgment.

Jacob Winograd [00:36:37]:
I’d say God has the prerogative to exercise that kind of judgment. He’s only done this in the sort of special covenantal arrangement in the Mosaic polity, of of old old covenant Israel. And even then, there there there were very limited, judgments to the Canaanite, people themselves and we have no commands for that today towards any other group of people and we don’t live under a theocratic, covenantal nation state. Right? So there’s a lot of incongruency there. But what’s normative in terms of just the accountability of of sin, right, is individually based. So the idea that Palestinians are guilty because of Hamas is the same logic that says that all Jews are guilty because of what certain Jewish leaders did in rejecting Christ. Now let me let me be clear. That’s evil.

Jacob Winograd [00:37:40]:
That kind of thinking has fueled pogroms, blood libels, and genocides for centuries. And the same sort of collectivism that is at play there is at play in this conflation and view of the Palestinians. You know, there there’s a lot of complexity when we’re looking back into the Old Testament and thinking about the divisions between nations and these sort of like tribal distinctions. And there’s also the, you know, angle of sort of like the gradual moral advancement, right, where like God’s taking a people who are coming from a very barbaric time and then giving them a law and arrangement that maybe looks still barbaric compared to certain standards we have in our liberal society today. But for them, it was highly advanced. Right? And, you know, it doesn’t mean it doesn’t mean when you read it, it’s not challenging. Right? And I’m not saying there’s not some sort of difficulty in understanding that calculus. But again, it’s not impossible calculus to do and most Christians understand that whether or not I I come from the reformed perspective, but even those who don’t, they’re gonna understand that there are things about the Mosaic Covenant that were that had a sort of designed, you know, planned obsolescence, right, that had a very limited application.

Jacob Winograd [00:39:06]:
And the the the the wiping out of entire people groups in the old mosaic old Mosaic Covenant, again, was very limited. I’ve done a past episode on this going into much more detail, and we have to read the Old Covenant in light of the New Covenant, right? So we should also see how Jesus and the New Testament approaches these subjects. And Jesus consistently dealt with people as individuals and really, challenged the sort of racial and political divides around him. Right? He he praised a Roman’s a Roman centurion’s faith in an empire that would eventually crucify him. He healed a Canaanite woman’s daughter. He told the parable of the good Samaritan deliberately casting a despised outsider as the hero. So Jesus didn’t paint with broad brushes. And if we’re following him, we shouldn’t either.

Jacob Winograd [00:40:04]:
And this goes both ways. Just as we reject the idea that all Palestinians are terrorists, we also reject the idea that all Israelis or Jews are evil or war criminals or or etcetera. Right? So, you know, human dignity and human guilt are individual, not collective. When Jesus died for our sins, he died for the sins of the world, but he died in in, like, the case of how that applies to you, he died for your sins. Your salvation is not you being saved from the sins of your group that you belong to or of your family or your ancestors. That’s not just a libertarian principle that we’re talking about here. It’s Christian theology, the rejection of collective guilt. Now some people might bring up passages like Exodus 20 or Deuteronomy five and say, you know, doesn’t the bible say that god punishes children for the sins of parents? And that’s a fair question, and it should be addressed here.

Jacob Winograd [00:41:11]:
Again, we have we have to we have to balance that, like, read it in light of Ezekiel 18, which says that the son shall not bear the guilt of the father. So what’s the reconciliation there? So, you know, if we read it carefully, we understand that, again, this is god giving a covenantal warning to covenantal Israel as a nation. He’s not saying that innocent children will be individually punished for something they had no part in. What he’s saying is that when people walk in rebellion generation after generation, there will be long term consequences that sin has a ripple effect, especially when it becomes cultural. If you look closely at the text, it even qualifies it by saying to those who hate me. Right? So, this isn’t a blanket curse on children who love god. It’s a warning that sin, when left unrepented, spreads. And eventually, judgment comes not just because of what their ancestors did, but because each generation continued in that rebellion.

Jacob Winograd [00:42:21]:
And by the time we get to Ezekiel, the Israelis are in exile and they’re blaming their suffering on their ancestors. You know, the the fathers have eaten sour grapes and the children’s teeth are set on edge, but god says no, that that’s that’s not how justice works. You’re being judged because you sinned, not because your fathers did. And this matters today. When we’re talking about the people of Gaza or Israel or any other group, we must not say they are getting what they deserve because of what their parents did, because of their ethnicity, because of what someone else in their tribe or nation did. That is not biblical justice. You know, that’s that’s the mindset of the Pharisees, of every violent regime in history as well. It’s exactly what Jesus rebuked.

Jacob Winograd [00:43:08]:
Do not judge by appearances, but judge with right judgment, John seven twenty four. Alright. Few more things I wanna cover, you know, based on things touched on in that debate. There’s the whole expert problem. Right? There’s there was this reoccurring theme about, like, well, are you an expert? Have you, you know, you have you been to the region? Have you served in the military? Do you have any credentials? Do you you speak the language? The implication being and this is an appeal to authority. Right? The implication is being that if you don’t have these things, you have no right to speak. You have no right to ask questions. You’re not allowed to challenge the narrative.

Jacob Winograd [00:43:48]:
You’re not allowed to look at the data and read the history and reach your own conclusion. But here’s the problem. That’s not, searching for truth. That’s gatekeeping. And I don’t think we as Christians should ever be okay with that. If we look at the early church, acts four says that the rulers were astonished at Peter and John because they were uneducated common men, but they recognized that they had been with Jesus. These weren’t scholars. They weren’t priests.

Jacob Winograd [00:44:16]:
They weren’t state approved experts, but they spoke the truth boldly because they had seen the truth. They were eyewitnesses, and they were filled with the spirit of truth, the holy spirit. And that was their authority, not a diploma or a degree. Right? The prophets in the old testament were often outsiders too. Like, I mean, Elijah wasn’t part of the king’s court. Amos wasn’t. Amos even says in chapter seven of, of Amos that I was neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet. I was a shepherd.

Jacob Winograd [00:44:47]:
But god used him to call out the corruption of priests and rulers. Now let me be clear. Expertise isn’t bad. It’s good to study. It’s good to listen to people who knew more than we do. But when expertise becomes a shield against accountability or a weapon to silence dissent or people asking questions, we’ve left the truth behind, and we’ve entered into, again, controlling the narrative. A relevant verse is, John seven forty eight where the Pharisees say, have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in him? Right? And sorry. How do we part my notes here? And in other words, what is that basically saying? Right? When it says have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in him, in other words, they’re saying, well, none of the experts agree with you, so you must be wrong.

Jacob Winograd [00:45:39]:
Right? And we know how Jesus responded to that crowd. So, so, yeah, again, this is just controlling the narrative. You could say it’s a type of, elitism or a a technocracy, idea that only a, or tonocracy, only the centralized elite. Right? Those with state credentials or Ivy League degrees, that they are the ones that have the right to speak on matters of war, peace, justice, economics for the managerial class. And they’re they’re kind of acting as a sort of priesthood, you could say. In practice, it becomes a system that just justifies war, engages in cover ups, lies, and corruption while the rest of us are told to just shut up and trust the process. And I don’t think that’s the right response as Christians. No one has a monopoly on the truth.

Jacob Winograd [00:46:34]:
The truth isn’t the property of the ruling class. No man and no group of men has a monopoly on truth. Truth belongs to God. It can be revealed through scripture. It can be known through reason. It can be discovered through honest inquiry. You don’t need a government badge or a PhD or a press pass to seek or speak the truth. You need courage, integrity, and a willingness to go where the evidence leads, even if it costs you, even if it makes you uncomfortable.

Jacob Winograd [00:47:06]:
Let’s talk about something that’s become incredibly toxic in our political discourse. The idea that if you criticize the state of Israel or if you oppose neoconservative foreign policy or if you question America’s unconditional military support for Israel, you must be antisemitic. That accusation gets thrown around way too casually, and it’s often as a way to shut down serious principled conversation. And it’s not just coming from the left. It’s a huge problem on the right, especially among conservative Christians. Let’s be crystal clear. Israel, the nation state, is not synonymous with the Jewish people or the Jewish religion. Criticizing the government of Israel is not the same thing as hating Jewish people.

Jacob Winograd [00:47:55]:
Just like criticizing America’s government doesn’t mean you hate Americans or criticizing the Chinese communist party doesn’t mean you hate Chinese people. Israel is a modern nation state with political leaders, military policies, borders, budgets, like every other state, and it can be criticized like any other state. Now I wanna talk about this idea of neoconservatism and neoconservative foreign policy. And what we’re talking about is not some weird, like, anti Semitic conspiracy theory. It’s an ideology, neoconservatism. It’s not an ethnicity. It’s not a religion. It’s not a race.

Jacob Winograd [00:48:35]:
I could go deep into, do an episode at some point on the history of neoconservatism. It’s a very specific thing thing, but I think one of the most important aspects is it’s the belief that The US should, you know, be willing to use military force and political power to intervene and reshape the world often in the name of things like democracy or freedom or protecting allies or protecting some sort of, you know, global order. And in many cases, it is deeply tied and the motivations behind the neoconservative, mindset are deeply rooted in support for Israel and often tied to, on the Christian side of things, often, you know, relying on the dispensationalist worldview to really back that or ground that support for Israel. And it’s not antisemitic to point that out. This is just political analysis. It’s pointing out things about like how much disproportionate, you know, foreign aid goes to Israel and just how we have an entire political pack in our country, you know, APAC, that’s basically here to represent the nation state of Israel in our own government. Right? We don’t have we don’t have that sort of thing for other not not like every nation state in the world has its own political pack here in our in our country lobbying to our politicians. Right? So, yeah, it it’s just it’s political analysis of things that need to be talked about.

Jacob Winograd [00:50:13]:
And the the antisemitic thing gets thrown around as a label to protect the powerful and to shrug off criticism, to shut people up, to poison the well. And it’s a tragedy because real antisemitism exists. It’s a demonic hatred that has haunted the Jewish people throughout history, including Christian history. And when we throw that term around carelessly, we, we do it to defend politicians or bombings or occupation policies. We cheapen the meaning of that word and distract from actual bigotry and the actual horrors of antisemitism. As Christians, we should never weaponize slander to protect power. As as says in the scriptures, you shall not fair, bear false witness against your neighbor. If someone is speaking the truth in love, or are they getting something wrong? Right? And or if it’s just something that makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t mean they’re being hateful.

Jacob Winograd [00:51:11]:
Right? And if it, if it’s truth and it’s just uncomfortable, that it it’s the truth still. When we falsely accuse brothers and sisters of antisemitism, not for attacking Jews or saying hateful things about Jews for just opposing unjust war, we become the ones bearing false witness. Jesus loved the Jewish people. He was Jewish. Right? The apostles were Jewish. Paul was Jewish. But yet Jesus and the apostles consistently and often and and very constantly at times rebuked the leaders of Israel, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin, and the corrupt temple system. Were they antisemitic? Of course not.

Jacob Winograd [00:51:52]:
They were truthful. They were hated for it. They were smeared for it, but it was the right thing for them to do. Don’t be afraid to speak the truth. That’s my encouragement. Don’t be bullied into silence. Don’t let people twist your love for peace and justice into something it’s not. If you criticize injustice, do it clearly, do it lovingly, do it with scripture, do it without malice, but don’t hold back because someone might smear you with a label.

Jacob Winograd [00:52:20]:
So let’s bring this all together and and I’ll I’ll wrap us up here. We’ve covered a lot in this episode. The problem with official narratives, the reality of blowback, the danger of collectivism, and the gatekeeping of so called experts, and the weaponization of terms like antisemitism to silence criticism. So what do we do with all this? As Christians and if you’re also a libertarian, what kind of posture should we take in a world full of propaganda, tribalism, and fear? Well, here’s the framework I think we need. First, we have to be relentless in the pursuit of truth, not convenience, not tribal loyalty, not party lines or patriotic myths or or propaganda. Truth. As as as it says, if you know the truth, it’ll set you free. Truth is not a truth is not a weapon to win arguments alone.

Jacob Winograd [00:53:16]:
It is a light that we walk in. And sometimes that light exposes uncomfortable things about our country, our church, our own prior assumptions. And that is okay because if we’re following Jesus, we’re not here to defend empire. We’re here to proclaim his kingdom. Two, we must love our neighbors, including our enemies. Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you.

Jacob Winograd [00:53:45]:
That’s not soft. That’s revolutionary. It means we refuse to dehumanize anyone, not Muslims in Gaza, not Jews in Israel, not Russians, not Ukrainians, not anyone. Every person you’re tempted to turn into an abstract enemy is someone made in the image of God, someone Christ died for. And if we believe that, we can’t cheer for the way that the, cheer for the war the way, that the world does. Three, we must judge with justice, not according to groups. Biblical justice is not tribal. It’s not about our side versus their side.

Jacob Winograd [00:54:24]:
It’s about what’s right and what’s wrong regardless of flag, race, or party. It says in the scriptures, do not pervert justice, do not show partiality, follow justice, and follow justice alone. There is no Jew, no Greek, no male, no female, no, free or slave. We are all one in Christ Jesus. If we want a world with less violence, less blowback, and more peace, it starts with rejecting collectiv rejecting collectivism and standing for principled justice. And four, we must refuse to outsource our conscience. This is for both Christians and libertarians. Don’t hand your moral reasoning over to the state.

Jacob Winograd [00:55:08]:
Don’t let Fox News or CNN or a political party or a megachurch pastor or an Ivy League expert think for you. You are responsible before God for what you believe, what you say, and what you support. And that means, as it says in scripture, first, first the first Thessalonians, we weigh, we, we test all things. We weigh every claim, every narrative, every call to war, every justification for violence because history and scripture teach us that those in power will lie to keep it, and our job isn’t to join them, it’s to expose them. As it says in Ephesians five, have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. So what does a Christian libertarian response to war, empire, and propaganda look like? Wisdom, courage, humility. And it looks like the narrow path, the one that Jesus said would be hard, but worth it. Truth seeking isn’t always easy, but it’s what we’re called to do.

Jacob Winograd [00:56:12]:
It’s the world needs people to do that. It needs the church to do that. That is our prophetic inheritance, to be those who aren’t afraid to walk in the light no matter the cost. So thanks for sticking me with you guys to this one. I know it’s a little bit longer. I know it’s a little bit heavier, but these are the conversations I think we really need to be having right now. Whether we’re talking about the lives that lead to war or the nations that exploit tribalism, the voices that get silenced in the name of expertise or national interest, the answer is always the same. Follow the truth.

Jacob Winograd [00:56:47]:
Love your neighbor. Fear God, not man. If this episode challenged or encouraged you, plea con please consider sharing it, text it to a friend, post it online, or bring it up in conversation. That’s how we push back against darkness. It’s one honest conversation at a time. You can also support the show by leaving a five star review, subscribing wherever you listen, and, become an LCI insider at biblicalanarchypodcast.com. Until next time, as I always conclude by saying, live at peace and live for Christ.

Knowledgeable Narrator [00:57:19]:
Take care. The Biblical Anarchy Podcast is a part of the Christians for Liberty Network, a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute. If you love this podcast, it helps us reach more with a message of freedom when you rate and review us on your favorite podcast apps and share with others. If you want to support the production of the Biblical Anarchy Podcast, please consider donating to the Libertarian Christian Institute at biblicalanarchypodcast.com, where you can also sign up to receive special announcements and resources related to biblical anarchy. Thanks for tuning in.

LCI uses automated transcripts from various sources. If you see a significant error, please let us know.