May 7, 2025 • 44 mins
This week on Givers, Doers, & Thinkers, Jeremy is joined by historian John Pinheiro to discuss the negative role philanthropy has sometimes played in American history. They discuss the “second great awakening,” anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic prejudice, the popularity of eugenics, how experts have turned apocalyptic, and the harm caused by even a well-intentioned technocratic mindset.
Center for Civil Society's YouTube Channel
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
This week on Givers, doers and Thinkers, we talk to
historian John Pinero about theroots of American philanthropy.
Most interestingly, we talkabout its dark sides, including
its historic associations withanti-Catholic prejudice, war and
eugenics, and what all thatreveals about one particular way
of understanding and practicingphilanthropy.
(00:23):
Let's go Welcome to Givers,doers and Thinkers a podcast on
(00:47):
philanthropy and civil society.
I am Jeremy Beer and it's greatto have you with us.
Today is March 28, 2025, and Iam excited to have as our guest
my friend John Pinero, ahistorian and the author or
editor of several books,including one that I really
(01:08):
enjoyed, called Missionaries ofRepublicanism A Religious
History of the Mexican-AmericanWar.
Now, that might sound like anarrowly focused book, but it's
actually really illuminating onthe topic we're going to talk
about here today, which is someof the ugliness and prejudice
that has accompanied mainstreamAmerican philanthropy and
(01:29):
charitable institutions or, Imight say, voluntary
associations over the years.
But first let me finishintroducing John.
He is Director of Research atthe Acton Institute in Grand
Rapids, michigan, from whosefancy studio he speaks with us
today.
As you can see, prior tojoining Acton, john was
professor of history at AquinasCollege in Grand Rapids, where
(01:51):
he chaired the history andphilosophy departments, and,
previous to Aquinas, john wasassistant editor of the Papers
of George Washington at theUniversity of Virginia.
In fact, his current bookproject is titled tentatively
Beyond Burke George Washingtonand the Origins of American
Conservatism, which I very muchlook forward to reading.
(02:12):
John, how are you?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm good.
Thank you for having me, Jeremy.
It's a pleasure to be on yourpodcast.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, thank you for joining.
As I told you when I invitedyou on, we're sort of loosely
focusing this season on theforthcoming American
semi-quincentennial and I wantedto have a historian like you on
to talk about that and sort ofthe less positive role that at
(02:42):
times a sort of Americanphilanthropy has played over the
last couple of hundred years.
So let's start by talking aboutprogressivism with a capital P,
and I'm going to have you kindof take us through a little bit
of how progressivism has shapedphilanthropic institutions over
the years and what that haslooked like.
(03:02):
And I thought we would startwith where your book really
starts, the Missionaries ofRepublicanism book, or at least
where it focuses.
It's kind of that Tocquevillianera, the 1830s or so.
Right, talk about what wasmotivating a lot of the
associations that were formingat that time.
(03:24):
What were they trying to do?
What did Tocqueville see?
What did he not see?
How was that all playing outback then?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Thanks, jeremy, for the question.
So Tocqueville toured theUnited States in the 1820s,
1830s, and this was the timewhere the United States was
becoming what, by the 1830s, wasactually the most democratic
country in the world.
So it's important to know whatthat means in the 1830s, of
course.
But this was the case, and whathe wanted to know was why the
(03:57):
United States hadn't fallenapart yet.
Why was it not going throughrecurrent revolutions and
violence and upheaval anddemagoguery like the United
States have?
What could, what could he learnfrom the Americans?
And the most major thing henoted, among other things for
why the Constitution was stillworking, was Americans fondness
for associative life.
(04:17):
And so he looked around in this, in this time and he said look,
in England we'd see a greatlord at the head of an effort,
in France we would see thegovernment at the head of an
effort.
But in America the Americansjust form associations.
They do it to build hospitals,schools, they do it to spread
(04:39):
Bibles, they do it for anynumber of things, small things,
big things, major things.
They never really just look tothe government.
Now we know, of course thestory with the progressives with
a capital P is they're going tolook to the government.
But we're in an evolutionarypart here, right.
And so in the 1820s and 30s thetradition was if you wanted to
(04:59):
change somebody's mind, youactually talk to them.
Somebody's mind, you actuallytalk to them.
You talk to them, you changeyour mind, you make arguments,
you try to educate theirchildren.
The point is, with thesevoluntary associations, this
associative life that of coursemakes money, people are
(05:20):
contributing their time butthey're also contributing money.
This is really wherephilanthropy starts.
In the United States we see afew efforts in the 1700s, but
it's really in the 1820s.
I would relate it firstly, andthere's a great book by Ronald
Walters called AmericanReformers that does this a
scholarly, academic work.
I think it's a great book andwhat he says is you can't talk
(05:43):
about the reform efforts and theassociations and the
philanthropy from this periodwithout understanding the
evangelical Protestant revivalsof the time period, so nearly
every one of these, the GreatAwakening kind of happened right
now.
This is the second GreatAwakening they called it so the
Great Awakening hadn't beencalled the Great Awak awakening
until the 1820s, and then the uhprotestants in america thought,
(06:06):
wow, we're living through atime that seems like the 1730s
and the 1740s.
That was the first greatawakening.
Then this is the second, andthis is when the evangelical
protestant churches really tookoff in america the presbyterians
and the baptists and themethodists.
And what walter said is youcan't understand their all these
reform efforts if you don'tunderstand the evangelicalism
(06:27):
underlying them, the fact thatthey were.
This was part of their faith.
They were looking towards a newmillennium.
They thought the end of theworld was near, and so they
really wanted to clean upamericans, the americans house,
in order to pave the way forjesus to come back.
Got I?
always compare it to like sograndma's coming over and you
(06:48):
live in a pretty clean house,but you know grandma's really
going to look around quite a bit.
Right.
So you just make it extra cleanwhen, when grandma's coming.
So when she comes she says, wow, this place looks great.
And you know most, most people.
There's just kind of a naturalinclination when you have guests
.
Yeah.
But william lloyd garrison, thefamous abolitionist, said look,
we wouldn't be when we pray thelord's prayer thy kingdom come,
(07:10):
thy will be done.
There's a sense garrisonthought and others, that there's
reformers thought you couldkind of push god's hand a little
bit, give them a nudge likelook at how good we're doing,
come, come back now, look at allthis stuff we're working on.
And you see this in politics,but you see it in the churches
as well.
And so this is the worldTocqueville came into and
(07:33):
there's just democratic ferventferment.
And Tocqueville said that thewhole country just seems on the
move everywhere.
It's just a very vibrant timein american history.
And so for the evangelicalsthat means they were, they
wanted to, what they werefunding schools, sunday schools.
The sunday school movementstarted at this time, the
sabbatarian movement to stopwork on sundays.
(07:55):
This is actually why the postoffice doesn't deliver mail.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I think they do now so there was a pre-sabbatarian
time, though, when people wereworking on sundays you're saying
seven days a week, even thepost office, and then they, you
know they rolled it back duringthis time period and this is a
kind of sabbath observance.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
You'd see, if you ever read, uh, the laurie engels
wilder books, where the twogirls have to sit in a chair and
dad swats them if they move aninch on sunday and you better
not laugh, you better not smile,and at least in the book and
the missionaries ofRepublicanism.
this is why the Americans are soshocked that Mexicans are
playing music and having a goodtime on Sunday when they're in
Mexico, which is a verydifferent culture from what
(08:35):
they're used to in the UnitedStates, but anyway.
So this would include theschools.
The schools is, in some ways,where the dark side, I would say
, comes in of philanthropy.
The schools is, in some ways,where the dark side I would say
comes in of philanthropy.
Talk about that.
Public schools in Americaessentially were Protestant
schools because that was theculture.
And so what that meant is therewas Bible reading in the
(08:56):
schools, there was prayer in theschools, and I think there's a
lot of American Christians nowwho would think, well, that
would be kind of nice,considering the state of our
culture.
You know, wouldn't that begreat to have a moral culture?
But what Catholics encounteredCatholic immigrants specifically
as immigration picked up in the1830s what they encountered
were efforts that they could notread their Bibles in the school
(09:21):
.
They had to read, say, the KingJames Bible in school.
They couldn't pray theirversion of the Lord's Prayer
school, they had to read, say,the king james bible.
In school they couldn't praytheir version of the lord's
prayer, they had to pray theprotestant translation of the
lord's prayer.
And so there was this growingsense in the 1830s where there
had been this kind of latentanti-catholicism in american
history, left over from theenglish heritage, and it had
(09:42):
been dampened down during theAmerican Revolution when
Americans fought on the sameside against England.
And it rises up in the 1830sand joins with this
anti-immigrant sentiment and youget new, very American
arguments for why we shouldn'thave immigration and why we
especially shouldn't haveCatholic immigration, and why
(10:04):
you should fund societies thatwant to spread the Protestant
gospel or the pure gospel, asthey called it into the West,
into the South, but especiallyinto the West.
Everyone knew the future of thecountry was in the West.
So if you wanted to raise money, you would say look, we're
going to save the West and we'regoing to save it for
Protestantism, and the reason wewant to do that is only
(10:27):
Protestants are capable ofmaintaining Republican
government.
representative government andCatholics can't do that and they
would give their arguments.
So if you give us money, we'llmake sure there's Protestant
teachers and Protestant schools,et cetera in the West.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, there's a lot of fear of, I assume.
So this is during theMexican-American War or just
after the Mexican-American War.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
So this is in the lead up.
So the 1820s it really startsto pick up in the 1820s.
The war against Mexico startedin 1846 and it didn't start over
religion, but it certainly was.
I argue in the book that thiswas the lens through which most
Americans were able to makesense of it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, because you were going to war against a
country that wasn't capable oftruly capable of being a
democracy and also was sort ofenthralled to a false sort of
religion.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I mean it's so.
It's the Catholic country nextdoor.
And the Texas Revolution in the1830s was the first sort of
wake up call about this.
By the 1840s, look, mexico hadhad 14 presidents since the
1820s, none of whom had beenelected.
And if you're trying to makearguments that Catholics just
can't do, republican government,and this is your next door
Catholic neighbor.
(11:39):
And then the Catholic chaplainswho were very controversial in
the United States, that James KPolk sent to with the army into
Mexico.
They're even writing backsaying, wow, we, we really got
to reform the church here.
It's, it's a mess.
So even the even the Catholicskind of had this downward,
downward look towards theMexicans as well.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, so there's really a leveraging though of
sort of anti-Catholic prejudiceto um build up these um early,
uh associative societies forspreading the gospel in the West
.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, leveraging is is the exact right word.
So we we'd like to usuallythink that the number one moral
issue prior to the civil war inAmerica was slavery Cause.
Wouldn't that be nice.
It's the most obvious, mostobvious, it's.
It's such an obvious affront tohuman dignity.
Right, but in fact the tariffwas number one.
We do hear about tariffsnowadays banking, internal
(12:36):
improvements, the federalgovernment funding them.
But what those three things hadin common was somehow the us
government from the top downgetting into your pocketbook,
affecting the choices and whatyou do with your money, what you
don't do with your money, sothat kind of control from afar.
But in fourth place and quicklyrising by the 1850s it was
number one until around the late1850s, when it was supplanted
(12:57):
by slavery was immigration.
Yeah, three out of the four,three out of four, probably 75
percent of the immigrants werecatholic.
All the irish immigrants werecatholic and about half of the
german immigrants were catholic,and these were the two large
groups coming in the 1820s and30s.
And so they come with theirreligion and they found schools,
convents.
(13:18):
They build churches.
In the 1840s bishop hughesstarted building a saint
patrick's cathedral in new YorkCity, for example.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And so you start to look around your city and you
think I thought we were anAnglo-Saxon Protestant country.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
This is really different?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Can these people really do?
They know what it means to bean American?
Are they capable ofassimilation?
They don't worship in ourlanguage.
They don't even speak our ownlanguage.
I mean, the Irish don't arrivein most cases speaking English.
They arrived speaking Irish,right, and so I mean they speak
some English, but a lot of themare speaking Irish, and so
(13:58):
there's the linguistic barrier.
What are those Catholics reallydoing in the confessional?
And so we start to getconspiracy theories, and they're
promoted by two peopleprimarily.
Samuel fb morse was one of themand lyman beecher was another.
And for our concern here wewant to look at lyman beecher.
Yeah, because he's the one whowas supporting a lot of these
(14:19):
western efforts and he would goon tours on the east coast.
After he split with some folksover whether slavery was more
important than anti-immigrationand he went the anti-immigration
route, he went back to Bostonto raise money for his Western
efforts and he talked about thethreat of Catholicism to the
(14:40):
American Republic.
He helped propagate thetheories that Morris did as well
, that the pope was actuallythinking about moving to the
Mississippi republic.
He helped propagate thetheories that morris did as well
, that the pope was actuallythinking about moving to the
mississippi river valley now.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
This would have been a surprise to the pope.
You haven't heard that.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
That's wild really so , but conspiracism in some ways
is.
It's an old american traditionright, we like conspiracies and
if you release all the documentsabout a conspiracy it's just
say, well, there's probably moredocuments so the conspiracy
just never, never dies.
But the conspiracy was with theupheavals in europe and the
(15:13):
liberal revolutions, especiallyby the 1840s in europe.
The pope's gonna get kicked outof rome, he's gonna come here.
So what these immigrants are isan advanced army and, to use
morris's words, they're led bytheir jesuit generals who are
well schooled in all the arts ofdarkness.
Indeed, sounds like somethingjk rowling would, would write, I
guess.
And so people, whether theybelieve the outlandish part of
(15:38):
that or not, what they did think, particularly in boston, they
look.
They looked up at the hill, atthis Ursuline convent that I
talk about in the book, thisvery infamous incident, and
thought that convent and schoolis not a sign that the First
Amendment's great and ourConstitution's great.
That's a sign that we'reletting in the wrong people, and
(15:58):
those are all, of course,unmarried, successful women
educating some of the cream ofthe crop of Boston.
So one night in the mid-1830s amob burned it down to the ground
, and then, by 1844, there'santi-Catholic riots in
Philadelphia.
Yeah, the incident outside ofBoston resulted from Lyman
(16:21):
Beecher speaking tour in Boston,and it's one of these things
where you say, well, did he tellthem to go?
Do it?
No, he didn't, but he calledthe Catholics an existential
threat and said this is why youhave to give me money.
And they thought well, I can'tgive him money, but I can, I can
go burn down that building.
I can go beat up some nuns.
I can do that yeah, andfascinating at what percentage
(16:43):
of americans um how popular wassort of anti-catholicism or at
least anti-immigrant catholicismat the time we're talking about
that's a great question,because when we talk about, I'd
say, anti-immigrant oranti-Catholic sentiment, we
always want to recall thatCatholics could own property,
(17:04):
they could own guns, they coulddo all sorts of things.
Particularly African-Americanslaves couldn't, but also
African-Americans and otherplaces and free blacks in the
South which numbered in thehundreds of thousands by the
1860s.
So we want to have someperspective here with that and
also with the Latter Day Saintsby the 1830s and 40s.
(17:25):
There was never a Catholicextermination order, but
Missouri had a Mormonextermination order.
So we kind of want to keep someperspective there.
I would say there was a generalfeel in terms of American
identity that American identitywas white, anglo-saxon,
protestant this is what I talkabout in the book and they
formulate this as manifestdestiny and they formulated an
(17:47):
argument for territorialexpansion and the only way to
spread good Republican alwayswith a lowercase r here I mean
Republican government on thecontinent is to spread the
American Republic.
Theolics just aren't capable ofthat type of government.
They're beholden to a foreignprince or they just their uh
religion makes them backwards,backwards economically,
(18:09):
backwards politically, etc.
I would say in general that's ageneral feeling, but these
violent acts were almost alwayscondemned by elites and educated
people and really theequivalent of what we now call
middle class people.
So in that sense, they're noteveryone's not supporting this
violence.
If you wanted to measurepopularity, we could look at New
(18:33):
York state and Pennsylvania,which ended up with the Native
American Party it was called.
This was not a party ofAmerican Indians, but of
nativists.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
They had six congressmen.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
They had the mayoralty of New York.
They controlled the legislaturein at least two states, so it
was popular enough, and this isprior to the 1850s.
What a lot of people know aboutthe Know-Nothing?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Party.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
This is a predecessor of the more famous
know-nothings that AbrahamLincoln tried to purge from the
Republican Party in the late1850s.
So I wouldn't say it's a largepercentage by any means
supporting that kind of violence.
But when the war comes, a lotof these voluntary societies say
you know, we're usuallypacifist and most of the
(19:20):
evangelicals were abolitionistsas well.
So we should oppose this warbecause we, number one, think
it's going to spread slavery and, number two, we're opposed to
violence in general.
But, gosh, we can spread thetrue faith to the shores.
You start to see chosen peoplerhetoric and pushing the
(19:41):
canaanites into the sea, and soa lot of these missionary
organizations right around 1845or 46 this is how they raised
money.
Then they toured eastern citiesand talked about fund me so I
can bring bibles into mexico assoon as our armies are done,
I'll go in there with the bible,I'll go in there with the track
.
So this would be the AmericanHome Missionary Society, the
(20:04):
American Bible Society and theAmerican Tract Society.
And then there was at least onethat was, I would call it
almost like the non-militarywing, or maybe almost the
military wing of the NativeAmerican Party, that was the
American Protestant Society.
So they would be kind ofinvolved in some of the violence
.
American part, that was theAmerican Protestant Society.
So they would be kind ofinvolved in some of the violence
at this time.
(20:24):
But those other missionarysocieties, I guess my point is,
when you want to raise money andin an age of rising demagoguery
, you can engage in demagogueryto do it.
It's the sense of crisis, it'sthe apocalypticism, it's the
finding somebody who's theproblem.
You give me money, I get theproblem out of the way.
Yeah, it's a, it's a short-termkind of thinking, of course.
(20:45):
Yeah, certainly not a kind ofthinking where you're gonna.
That thinks of the primacy ofculture and changing the culture
over the long haul, or talkingto people or morally persuading
people, and it's very muchsaying well, art, let's just go
in the wake of our armies.
And you give me money and I'llmake sure in the West there's
Protestant schools and noCatholic schools.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
It's interesting that this early date, 200 years ago,
this sort of American, thisparticular form of the American
genius arises right.
Right, there's a certain kindof it's new, that's something
new in the world right, becauseit's new.
That's something new in theworld right.
These are associations,voluntary associations, at least
(21:26):
at this kind of scale,participating in that kind of
crusading work.
I think it's something new.
It's not associating to feedthe poor in the village.
This is something verydifferent than that.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I mean to be fair, they did that too, but they also
, yeah, we're doing this right.
And I think the key, the keyfor me when I think of the, the
tokevillian angle here in thecivil society angle, is the us
government, from the presidenton down, they're trying to push
against this.
They're very afraid that if themexicans saw this as a
religious war, yeah, and it'llreally be a long drawn-out war.
So it's not a case of where,like nowadays, certain think
(22:07):
tanks or associations might workbehind the scenes or not so
behind the scenes, with USgovernment officials etc.
And the money crossing in alldifferent directions.
This was very much a case ofgrassroots and in that sense
that's I mean, that's certainlyvery american too.
This is what impressed hope.
This is what a democracy lookslike.
The ideas come from the bottomand so does the action, even
(22:28):
yeah let's leap ahead.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Um, oh, I don't know.
Another several generationstalk about eugenics.
Eugenics and progressivism andphilanthropy.
How do you understand?
We've we talked about this onthis podcast a couple of times
in the past with differentguests, but how do you
understand what the energy,where the energy came from
(22:53):
behind the eugenics movement?
What sort of what sort ofideology was driving that and
how, how philanthropy gets mixedup with it?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
I don't think we can.
It's hard to understand formost Americans how popular
eugenics really was, howrespected it really was.
We like to engage in what Icondemn all the time, which is
presentism, where we just, wejust assume we would have been
on the right side of everythingin the past and we somehow would
have had more knowledge thanthey had.
We do this all the time andit's a terrible thing, but most
(23:27):
of us really have a hard timeunderstanding the eugenics
movement and the support for it,because its culmination it
seemed in many ways its horribleculmination was really the
efforts in Nazi Germany, forinstance, was really the efforts
in nazi germany, for instance.
So when you, when you go fromencouraging versus discouraging
some people to, uh, to procreateto sterilizing them, and then
(23:52):
what's eventually?
the next step will just likekill them now, right, and that's
that's even faster, and that'sthat's kind of what the what the
nazi regime does eventually, bythe 1830s, 1930s this, I'm
sorry, 19, I'm still in the 19thcentury yes, yeah, the 1930s.
So in the case of, in the caseof americans, this was an age of
(24:14):
what I'd call scientism and notscience, and there's this kind
of worship of all thingsscientific, and this was a
scientific theory that goes verywell with the scientific
racialism of the time period,which said, in the United States
, that, again, this started toevolve in the 1840s, but that
the Anglo-Saxon race was somehowsuperior, whether it was
(24:35):
biological or not.
There were congenital thingsthat made them choose the
religion of free people, whichwas Protestant Christianity, the
politics of free people, whichwas Republican government, and
they were more productive.
They had the biggest empire inthe world, the British Empire,
and then the second biggest,soon to be, they thought, the
United States.
This is where the future wasmoving, and so this is the age
(24:57):
of social Darwinism, out ofwhich we get this phrase,
survival of the fittest, whichdoesn't come from Darwin Right,
that comes from talking aboutsocial groups competing, and so,
for most educated people, theythought well, this is what the
scientists are saying.
So if you follow the science, asthey were saying a few years
ago, in this time period, youfollow it into eugenics and you
(25:19):
think, why do we want poor,suffering people and
tuberculosis and all thesethings?
Let's just, let's just try tofigure out how to make the race
stronger.
And that's what eugenics wasall about.
So they, they couldn't go anddig around in the genome and
they couldn't make they didn'thave CRISPR technology and they
couldn't make techno babies andperfect babies and clones, but
(25:41):
what they could do is figure outwho they thought was inferior
and didn't deserve to breed.
So they would talk about thefeeble minded and then we talk
about others.
And so where philanthropy getswrapped up in the eugenics
movement primarily was wasgiving funding to this kind of
research in the United Statesand abroad.
As you know, jeremy, betterthan I of research in the United
States and abroad.
(26:01):
As you know Jeremy better than Ido.
The United States is the mostphilanthropic country in the
world At Acton Institute.
When we talk to other thinktanks around the world, and in
every case it's hard to getpeople from their own countries
to give to them.
It's just not in their culture.
But it's really an Americanculture.
So if you say I'm going to helpthese people all the way around
(26:23):
the world, do this and they'redoing some great stuff in
Germany right now, why don't yougive me some money for that?
And they're doing it.
So the Carnegie things foundedby the Carnegie Institution, the
Rockefeller Foundation,eventually the Ford Foundation,
a lot of these, that margaretsanger's uh birth control league
, which eventually evolved intoplanned parenthood they're all
(26:45):
involved in funding eugenics andthey're.
What are they funding?
Well, in terms of policy,they're funding court cases in
favor of sterilization lawswhich are being uh challenged in
various states, so forcedsterilization laws, for instance
, and eventually those areoverturned and people nowadays
(27:05):
they're horrified that thiscould happen.
This was a respectable thing atthe time.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
That's right.
Indiana led the way in forcedsterilizations, if I recall
correctly, and there's a famousKerry Buck case, buck versus
Bell.
What's the ideology here?
How do we get from philanthropy, charity, helping in this more
(27:36):
modest scale of helping people,to this, this big thinking like
let's save the race, like what,what?
What's that shift?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
I think that's where we move into the capital P
progressive.
So you know, right around 1900in the United States, by that
time we have a college, educated, white collar populace, the
middle class has been createdand they're they're a
professional class and a modernprofessional class and an urban
(28:07):
professional class.
So what?
What they learned in college,what they've learned in
universities, is the way you dothings is you engage in a study,
you engage in a study of aproblem, and once you engage in
the study, you know exactly whatto do, and then all it takes is
action, and the action takesmoney.
But once you put the twotogether, you can solve problems
(28:28):
that nobody had ever solvedbefore.
You could solve poverty.
Jesus might have told you hey,the poor are always going to be
with you.
But he was mistaken and we knowbetter, and here's why.
So we, we call this now thetechnocratic mindset this idea
that that there are people whocan be omnicompetent and they're
(28:49):
going to work for thegovernment because only the
government has the top downresources to do this, so that
philanthropists were no longertalking about voluntary
societies from the bottom uptrying to do good even if they
have good intentions, and badresults even if they have bad
intentions.
They were still bottom up bythis time.
It's the inclination, is a topdown.
(29:10):
This is the time period, thisprogressive era, theodore
roosevelt, etc.
This is the beginning of whenyou answer that question well,
what needs to be done about this?
I don't know.
Let's see what the governmentcan do.
This, this is when that startsand it picks up all the way
through the 20th century.
So I think it's a.
It's an anthropological problemin the sense that they believe
(29:33):
people are capable of the amountof knowledge necessary and the
expertise necessary to solveproblems, and it all that was
lacking in the past was, was,will, maybe knowledge, but also
also will scale.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, right, right, but really, ultimately, we're
going to have the guts to dothis the way it should be done.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And I come, I come to you and I say, yeah, you, you
want to eradicate hookworm inthe South, give me money.
And so that's fun and that's agreat thing they're working on
hookworm and tuberculosis.
They're working on a number ofthings at this time.
There's a whole movement tofund schools for
African-Americans, for instance,to try to equalize educational
outcomes, et cetera at this time.
(30:16):
So there's a lot of amazinggood things going on in essence,
etc at this time.
So there's a lot of amazinggood things going on in essence,
but it's a.
It's that kind of model wherethe the top down people, the
people at the top, just don'treally have the knowledge.
Yeah, but not only do they nothave the knowledge, what they're
doing and the way they're doing, it's actually damaging the
very thing they're trying tohelp right right, and it also
(30:39):
erodes the sort of habit of ofassociating voluntarily to take
care of problems on our own.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
It kind of erodes democratic habits.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, you hollow out the middle right, and then
there's this, you and the state,and so, in the name of
protecting these individuals,there's nothing left that can
really protect them.
Now you just have to rely onthe state.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
So eugenics is an example of sort of the
technocratic mindset withoutregard for the human person.
There's no sort of, there's noinbuilt sort of parameter there
that will hold on here, sort ofparameter there that will hold
on here.
There are certain rights atplay, there's a certain dignity
(31:27):
being assaulted through theeugenics program.
You make the point that there'sanother example of that that
you would point to.
Now that kind of is a similartechnocratic mindset and a
similar example of goodintentions that actually harm
people.
What would that be?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
So that would be.
There's much in the modernenvironmental movement that
would match up to what you saidvery well.
So I'm not talking aboutconservation, right, I'm not
talking about efforts to stop insome foreign countries.
This doesn't really happen inthe United States, but
particularly in places likeNigeria, in foreign countries.
This doesn't really happen inthe United States, but
particularly in places likeNigeria, where there's a lack of
(32:02):
the rule of law and clear titleto lands, or that foreign
companies come in and destroyforests and destroy farmland and
leave behind toxic runoff, etc.
We're not talking about that.
We're talking about a movementI mentioned apocalypticism
earlier that preaches anenvironmental apocalypse and the
only way to overcome theapocalypse and get to the
(32:22):
environmental millennium is togive them money.
And so these are folks who havethis faulty view that there's.
There's two ways I woulddescribe it.
There's two faulty views of thehuman person at play here.
One is we're omnipotent,omnicompetent gods.
We can overcome nature itself.
They, what I make of nature iswhat I make of nature.
(32:43):
Like I, I can do it.
Nature doesn't matter.
But then there's the the person.
Not the person is god, but thiswould be.
The person is scourge and demonand we're like an infection on
the earth.
I actually have it.
So the, the founder of Earth,first said quote man is no
important than any other species.
Sir David Attenborough, who'svery popular for narrating
(33:06):
nature shows, has called humanbeings a plague upon the earth.
Paul Ehrlich, we need a newcivilization.
This is an environmental crisis.
What's it going to solve?
I'll just quote him here theinequitable distribution of
wealth and resources racism,sexism, religious prejudice and
xenophobia.
That's pretty amazing for agroup that wants to save the
(33:30):
whales and the trees, and I meanthat's a lot to try to
accomplish.
But that's what I mean by theapocalyptices the world is going
to end tomorrow if we don't dosomething.
Give me money.
I recall when I was a wide-eyedcollege student and I think
Greenpeace was always.
They were always coming in andout of the campus and they had
(33:50):
booths and I thought, okay, Ilike sea otters.
I was living in California.
I like otters, I was living incalifornia.
I like otters, I like whales.
I don't like oil on my feetwhen I'm at the beach.
I mean maybe there's, maybethere's, we have some common
ground here.
And I said what can I do?
They said just send us a check,yeah.
And I said, well, I'm a collegestudent.
(34:11):
What are you sitting here?
I'm working at chick-fil-a,what do you?
I'll give you here's a dollar.
I mean, what do you do you want?
But I can do something.
I mean I understood that Icould donate my leg.
Maybe there's something youwant me to do.
Isn't there a sign I can holdup?
Can I go protest?
Something Like just send us acheck?
Yeah, I remember getting on thephone with Greenpeace.
It was in the end give us acheck.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Not sure that's what you realized.
That's what I'm pretty smart.
It took me a little bit right.
Well, what I like about yourpoint is there's this
combination of two things thatare exactly the opposite, and
this wouldn't just be the onlyexample.
One a too high view of thehuman, that we can, that we can
solve this.
The hayek has a great critiqueof this right that we can gain
enough knowledge to solvesomething so big, that's so
beyond what anybody can reallydo.
(34:59):
But we can do that.
From a few of us sitting here,we can write you the
constitution for your part ofthe world, across the world.
We can solve all these issuesyou talked about.
There's a too high of a view,and then there's this too low of
view.
Right, we're a plague, we're ascourge talked about.
There's this too high of a view, and then there's this too low
of a view.
Right, we're a plague, we're ascourge human beings are.
(35:20):
The earth will be better offwhen we're, all you know,
extinct.
It's just a crazy combinationof views.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Well, that's why, you know, when the Greek wisdom was
moderation in all things andtemperance as a virtue.
And here you see, this iscertainly not the golden mean
right, it's the two, it's twoextremes.
Now that the latter extremethough, where humans are a
scourge, you notice, there'salways somebody who, uh, to
borrow uh Vladimir Lenin's terms, there's always somebody who's
got to be the vanguard right,the workers can't really.
They can't really run things.
I mean, they're good to have arevolution, revolution, but
(35:53):
they're not going to run therevolution and so that, that
idea that there's, there'ssomebody who is uh, um, as eric
vogelin called it, who possessesthat gnostic secret knowledge.
They have the secret plan, theyhave the know-how.
This is the connection to theprogressive era, but even
earlier, the idea of rule byexperts.
(36:13):
Now, when I go, if mygallbladder starts to swell up
or you know the appendix orsomething, or I have a sore
tooth, I'm not going to take mysore tooth and go to I don't
know the bowling alley, see ifthere's anyone around who can
help, right?
I mean, there's experts forsome things, but these are
experts in all things, and thereason Vogelin called them
(36:35):
modern Gnostics is because theyhave the knowledge.
You don't and you just have tolisten to them.
And even when their resultscause damage, either to the
environment, to the human person, to the dignity of the human
person, they'll ignore that,because if they don't ignore it,
then they have to're not.
(36:56):
They're not a small subset ofthe first half, you're the
omnicom, omnicompetent god.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah right, right, what I like, I think the other,
the um interesting connectionyou're making here is that, uh,
um, the rule of experts, um isalways driven by uhocalypticism.
Right, the reason we, how wedrive you to accept the rule of
experts, is to put forth anapocalyptic scenario that
(37:25):
justifies it.
Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah, I think that's the downside of democracy, and
again, tocqueville, of course,identified this as well.
What's the easiest way to getsomebody's vote?
Have them read a treatise ongovernment and take five
philosophy classes or to saythose people are damaging
exactly what helps you flourishand thrive.
(37:49):
If you elect us, we'll takecare of those people.
And so you extend the crisis,and politicians on both sides of
the political spectrum in theUnited States do this all the
time.
They've done it with race,they've done it with abortion,
and you never really quite solveany of the problems you say you
can solve, because the otherpeople are causing problems.
So it's just Aristotleidentified this right, it's just
demagoguery.
(38:10):
And, of course, it worksbecause we're not we're not
omni-competent gods capable ofperfection.
Uh, we're.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
We're creatures who have flaws right, yeah, and
limitations, um, and speaking ofthat, uh, before I let you go,
I wanted to make sure we had achance to talk about another, uh
, philanthropic initiative ofquestionable legitimacy, or it
would be some of the work you'vebrought to the attention of the
(38:42):
US Catholic bishops, I think,recently on foundations and
their collaborations withcertain international
institutions regardingpopulation growth and things
like that.
Can you talk about that work alittle bit?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Sure.
So the Catholic Church, ofcourse, is a worldwide
organization and the bishops init come from a multitude of
experiences and nations aroundthe world, like the current Pope
, the Bishop of Rome, popeFrancis.
They come from Argentina, withthe Peronist background in
Argentina and the economictroubles of Argentina and how
government has worked or notworked in Argentina.
(39:14):
They come from the UnitedStates.
They come from Europe.
One of the things Pope Francistalked about in his very popular
encyclical La Dato' C wassaying how there's ecological
movements and they defend theintegrity of the environment,
which is a good thing, and theyrealize people are connected to
the ecological landscape theylive in, but then they won't
(39:35):
apply those principles to humanlife and so we can't save the
world by killing people, forinstance.
I mean, that seems simple, butyou know, do you need to kill or
experiment?
Do you need to experiment onhumanity, like eugenics, to save
it?
Do you need to kill a certainnumber of people in order to
save the world?
Do you kill humanity to savethe earth from from destruction?
(39:57):
However, pope Francis has alsopromoted working very, very
closely to the United Nationsand many of these international
bodies and agencies, and what Ihave told bishops is.
I just said maybe we need tocooperate with these agencies
(40:18):
and with the UN.
We meaning I'm speaking asCatholics here, talking to them.
You know maybe Catholic bishopsshould cooperate and maybe they
shouldn't, but you have to knowwho you're working with.
The, the the UN as a politicalproject requires compromise.
The UN as a political projectrequires compromise, and so what
we see in the UN Declaration ofHuman Rights.
There's guidelines produced bythe World Health Organization on
(40:42):
human reproduction that promoteabortion and sterilization and
birth control.
In the name of the country ofthe Netherlands, partnered with
the UN Population Fund on.
They usually call it sexualhealth or reproductive health.
Sometimes the Bill and MelindaGates Foundation does this as
(41:06):
well.
Sexual and reproductive health.
The World Economic Forum talkedabout the dangers of
overpopulation.
This is not the integralecology that Francis and
previously Pope Benedict talkedabout.
So I mean my point is becareful who you're working with,
because maybe 50 years from nowpeople will look back like we
(41:28):
like to look back on a highhorse about eugenics and say I
can't believe they thought youjust had to kill people and
sterilize people in developingcountries.
Like this is how you're goingto save the world, and this is
the World Health Organization.
Jacques Martin, the Frenchphilosopher, pointed this out,
who helped write the UN humanrights guidelines, kind of
(41:49):
translating Catholicunderstanding to the human
person in the secular language,and he had said that you know,
the problem is, we can all agreeat the UN that people have
rights, as long as we don't digtoo deeply into what the rights
actually are.
And it turns out you can drivenow I'm putting words in his
mouth, but it because it's acompromise document, that
(42:10):
declaration of human rights.
You could, you could reallydrive a truck through the,
through the holes in it, andthat's, that's a problem.
Right, you could, you couldreally drive a truck through the
, through the holes in it, andthat's, that's a problem.
So that's just a, it's just aword of warning to say if you
look at the, it's the undevelopment goal.
I had written it down in notesbut I've mistaken, I I moved it
somewhere.
But the, the un developmentgoals that have to do with
(42:33):
having nice cities andcomfortable cities, and you, you
dig down deep and that's where.
That's where all the thingsthat I think run I would argue
run contrary to human dignityare to be found.
And, and there's privatephilanthropic organizations
connected but, also alsogovernments, including the U S
government.
(42:53):
I, I, I would add so yeah, noit the US government.
I would add.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, no, it's good.
I'm glad you brought that toour attention and talked about
that a little bit, john, andthank you for you.
Know we celebrate the traditionof America's private
philanthropy a lot, and rightlyso, especially as we approach
the semi-quincentennial.
But I always like to remindpeople what the dark side of
(43:18):
that has been, and there's moreto it than what we just talked
about in the last 45 or 50minutes.
But when it gets entangled withor seen through a technocratic
lens maybe disconnected from itsChristian or Jewish
Jewish-Christian roots, maybedisconnected from its Christian
or Jewish Jewish Christian rootscan be a big.
(43:41):
There can be major, majorproblems with it.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
So yeah, thank you, jeremy.
I mean, we're capable of greatgood, we're capable of great
evil.
We have to be aware of that allthe time.
It's UN sustainable developmentgoal Number 11.
Okay, it rattles aroundeventually.
Got it.
Appreciate you, it rattlesaround eventually.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Got it, appreciate you.
Thank you so much, john Pinero.
People can follow you on X atwhat's your handle, dr John
Pinero, dr John Pinero.
On X, that's P I N H E I R O.
And also at actinorg you cancheck out John's work and the
work of the many other excellentscholars who are connected with
(44:19):
the Acton Institute.
So thank you, john, very muchfor being with us.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Absolutely.
Thank you, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Hey, thanks for joining us for today's podcast.
If you enjoyed it, we inviteyou to subscribe and or rate and
or review us on YouTube, apple,spotify or wherever you listen
to our podcasts.
Thanks a lot.
This week on Givers, doers and Thinkers, we talk to
historian John Pinero about theroots of American philanthropy.
Most interestingly, we talkabout its dark sides, including
its historic associations withanti-Catholic prejudice, war and
eugenics, and what all thatreveals about one particular way
of understanding and practicingphilanthropy.
(00:23):
Let's go Welcome to Givers,doers and Thinkers a podcast on
(00:47):
philanthropy and civil society.
I am Jeremy Beer and it's greatto have you with us.
Today is March 28, 2025, and Iam excited to have as our guest
my friend John Pinero, ahistorian and the author or
editor of several books,including one that I really
(01:08):
enjoyed, called Missionaries ofRepublicanism A Religious
History of the Mexican-AmericanWar.
Now, that might sound like anarrowly focused book, but it's
actually really illuminating onthe topic we're going to talk
about here today, which is someof the ugliness and prejudice
that has accompanied mainstreamAmerican philanthropy and
(01:29):
charitable institutions or, Imight say, voluntary
associations over the years.
But first let me finishintroducing John.
He is Director of Research atthe Acton Institute in Grand
Rapids, michigan, from whosefancy studio he speaks with us
today.
As you can see, prior tojoining Acton, john was
professor of history at AquinasCollege in Grand Rapids, where
(01:51):
he chaired the history andphilosophy departments, and,
previous to Aquinas, john wasassistant editor of the Papers
of George Washington at theUniversity of Virginia.
In fact, his current bookproject is titled tentatively
Beyond Burke George Washingtonand the Origins of American
Conservatism, which I very muchlook forward to reading.
(02:12):
John, how are you?
Speaker 2 (02:14):
I'm good.
Thank you for having me, Jeremy.
It's a pleasure to be on yourpodcast.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
Yeah, thank you for joining.
As I told you when I invitedyou on, we're sort of loosely
focusing this season on theforthcoming American
semi-quincentennial and I wantedto have a historian like you on
to talk about that and sort ofthe less positive role that at
(02:42):
times a sort of Americanphilanthropy has played over the
last couple of hundred years.
So let's start by talking aboutprogressivism with a capital P,
and I'm going to have you kindof take us through a little bit
of how progressivism has shapedphilanthropic institutions over
the years and what that haslooked like.
(03:02):
And I thought we would startwith where your book really
starts, the Missionaries ofRepublicanism book, or at least
where it focuses.
It's kind of that Tocquevillianera, the 1830s or so.
Right, talk about what wasmotivating a lot of the
associations that were formingat that time.
(03:24):
What were they trying to do?
What did Tocqueville see?
What did he not see?
How was that all playing outback then?
Speaker 2 (03:34):
Thanks, jeremy, for the question.
So Tocqueville toured theUnited States in the 1820s,
1830s, and this was the timewhere the United States was
becoming what, by the 1830s, wasactually the most democratic
country in the world.
So it's important to know whatthat means in the 1830s, of
course.
But this was the case, and whathe wanted to know was why the
(03:57):
United States hadn't fallenapart yet.
Why was it not going throughrecurrent revolutions and
violence and upheaval anddemagoguery like the United
States have?
What could, what could he learnfrom the Americans?
And the most major thing henoted, among other things for
why the Constitution was stillworking, was Americans fondness
for associative life.
(04:17):
And so he looked around in this, in this time and he said look,
in England we'd see a greatlord at the head of an effort,
in France we would see thegovernment at the head of an
effort.
But in America the Americansjust form associations.
They do it to build hospitals,schools, they do it to spread
(04:39):
Bibles, they do it for anynumber of things, small things,
big things, major things.
They never really just look tothe government.
Now we know, of course thestory with the progressives with
a capital P is they're going tolook to the government.
But we're in an evolutionarypart here, right.
And so in the 1820s and 30s thetradition was if you wanted to
(04:59):
change somebody's mind, youactually talk to them.
Somebody's mind, you actuallytalk to them.
You talk to them, you changeyour mind, you make arguments,
you try to educate theirchildren.
The point is, with thesevoluntary associations, this
associative life that of coursemakes money, people are
(05:20):
contributing their time butthey're also contributing money.
This is really wherephilanthropy starts.
In the United States we see afew efforts in the 1700s, but
it's really in the 1820s.
I would relate it firstly, andthere's a great book by Ronald
Walters called AmericanReformers that does this a
scholarly, academic work.
I think it's a great book andwhat he says is you can't talk
(05:43):
about the reform efforts and theassociations and the
philanthropy from this periodwithout understanding the
evangelical Protestant revivalsof the time period, so nearly
every one of these, the GreatAwakening kind of happened right
now.
This is the second GreatAwakening they called it so the
Great Awakening hadn't beencalled the Great Awak awakening
until the 1820s, and then the uhprotestants in america thought,
(06:06):
wow, we're living through atime that seems like the 1730s
and the 1740s.
That was the first greatawakening.
Then this is the second, andthis is when the evangelical
protestant churches really tookoff in america the presbyterians
and the baptists and themethodists.
And what walter said is youcan't understand their all these
reform efforts if you don'tunderstand the evangelicalism
(06:27):
underlying them, the fact thatthey were.
This was part of their faith.
They were looking towards a newmillennium.
They thought the end of theworld was near, and so they
really wanted to clean upamericans, the americans house,
in order to pave the way forjesus to come back.
Got I?
always compare it to like sograndma's coming over and you
(06:48):
live in a pretty clean house,but you know grandma's really
going to look around quite a bit.
Right.
So you just make it extra cleanwhen, when grandma's coming.
So when she comes she says, wow, this place looks great.
And you know most, most people.
There's just kind of a naturalinclination when you have guests
.
Yeah.
But william lloyd garrison, thefamous abolitionist, said look,
we wouldn't be when we pray thelord's prayer thy kingdom come,
(07:10):
thy will be done.
There's a sense garrisonthought and others, that there's
reformers thought you couldkind of push god's hand a little
bit, give them a nudge likelook at how good we're doing,
come, come back now, look at allthis stuff we're working on.
And you see this in politics,but you see it in the churches
as well.
And so this is the worldTocqueville came into and
(07:33):
there's just democratic ferventferment.
And Tocqueville said that thewhole country just seems on the
move everywhere.
It's just a very vibrant timein american history.
And so for the evangelicalsthat means they were, they
wanted to, what they werefunding schools, sunday schools.
The sunday school movementstarted at this time, the
sabbatarian movement to stopwork on sundays.
(07:55):
This is actually why the postoffice doesn't deliver mail.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
I think they do now so there was a pre-sabbatarian
time, though, when people wereworking on sundays you're saying
seven days a week, even thepost office, and then they, you
know they rolled it back duringthis time period and this is a
kind of sabbath observance.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
You'd see, if you ever read, uh, the laurie engels
wilder books, where the twogirls have to sit in a chair and
dad swats them if they move aninch on sunday and you better
not laugh, you better not smile,and at least in the book and
the missionaries ofRepublicanism.
this is why the Americans are soshocked that Mexicans are
playing music and having a goodtime on Sunday when they're in
Mexico, which is a verydifferent culture from what
(08:35):
they're used to in the UnitedStates, but anyway.
So this would include theschools.
The schools is, in some ways,where the dark side, I would say
, comes in of philanthropy.
The schools is, in some ways,where the dark side I would say
comes in of philanthropy.
Talk about that.
Public schools in Americaessentially were Protestant
schools because that was theculture.
And so what that meant is therewas Bible reading in the
(08:56):
schools, there was prayer in theschools, and I think there's a
lot of American Christians nowwho would think, well, that
would be kind of nice,considering the state of our
culture.
You know, wouldn't that begreat to have a moral culture?
But what Catholics encounteredCatholic immigrants specifically
as immigration picked up in the1830s what they encountered
were efforts that they could notread their Bibles in the school
(09:21):
.
They had to read, say, the KingJames Bible in school.
They couldn't pray theirversion of the Lord's Prayer
school, they had to read, say,the king james bible.
In school they couldn't praytheir version of the lord's
prayer, they had to pray theprotestant translation of the
lord's prayer.
And so there was this growingsense in the 1830s where there
had been this kind of latentanti-catholicism in american
history, left over from theenglish heritage, and it had
(09:42):
been dampened down during theAmerican Revolution when
Americans fought on the sameside against England.
And it rises up in the 1830sand joins with this
anti-immigrant sentiment and youget new, very American
arguments for why we shouldn'thave immigration and why we
especially shouldn't haveCatholic immigration, and why
(10:04):
you should fund societies thatwant to spread the Protestant
gospel or the pure gospel, asthey called it into the West,
into the South, but especiallyinto the West.
Everyone knew the future of thecountry was in the West.
So if you wanted to raise money, you would say look, we're
going to save the West and we'regoing to save it for
Protestantism, and the reason wewant to do that is only
(10:27):
Protestants are capable ofmaintaining Republican
government.
representative government andCatholics can't do that and they
would give their arguments.
So if you give us money, we'llmake sure there's Protestant
teachers and Protestant schools,et cetera in the West.
Speaker 1 (10:41):
Yeah, there's a lot of fear of, I assume.
So this is during theMexican-American War or just
after the Mexican-American War.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
So this is in the lead up.
So the 1820s it really startsto pick up in the 1820s.
The war against Mexico startedin 1846 and it didn't start over
religion, but it certainly was.
I argue in the book that thiswas the lens through which most
Americans were able to makesense of it.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
Yeah, because you were going to war against a
country that wasn't capable oftruly capable of being a
democracy and also was sort ofenthralled to a false sort of
religion.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I mean it's so.
It's the Catholic country nextdoor.
And the Texas Revolution in the1830s was the first sort of
wake up call about this.
By the 1840s, look, mexico hadhad 14 presidents since the
1820s, none of whom had beenelected.
And if you're trying to makearguments that Catholics just
can't do, republican government,and this is your next door
Catholic neighbor.
(11:39):
And then the Catholic chaplainswho were very controversial in
the United States, that James KPolk sent to with the army into
Mexico.
They're even writing backsaying, wow, we, we really got
to reform the church here.
It's, it's a mess.
So even the even the Catholicskind of had this downward,
downward look towards theMexicans as well.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, so there's really a leveraging though of
sort of anti-Catholic prejudiceto um build up these um early,
uh associative societies forspreading the gospel in the West
.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Yeah, leveraging is is the exact right word.
So we we'd like to usuallythink that the number one moral
issue prior to the civil war inAmerica was slavery Cause.
Wouldn't that be nice.
It's the most obvious, mostobvious, it's.
It's such an obvious affront tohuman dignity.
Right, but in fact the tariffwas number one.
We do hear about tariffsnowadays banking, internal
(12:36):
improvements, the federalgovernment funding them.
But what those three things hadin common was somehow the us
government from the top downgetting into your pocketbook,
affecting the choices and whatyou do with your money, what you
don't do with your money, sothat kind of control from afar.
But in fourth place and quicklyrising by the 1850s it was
number one until around the late1850s, when it was supplanted
(12:57):
by slavery was immigration.
Yeah, three out of the four,three out of four, probably 75
percent of the immigrants werecatholic.
All the irish immigrants werecatholic and about half of the
german immigrants were catholic,and these were the two large
groups coming in the 1820s and30s.
And so they come with theirreligion and they found schools,
convents.
(13:18):
They build churches.
In the 1840s bishop hughesstarted building a saint
patrick's cathedral in new YorkCity, for example.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
And so you start to look around your city and you
think I thought we were anAnglo-Saxon Protestant country.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
This is really different?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
Can these people really do?
They know what it means to bean American?
Are they capable ofassimilation?
They don't worship in ourlanguage.
They don't even speak our ownlanguage.
I mean, the Irish don't arrivein most cases speaking English.
They arrived speaking Irish,right, and so I mean they speak
some English, but a lot of themare speaking Irish, and so
(13:58):
there's the linguistic barrier.
What are those Catholics reallydoing in the confessional?
And so we start to getconspiracy theories, and they're
promoted by two peopleprimarily.
Samuel fb morse was one of themand lyman beecher was another.
And for our concern here wewant to look at lyman beecher.
Yeah, because he's the one whowas supporting a lot of these
(14:19):
western efforts and he would goon tours on the east coast.
After he split with some folksover whether slavery was more
important than anti-immigrationand he went the anti-immigration
route, he went back to Bostonto raise money for his Western
efforts and he talked about thethreat of Catholicism to the
(14:40):
American Republic.
He helped propagate thetheories that Morris did as well
, that the pope was actuallythinking about moving to the
Mississippi republic.
He helped propagate thetheories that morris did as well
, that the pope was actuallythinking about moving to the
mississippi river valley now.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
This would have been a surprise to the pope.
You haven't heard that.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
That's wild really so , but conspiracism in some ways
is.
It's an old american traditionright, we like conspiracies and
if you release all the documentsabout a conspiracy it's just
say, well, there's probably moredocuments so the conspiracy
just never, never dies.
But the conspiracy was with theupheavals in europe and the
(15:13):
liberal revolutions, especiallyby the 1840s in europe.
The pope's gonna get kicked outof rome, he's gonna come here.
So what these immigrants are isan advanced army and, to use
morris's words, they're led bytheir jesuit generals who are
well schooled in all the arts ofdarkness.
Indeed, sounds like somethingjk rowling would, would write, I
guess.
And so people, whether theybelieve the outlandish part of
(15:38):
that or not, what they did think, particularly in boston, they
look.
They looked up at the hill, atthis Ursuline convent that I
talk about in the book, thisvery infamous incident, and
thought that convent and schoolis not a sign that the First
Amendment's great and ourConstitution's great.
That's a sign that we'reletting in the wrong people, and
(15:58):
those are all, of course,unmarried, successful women
educating some of the cream ofthe crop of Boston.
So one night in the mid-1830s amob burned it down to the ground
, and then, by 1844, there'santi-Catholic riots in
Philadelphia.
Yeah, the incident outside ofBoston resulted from Lyman
(16:21):
Beecher speaking tour in Boston,and it's one of these things
where you say, well, did he tellthem to go?
Do it?
No, he didn't, but he calledthe Catholics an existential
threat and said this is why youhave to give me money.
And they thought well, I can'tgive him money, but I can, I can
go burn down that building.
I can go beat up some nuns.
I can do that yeah, andfascinating at what percentage
(16:43):
of americans um how popular wassort of anti-catholicism or at
least anti-immigrant catholicismat the time we're talking about
that's a great question,because when we talk about, I'd
say, anti-immigrant oranti-Catholic sentiment, we
always want to recall thatCatholics could own property,
(17:04):
they could own guns, they coulddo all sorts of things.
Particularly African-Americanslaves couldn't, but also
African-Americans and otherplaces and free blacks in the
South which numbered in thehundreds of thousands by the
1860s.
So we want to have someperspective here with that and
also with the Latter Day Saintsby the 1830s and 40s.
(17:25):
There was never a Catholicextermination order, but
Missouri had a Mormonextermination order.
So we kind of want to keep someperspective there.
I would say there was a generalfeel in terms of American
identity that American identitywas white, anglo-saxon,
protestant this is what I talkabout in the book and they
formulate this as manifestdestiny and they formulated an
(17:47):
argument for territorialexpansion and the only way to
spread good Republican alwayswith a lowercase r here I mean
Republican government on thecontinent is to spread the
American Republic.
Theolics just aren't capable ofthat type of government.
They're beholden to a foreignprince or they just their uh
religion makes them backwards,backwards economically,
(18:09):
backwards politically, etc.
I would say in general that's ageneral feeling, but these
violent acts were almost alwayscondemned by elites and educated
people and really theequivalent of what we now call
middle class people.
So in that sense, they're noteveryone's not supporting this
violence.
If you wanted to measurepopularity, we could look at New
(18:33):
York state and Pennsylvania,which ended up with the Native
American Party it was called.
This was not a party ofAmerican Indians, but of
nativists.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
They had six congressmen.
Speaker 2 (18:45):
They had the mayoralty of New York.
They controlled the legislaturein at least two states, so it
was popular enough, and this isprior to the 1850s.
What a lot of people know aboutthe Know-Nothing?
Speaker 1 (18:57):
Party.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
This is a predecessor of the more famous
know-nothings that AbrahamLincoln tried to purge from the
Republican Party in the late1850s.
So I wouldn't say it's a largepercentage by any means
supporting that kind of violence.
But when the war comes, a lotof these voluntary societies say
you know, we're usuallypacifist and most of the
(19:20):
evangelicals were abolitionistsas well.
So we should oppose this warbecause we, number one, think
it's going to spread slavery and, number two, we're opposed to
violence in general.
But, gosh, we can spread thetrue faith to the shores.
You start to see chosen peoplerhetoric and pushing the
(19:41):
canaanites into the sea, and soa lot of these missionary
organizations right around 1845or 46 this is how they raised
money.
Then they toured eastern citiesand talked about fund me so I
can bring bibles into mexico assoon as our armies are done,
I'll go in there with the bible,I'll go in there with the track
.
So this would be the AmericanHome Missionary Society, the
(20:04):
American Bible Society and theAmerican Tract Society.
And then there was at least onethat was, I would call it
almost like the non-militarywing, or maybe almost the
military wing of the NativeAmerican Party, that was the
American Protestant Society.
So they would be kind ofinvolved in some of the violence
.
American part, that was theAmerican Protestant Society.
So they would be kind ofinvolved in some of the violence
at this time.
(20:24):
But those other missionarysocieties, I guess my point is,
when you want to raise money andin an age of rising demagoguery
, you can engage in demagogueryto do it.
It's the sense of crisis, it'sthe apocalypticism, it's the
finding somebody who's theproblem.
You give me money, I get theproblem out of the way.
Yeah, it's a, it's a short-termkind of thinking, of course.
(20:45):
Yeah, certainly not a kind ofthinking where you're gonna.
That thinks of the primacy ofculture and changing the culture
over the long haul, or talkingto people or morally persuading
people, and it's very muchsaying well, art, let's just go
in the wake of our armies.
And you give me money and I'llmake sure in the West there's
Protestant schools and noCatholic schools.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
It's interesting that this early date, 200 years ago,
this sort of American, thisparticular form of the American
genius arises right.
Right, there's a certain kindof it's new, that's something
new in the world right, becauseit's new.
That's something new in theworld right.
These are associations,voluntary associations, at least
(21:26):
at this kind of scale,participating in that kind of
crusading work.
I think it's something new.
It's not associating to feedthe poor in the village.
This is something verydifferent than that.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I mean to be fair, they did that too, but they also
, yeah, we're doing this right.
And I think the key, the keyfor me when I think of the, the
tokevillian angle here in thecivil society angle, is the us
government, from the presidenton down, they're trying to push
against this.
They're very afraid that if themexicans saw this as a
religious war, yeah, and it'llreally be a long drawn-out war.
So it's not a case of where,like nowadays, certain think
(22:07):
tanks or associations might workbehind the scenes or not so
behind the scenes, with USgovernment officials etc.
And the money crossing in alldifferent directions.
This was very much a case ofgrassroots and in that sense
that's I mean, that's certainlyvery american too.
This is what impressed hope.
This is what a democracy lookslike.
The ideas come from the bottomand so does the action, even
(22:28):
yeah let's leap ahead.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Um, oh, I don't know.
Another several generationstalk about eugenics.
Eugenics and progressivism andphilanthropy.
How do you understand?
We've we talked about this onthis podcast a couple of times
in the past with differentguests, but how do you
understand what the energy,where the energy came from
(22:53):
behind the eugenics movement?
What sort of what sort ofideology was driving that and
how, how philanthropy gets mixedup with it?
Speaker 2 (23:03):
I don't think we can.
It's hard to understand formost Americans how popular
eugenics really was, howrespected it really was.
We like to engage in what Icondemn all the time, which is
presentism, where we just, wejust assume we would have been
on the right side of everythingin the past and we somehow would
have had more knowledge thanthey had.
We do this all the time andit's a terrible thing, but most
(23:27):
of us really have a hard timeunderstanding the eugenics
movement and the support for it,because its culmination it
seemed in many ways its horribleculmination was really the
efforts in Nazi Germany, forinstance, was really the efforts
in nazi germany, for instance.
So when you, when you go fromencouraging versus discouraging
some people to, uh, to procreateto sterilizing them, and then
(23:52):
what's eventually?
the next step will just likekill them now, right, and that's
that's even faster, and that'sthat's kind of what the what the
nazi regime does eventually, bythe 1830s, 1930s this, I'm
sorry, 19, I'm still in the 19thcentury yes, yeah, the 1930s.
So in the case of, in the caseof americans, this was an age of
(24:14):
what I'd call scientism and notscience, and there's this kind
of worship of all thingsscientific, and this was a
scientific theory that goes verywell with the scientific
racialism of the time period,which said, in the United States
, that, again, this started toevolve in the 1840s, but that
the Anglo-Saxon race was somehowsuperior, whether it was
(24:35):
biological or not.
There were congenital thingsthat made them choose the
religion of free people, whichwas Protestant Christianity, the
politics of free people, whichwas Republican government, and
they were more productive.
They had the biggest empire inthe world, the British Empire,
and then the second biggest,soon to be, they thought, the
United States.
This is where the future wasmoving, and so this is the age
(24:57):
of social Darwinism, out ofwhich we get this phrase,
survival of the fittest, whichdoesn't come from Darwin Right,
that comes from talking aboutsocial groups competing, and so,
for most educated people, theythought well, this is what the
scientists are saying.
So if you follow the science, asthey were saying a few years
ago, in this time period, youfollow it into eugenics and you
(25:19):
think, why do we want poor,suffering people and
tuberculosis and all thesethings?
Let's just, let's just try tofigure out how to make the race
stronger.
And that's what eugenics wasall about.
So they, they couldn't go anddig around in the genome and
they couldn't make they didn'thave CRISPR technology and they
couldn't make techno babies andperfect babies and clones, but
(25:41):
what they could do is figure outwho they thought was inferior
and didn't deserve to breed.
So they would talk about thefeeble minded and then we talk
about others.
And so where philanthropy getswrapped up in the eugenics
movement primarily was wasgiving funding to this kind of
research in the United Statesand abroad.
As you know, jeremy, betterthan I of research in the United
States and abroad.
(26:01):
As you know Jeremy better than Ido.
The United States is the mostphilanthropic country in the
world At Acton Institute.
When we talk to other thinktanks around the world, and in
every case it's hard to getpeople from their own countries
to give to them.
It's just not in their culture.
But it's really an Americanculture.
So if you say I'm going to helpthese people all the way around
(26:23):
the world, do this and they'redoing some great stuff in
Germany right now, why don't yougive me some money for that?
And they're doing it.
So the Carnegie things foundedby the Carnegie Institution, the
Rockefeller Foundation,eventually the Ford Foundation,
a lot of these, that margaretsanger's uh birth control league
, which eventually evolved intoplanned parenthood they're all
(26:45):
involved in funding eugenics andthey're.
What are they funding?
Well, in terms of policy,they're funding court cases in
favor of sterilization lawswhich are being uh challenged in
various states, so forcedsterilization laws, for instance
, and eventually those areoverturned and people nowadays
(27:05):
they're horrified that thiscould happen.
This was a respectable thing atthe time.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
That's right.
Indiana led the way in forcedsterilizations, if I recall
correctly, and there's a famousKerry Buck case, buck versus
Bell.
What's the ideology here?
How do we get from philanthropy, charity, helping in this more
(27:36):
modest scale of helping people,to this, this big thinking like
let's save the race, like what,what?
What's that shift?
Speaker 2 (27:46):
I think that's where we move into the capital P
progressive.
So you know, right around 1900in the United States, by that
time we have a college, educated, white collar populace, the
middle class has been createdand they're they're a
professional class and a modernprofessional class and an urban
(28:07):
professional class.
So what?
What they learned in college,what they've learned in
universities, is the way you dothings is you engage in a study,
you engage in a study of aproblem, and once you engage in
the study, you know exactly whatto do, and then all it takes is
action, and the action takesmoney.
But once you put the twotogether, you can solve problems
(28:28):
that nobody had ever solvedbefore.
You could solve poverty.
Jesus might have told you hey,the poor are always going to be
with you.
But he was mistaken and we knowbetter, and here's why.
So we, we call this now thetechnocratic mindset this idea
that that there are people whocan be omnicompetent and they're
(28:49):
going to work for thegovernment because only the
government has the top downresources to do this, so that
philanthropists were no longertalking about voluntary
societies from the bottom uptrying to do good even if they
have good intentions, and badresults even if they have bad
intentions.
They were still bottom up bythis time.
It's the inclination, is a topdown.
(29:10):
This is the time period, thisprogressive era, theodore
roosevelt, etc.
This is the beginning of whenyou answer that question well,
what needs to be done about this?
I don't know.
Let's see what the governmentcan do.
This, this is when that startsand it picks up all the way
through the 20th century.
So I think it's a.
It's an anthropological problemin the sense that they believe
(29:33):
people are capable of the amountof knowledge necessary and the
expertise necessary to solveproblems, and it all that was
lacking in the past was, was,will, maybe knowledge, but also
also will scale.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, right, right, but really, ultimately, we're
going to have the guts to dothis the way it should be done.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (29:55):
And I come, I come to you and I say, yeah, you, you
want to eradicate hookworm inthe South, give me money.
And so that's fun and that's agreat thing they're working on
hookworm and tuberculosis.
They're working on a number ofthings at this time.
There's a whole movement tofund schools for
African-Americans, for instance,to try to equalize educational
outcomes, et cetera at this time.
(30:16):
So there's a lot of amazinggood things going on in essence,
etc at this time.
So there's a lot of amazinggood things going on in essence,
but it's a.
It's that kind of model wherethe the top down people, the
people at the top, just don'treally have the knowledge.
Yeah, but not only do they nothave the knowledge, what they're
doing and the way they're doing, it's actually damaging the
very thing they're trying tohelp right right, and it also
(30:39):
erodes the sort of habit of ofassociating voluntarily to take
care of problems on our own.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
It kind of erodes democratic habits.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
Yeah, you hollow out the middle right, and then
there's this, you and the state,and so, in the name of
protecting these individuals,there's nothing left that can
really protect them.
Now you just have to rely onthe state.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
So eugenics is an example of sort of the
technocratic mindset withoutregard for the human person.
There's no sort of, there's noinbuilt sort of parameter there
that will hold on here, sort ofparameter there that will hold
on here.
There are certain rights atplay, there's a certain dignity
(31:27):
being assaulted through theeugenics program.
You make the point that there'sanother example of that that
you would point to.
Now that kind of is a similartechnocratic mindset and a
similar example of goodintentions that actually harm
people.
What would that be?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
So that would be.
There's much in the modernenvironmental movement that
would match up to what you saidvery well.
So I'm not talking aboutconservation, right, I'm not
talking about efforts to stop insome foreign countries.
This doesn't really happen inthe United States, but
particularly in places likeNigeria, in foreign countries.
This doesn't really happen inthe United States, but
particularly in places likeNigeria, where there's a lack of
(32:02):
the rule of law and clear titleto lands, or that foreign
companies come in and destroyforests and destroy farmland and
leave behind toxic runoff, etc.
We're not talking about that.
We're talking about a movementI mentioned apocalypticism
earlier that preaches anenvironmental apocalypse and the
only way to overcome theapocalypse and get to the
(32:22):
environmental millennium is togive them money.
And so these are folks who havethis faulty view that there's.
There's two ways I woulddescribe it.
There's two faulty views of thehuman person at play here.
One is we're omnipotent,omnicompetent gods.
We can overcome nature itself.
They, what I make of nature iswhat I make of nature.
(32:43):
Like I, I can do it.
Nature doesn't matter.
But then there's the the person.
Not the person is god, but thiswould be.
The person is scourge and demonand we're like an infection on
the earth.
I actually have it.
So the, the founder of Earth,first said quote man is no
important than any other species.
Sir David Attenborough, who'svery popular for narrating
(33:06):
nature shows, has called humanbeings a plague upon the earth.
Paul Ehrlich, we need a newcivilization.
This is an environmental crisis.
What's it going to solve?
I'll just quote him here theinequitable distribution of
wealth and resources racism,sexism, religious prejudice and
xenophobia.
That's pretty amazing for agroup that wants to save the
(33:30):
whales and the trees, and I meanthat's a lot to try to
accomplish.
But that's what I mean by theapocalyptices the world is going
to end tomorrow if we don't dosomething.
Give me money.
I recall when I was a wide-eyedcollege student and I think
Greenpeace was always.
They were always coming in andout of the campus and they had
(33:50):
booths and I thought, okay, Ilike sea otters.
I was living in California.
I like otters, I was living incalifornia.
I like otters, I like whales.
I don't like oil on my feetwhen I'm at the beach.
I mean maybe there's, maybethere's, we have some common
ground here.
And I said what can I do?
They said just send us a check,yeah.
And I said, well, I'm a collegestudent.
(34:11):
What are you sitting here?
I'm working at chick-fil-a,what do you?
I'll give you here's a dollar.
I mean, what do you do you want?
But I can do something.
I mean I understood that Icould donate my leg.
Maybe there's something youwant me to do.
Isn't there a sign I can holdup?
Can I go protest?
Something Like just send us acheck?
Yeah, I remember getting on thephone with Greenpeace.
It was in the end give us acheck.
Speaker 1 (34:38):
Not sure that's what you realized.
That's what I'm pretty smart.
It took me a little bit right.
Well, what I like about yourpoint is there's this
combination of two things thatare exactly the opposite, and
this wouldn't just be the onlyexample.
One a too high view of thehuman, that we can, that we can
solve this.
The hayek has a great critiqueof this right that we can gain
enough knowledge to solvesomething so big, that's so
beyond what anybody can reallydo.
(34:59):
But we can do that.
From a few of us sitting here,we can write you the
constitution for your part ofthe world, across the world.
We can solve all these issuesyou talked about.
There's a too high of a view,and then there's this too low of
view.
Right, we're a plague, we're ascourge talked about.
There's this too high of a view, and then there's this too low
of a view.
Right, we're a plague, we're ascourge human beings are.
(35:20):
The earth will be better offwhen we're, all you know,
extinct.
It's just a crazy combinationof views.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Well, that's why, you know, when the Greek wisdom was
moderation in all things andtemperance as a virtue.
And here you see, this iscertainly not the golden mean
right, it's the two, it's twoextremes.
Now that the latter extremethough, where humans are a
scourge, you notice, there'salways somebody who, uh, to
borrow uh Vladimir Lenin's terms, there's always somebody who's
got to be the vanguard right,the workers can't really.
They can't really run things.
I mean, they're good to have arevolution, revolution, but
(35:53):
they're not going to run therevolution and so that, that
idea that there's, there'ssomebody who is uh, um, as eric
vogelin called it, who possessesthat gnostic secret knowledge.
They have the secret plan, theyhave the know-how.
This is the connection to theprogressive era, but even
earlier, the idea of rule byexperts.
(36:13):
Now, when I go, if mygallbladder starts to swell up
or you know the appendix orsomething, or I have a sore
tooth, I'm not going to take mysore tooth and go to I don't
know the bowling alley, see ifthere's anyone around who can
help, right?
I mean, there's experts forsome things, but these are
experts in all things, and thereason Vogelin called them
(36:35):
modern Gnostics is because theyhave the knowledge.
You don't and you just have tolisten to them.
And even when their resultscause damage, either to the
environment, to the human person, to the dignity of the human
person, they'll ignore that,because if they don't ignore it,
then they have to're not.
(36:56):
They're not a small subset ofthe first half, you're the
omnicom, omnicompetent god.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
Yeah right, right, what I like, I think the other,
the um interesting connectionyou're making here is that, uh,
um, the rule of experts, um isalways driven by uhocalypticism.
Right, the reason we, how wedrive you to accept the rule of
experts, is to put forth anapocalyptic scenario that
(37:25):
justifies it.
Is that fair to say?
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Yeah, I think that's the downside of democracy, and
again, tocqueville, of course,identified this as well.
What's the easiest way to getsomebody's vote?
Have them read a treatise ongovernment and take five
philosophy classes or to saythose people are damaging
exactly what helps you flourishand thrive.
(37:49):
If you elect us, we'll takecare of those people.
And so you extend the crisis,and politicians on both sides of
the political spectrum in theUnited States do this all the
time.
They've done it with race,they've done it with abortion,
and you never really quite solveany of the problems you say you
can solve, because the otherpeople are causing problems.
So it's just Aristotleidentified this right, it's just
demagoguery.
(38:10):
And, of course, it worksbecause we're not we're not
omni-competent gods capable ofperfection.
Uh, we're.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
We're creatures who have flaws right, yeah, and
limitations, um, and speaking ofthat, uh, before I let you go,
I wanted to make sure we had achance to talk about another, uh
, philanthropic initiative ofquestionable legitimacy, or it
would be some of the work you'vebrought to the attention of the
(38:42):
US Catholic bishops, I think,recently on foundations and
their collaborations withcertain international
institutions regardingpopulation growth and things
like that.
Can you talk about that work alittle bit?
Speaker 2 (38:52):
Sure.
So the Catholic Church, ofcourse, is a worldwide
organization and the bishops init come from a multitude of
experiences and nations aroundthe world, like the current Pope
, the Bishop of Rome, popeFrancis.
They come from Argentina, withthe Peronist background in
Argentina and the economictroubles of Argentina and how
government has worked or notworked in Argentina.
(39:14):
They come from the UnitedStates.
They come from Europe.
One of the things Pope Francistalked about in his very popular
encyclical La Dato' C wassaying how there's ecological
movements and they defend theintegrity of the environment,
which is a good thing, and theyrealize people are connected to
the ecological landscape theylive in, but then they won't
(39:35):
apply those principles to humanlife and so we can't save the
world by killing people, forinstance.
I mean, that seems simple, butyou know, do you need to kill or
experiment?
Do you need to experiment onhumanity, like eugenics, to save
it?
Do you need to kill a certainnumber of people in order to
save the world?
Do you kill humanity to savethe earth from from destruction?
(39:57):
However, pope Francis has alsopromoted working very, very
closely to the United Nationsand many of these international
bodies and agencies, and what Ihave told bishops is.
I just said maybe we need tocooperate with these agencies
(40:18):
and with the UN.
We meaning I'm speaking asCatholics here, talking to them.
You know maybe Catholic bishopsshould cooperate and maybe they
shouldn't, but you have to knowwho you're working with.
The, the the UN as a politicalproject requires compromise.
The UN as a political projectrequires compromise, and so what
we see in the UN Declaration ofHuman Rights.
There's guidelines produced bythe World Health Organization on
(40:42):
human reproduction that promoteabortion and sterilization and
birth control.
In the name of the country ofthe Netherlands, partnered with
the UN Population Fund on.
They usually call it sexualhealth or reproductive health.
Sometimes the Bill and MelindaGates Foundation does this as
(41:06):
well.
Sexual and reproductive health.
The World Economic Forum talkedabout the dangers of
overpopulation.
This is not the integralecology that Francis and
previously Pope Benedict talkedabout.
So I mean my point is becareful who you're working with,
because maybe 50 years from nowpeople will look back like we
(41:28):
like to look back on a highhorse about eugenics and say I
can't believe they thought youjust had to kill people and
sterilize people in developingcountries.
Like this is how you're goingto save the world, and this is
the World Health Organization.
Jacques Martin, the Frenchphilosopher, pointed this out,
who helped write the UN humanrights guidelines, kind of
(41:49):
translating Catholicunderstanding to the human
person in the secular language,and he had said that you know,
the problem is, we can all agreeat the UN that people have
rights, as long as we don't digtoo deeply into what the rights
actually are.
And it turns out you can drivenow I'm putting words in his
mouth, but it because it's acompromise document, that
(42:10):
declaration of human rights.
You could, you could reallydrive a truck through the,
through the holes in it, andthat's, that's a problem.
Right, you could, you couldreally drive a truck through the
, through the holes in it, andthat's, that's a problem.
So that's just a, it's just aword of warning to say if you
look at the, it's the undevelopment goal.
I had written it down in notesbut I've mistaken, I I moved it
somewhere.
But the, the un developmentgoals that have to do with
(42:33):
having nice cities andcomfortable cities, and you, you
dig down deep and that's where.
That's where all the thingsthat I think run I would argue
run contrary to human dignityare to be found.
And, and there's privatephilanthropic organizations
connected but, also alsogovernments, including the U S
government.
(42:53):
I, I, I would add so yeah, noit the US government.
I would add.
Speaker 1 (42:55):
Yeah, no, it's good.
I'm glad you brought that toour attention and talked about
that a little bit, john, andthank you for you.
Know we celebrate the traditionof America's private
philanthropy a lot, and rightlyso, especially as we approach
the semi-quincentennial.
But I always like to remindpeople what the dark side of
(43:18):
that has been, and there's moreto it than what we just talked
about in the last 45 or 50minutes.
But when it gets entangled withor seen through a technocratic
lens maybe disconnected from itsChristian or Jewish
Jewish-Christian roots, maybedisconnected from its Christian
or Jewish Jewish Christian rootscan be a big.
(43:41):
There can be major, majorproblems with it.
Speaker 2 (43:43):
So yeah, thank you, jeremy.
I mean, we're capable of greatgood, we're capable of great
evil.
We have to be aware of that allthe time.
It's UN sustainable developmentgoal Number 11.
Okay, it rattles aroundeventually.
Got it.
Appreciate you, it rattlesaround eventually.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
Got it, appreciate you.
Thank you so much, john Pinero.
People can follow you on X atwhat's your handle, dr John
Pinero, dr John Pinero.
On X, that's P I N H E I R O.
And also at actinorg you cancheck out John's work and the
work of the many other excellentscholars who are connected with
(44:19):
the Acton Institute.
So thank you, john, very muchfor being with us.
Speaker 2 (44:23):
Absolutely.
Thank you, it's my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Hey, thanks for joining us for today's podcast.
If you enjoyed it, we inviteyou to subscribe and or rate and
or review us on YouTube, apple,spotify or wherever you listen
to our podcasts.
Thanks a lot.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.