Culture Friday: Boorish behavior

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: It’s the 13th day of January, 2023. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. It’s Culture Friday!

Joining us now is John Stonestreet, president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast.

Morning, John

JOHN STONESTREET, GUEST: Good morning.

EICHER: I have to get a John Stonestreet take on this self-identified misogynist influencer, his name is Andrew Tate. Frighteningly, he is enough of an influencer that he’s built up quite a following. Now, he was arrested in Romania right before New Year’s after he got into an online tiff with the teenage environmental influencer Greta Thunberg. The arrest had nothing to do with that. Evidently, authorities had been looking for him for awhile; he is suspected of, among other awful things, human trafficking, and I guess it’ll be awhile before that’s proven, if it’s proven.

But one of our Opinions writers—Bethel McGrew—calls Tate a “self-styled action hero for a generation of men without chests” to borrow C.S. Lewis’s idea. “Now that the hero seems to have fallen,” she writes, “and may soon become a villain behind bars.” So what’s your take on Andrew Tate?

STONESTREET: Well, I hadn’t heard the name Andrew Tate until he got arrested. So I, you know, that's just not my world. But it's not something that can be understood in and of itself, you know, somebody who's misogynistic, and, and, you know, kind of the example of what might be, you know, rightly considered toxic masculinity, because there is obviously, a masculinity and femininity that God created. And then what the fall does is twist good things into bad shapes and towards bad ends. And apparently, a lot of what he does online, would fit into that category. But look, this has got to be understood in light of all kinds of other examples. I think it was GK Chesterton, who said there's a lot of ways to fall down, there's only one way to stand up straight, if what it means to be a man is what it means to stand up straight as God designed it, we're falling down on that all kinds of different directions, Andrew Tate's an example of one kind of fall and, you know, pretending that one can actually become a woman as another kind of fall, and we could put everything in between. But you can never answer what something should do if you don't know what that something is for. That's an observation of TS Eliot. In other words, what the purpose of something is, what shapes our moral understanding of it. And also not even just moral in terms of whether a particular behavior is right and wrong, but just the overall direction of whether something is headed in the right direction, or is headed in the wrong direction. Now, St. Augustine, by the way, had another observation, I think, is essential here for this particular story. And that is when something goes against its God's given purpose, it normally heads in the opposite direction. But when it's sinful, it curves in on itself. And this is going to be that weirdest illustration you're going to hear all week or your money back, Nick, and Myrna, but I grew up on a farm with horned Hereford cattle as my dad had. And he would dehorn his cattle, for convenience's sake, because when horns really do grow out as bulls in particular get more aggressive and get bigger, then they're really inconvenient. And when you're dealing with closed gates and fences, you have to do something about it. Well, some farmers at the time would put weights on those horns and it would curve those horns down. But if you mess this up, there was a way to mess it up and actually turn that horn into a curve, and would actually grow into the bull's brain and kill it. I told you this is gonna be the weirdest example you've ever heard of your money back? Yeah. This is Augustine in real life, that sin takes us away from a God given purpose. But it curves in on itself, it becomes something that actually doesn't just lead away from God's design and intent for life and purpose, it actually becomes dangerous and dangerous for us and dangerous for others. And so look, that might seem to be a pretty dramatic take on one particular influencer, you know, who happens to I guess, fight in the MMA or something like that. But look, there's so many examples of young men not knowing who they are, not knowing what they're for, and missing out on what's happening. And so there's just a gut level reaction. That is not a way that leads to life but a way that leads to death.

EICHER: OK, so I’d not heard of Andrew Tate either and I’ve only seen a few photos of him, but it doesn’t matter. Now, with the bovine imagery, that’s not far etymologically from the term “boorish,” which is how you have to describe what he displayed online but, that’s just brilliant.

BROWN: John, how quickly the culture shifts. Last week we were talking about a revival of prayer around the country following the Damar Hamlin injury.

This week, an unbelievable “about face.” Maybe you heard about it…

Just before Christmas, a pro-life volunteer and leader of the U.K.’s March for Life was arrested and charged with four counts of praying silently on a public street near a closed abortion facility in the U.K. At least five areas in the U.K. have implemented measures that prevent any person from approving or disapproving of abortion—including through silent prayer—within a censorship zone, and Parliament may soon consider a national ban on expressing opinions near an abortion facility. These measures are a violation of the most basic rights to freedom of speech and thought.

Erin Hawley, senior counsel at Alliance Defending Freedom and WORLD Opinions contributor, says this is a wake up call to anyone living in a country governed by elected representatives. How close do you think we are to something like that in this country?

STONESTREET: I think something like this being tried. I don't think we're that far from a state like Michigan, a state like California, but I don't think it'll stand. And I don't know Erin Hawley very well. I'm a fan, big fan. But my guess is there's an awful lot of lawyers like Aaron who are waiting and say, Please do this so that we can smack it now. But I do think we can expect it. And the reason I think we can expect it is because there is a sense in which for the first time, maybe not for the first time but never to this degree, that this whole Critical Theory mood that we're in, that someone is a good guy or a bad guy simply because of a predetermined moral status given based on some people grouping. Of course, when we're talking about a critical theory, moonwalk doesn't matter, race or sexual orientation, or something like that. But I do think there's going to be a pro life versus non pro life smuggling in under the category being pro-woman or not pro-women. And we've already seen that sort of language. But we haven't seen that sort of legal enforcement. But I do think there's more of a way in which being pro life and being pro abortion were two sides of a culture war for a long time. I remember, you know, in his analysis of where Obergefell was going to take us, Ryan Anderson of the EPPC said, you know, something along the lines of the way this is proceeding, there's going to be a cultural war created out of the same sex marriage issue, where it's not okay to disagree. And he ended up being right. But you know, he contrasted that with 50 years or at the time, 40 years of Roe v. Wade, and saying, you know, might be unpopular to be a pro lifer. But you're not dismissed from society, you're not going to be fired from your job, you're not going to be and you know, the courts consistently protected nurses and other things in terms of their rights. I don't think what I expected was, that contrast was a helpful one between, you know, the immediate years after the same sex marriage issue in pro life. But now the this critical theory mood and being so sexually charged and abortion being associated with women's freedom and being able to disconnect from their bodies in this kind of pursuit of sexual autonomy, how the abortion issue is going to be smuggled back in into this way of thinking about the two sides as if there really are good guys and bad guys, and the bad guys are really bad and need to be punished. Now, again, I don't think this holds up. I don't think this holds up past. The first time it gets taken to the Supreme Court. I mean, the court has consistently said, Hey, California, you can't make pro life centers advertise for your services, and hey, California, you can usually it's California, not always California, but it's often California. So I think we'll see something like this, where there'll be a thought control, what the language is behind this bill upon which and I think it was the city of Birmingham in England. Why this leader, UK pro life leader was arrested. I mean, when you look at it, you're like, This is Orwellian. Can't imagine you know, that stance maybe the difference between America and Britain, I suspect we'll have that in a city or in a location, much like speech codes. And, you know, censorship zones were tried on the college campus and ADF smack that around. I would assume that folks like ADF are gonna smack this around. But I do think it'll happen if that makes sense.

BROWN: John Stonestreet is president of the Colson Center and host of the Breakpoint podcast. Thanks, John!

STONESTREET: Thank you both.

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