December 26, 2025 • 44 mins
Today’s show is a no-holds-barred examination of the philosophical and cultural spine of Western civilization—and why it’s cracking. Josh Hammer and Melanie Phillips, author of the new book, "The Builders Stone", sound the alarm on the rapid erosion of Judeo-Christian values, exposing how radical ideologies are undermining the very foundations that built the West. They lay out the indispensable contributions of Judaism and Christianity to our moral and political order, dissect the geopolitical chaos we now face, and argue why reconnecting with these principles is not optional but essential for survival. The conversation also confronts the hard question of Islam’s compatibility with Western norms and digs into the cultural and ideological battles that will determine the future of the West.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
My book earlier this year is Real and Civilization, The
Fate of the Jewish Nation, The Destiny of the West
is a book, not, as the title would necessarily imply,
just about foreign policy or anything like that. Rather, it
is a book about the foundations the origins of Western civilization. Well,
as it turns out, there was at least one other
author out there who had something of a mind melt
(00:26):
with me, and that woman is Melanie Phillips. Melani Philips
is a long standing British conservative commentator, newspaper columnist, TV presenter,
and also the author of the book that I currently
hold in my hands, in which I recently read myself,
The Builders Stone, How Jews and Christians built the West
and why only they can save it now The Builderstone
and my book is on civilization. There are some things
(00:47):
that are a little different, I think Melani and I
don't necessarily agree on everything. We'll see if there are
any areas where we disagree over the course of our
conversation here in just a few moments. But certainly broadly speaking,
we agree on the big questions. And the big question
is essentially as follows in the aftermath of the Hamas
program of October seven, twenty twenty three, And not just
(01:07):
the pagram, but the world's reaction to the Pagram, And
boy was that a horrific reaction. In the aftermath of that,
can the West recover? Can the West one understand what
it is that which built it, which above all is
a biblical inheritance. Can the West understand that? Can it
come to appreciate that? And can it come to fight
(01:29):
for that and take a stand for that? That is
the most important thing, because the reaction to the program
wasn't just quote unquote anti Israel or anti Semitic, it
was anti Western. When you are failing to distinguish between
a culture that loves life and a culture that loves death,
(01:51):
for a culture that flourishes and a culture that seeks
destruction subjugation. When you can't distinguish, when you are incapable
of logical you are morally discerning between these two dichotomous,
completely opposing forces, then you have lost the plot. And
if the West is to be saved, it must re
understand the plot at its most basic, rudimentary level. Because
(02:16):
it was the Bible that gave us Western civilization. Sure,
there is absolutely a role to be played for some
no Biblical sources, namely ancient Greek and Roman Greco Roman thought.
There's a role for that, certainly, no doubt about that, Aristotle, Cicero,
any of the greats. But the West would not be
the West where not for the Bible. It's not necessarily
(02:41):
just free speech or the marketplace of ideas or the
economic market places in general. These things are important. There
are key features of moderny is something that Melani Phillips
emphasized in her book. But the core, the absolute bedrock
of that which has made us great, and that which
alone can actually still make us great. The core is
(03:04):
the Bible. That is these shared inheritance of Jews and Christians.
That is, these shared inheritance of the original people of
the book, the original folks led by Moses who stood
there at the base of Mount Sinai during the Revelation,
the shared inheritance of the children of Issiel, the Jews
and Christiendom, the great gentile offshoot that spread the message
(03:28):
and civilized what today is known as the West. Jews
and Christians should both be proud of the role that
their religions have played in the development of the West.
But if the West is going to stand up today
against the forces that seek to subjugate it, against intersectional wokeism, Islamism,
(03:48):
and global neoliberalism. It's going to have to regain some
confidence and appreciation of what it once was and what
God willing will once again be in short order. Well,
it's the end of the holiday season and it's the
time of the year where we are all having those
deep questions as to what should we believe, should we
believe in anything at all? What is the basis of
(04:10):
our civilization? All the fun things that we discuss not
just this on of the year, but oftentimes on a
day day basis here on the Josh Hammer Show. And
it's really a thrill to bring on a long standing writer,
thinker and commentator who's been saying and writing about these
very topics for many many years now, including most recently
in the form of the book that I Hold in
my hands, The Builder's Stone. Melanie Phillips is the author
(04:33):
of The Builderstone. She's also a columnist at Times of London,
long standing British conservative commentator. I recently finished this book
and thoroughly enjoyed it. So Melanie Phillips, thank you for
joining the Josh Hammer Show.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Thank you very much, Josh, very good to be with you.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, it's really a delight. So I did recently finish
this book, as I said, and I was struck by
reading it. Melanie, I think you and I had something
of a mind meld for your book. In my book,
Israel and civilization have a lot in common. There are
some differences, to be clear that they're not exactly verbatim
carbon copy, but very broadly speaking similar books written in
(05:11):
a in a post October seventh milieu in this world,
the world where the world has been morally confused as
as to who to side with, not just between Israel
and Hamas, but more broadly speaking, between civilization and barbarism.
More generally speaking, Melli, I think I think one thing
that I would like to kind of start in and
(05:31):
to get our conversation started here. For a while, right
of center partisans such as myself, perhaps yourself as well.
I'm not sure how you would self described, but conservatives,
I think felt pretty reassured that we were unanimously on
the side of team civilization and not team barbarism. But
unfortunately here in the United States there have been some
signs that not everyone who thinks of him or herself
(05:55):
as being conservative or on the right is necessarily part
of teams civilization. I was told me that maybe you
could kind of just dive in unpack some of these strands. Here,
what is Western civilization as you can see and define it?
And then perhaps by extension, why do you think that
some folks who think of themselves as being on the
right seem to have lost the plot a little?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yes? Well, to me, western civilization is more than just
a geographical area. Obviously, it consists very largely of the
geographical West. But to me, it's an idea, and the
idea is modernity. To me, the West became the West,
as it were, in the way that we think of it,
(06:37):
when the modern world really emerged after the eighteenth century Enlightenment,
when we had the division of church and state, the
arrival of toleration of minorities, the development of what became
democracy and the democratic nation state, and that powered what
(06:58):
we now think of as the world, which was to
be the cutting edge of technology, of science, of reason.
That's what I mean when I that's what I mean
when I talk about the West. Now, your second question
was what happened to the West and was that your question?
(07:24):
What was your question?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Well, let's let's start there. I want to get into
also some internest sine fights happening on the right of center.
Let's let's let's start with why did conservatives?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Why do conservatives lose the plot? Okay, so perhaps undlike yourself,
I never thought conservatives had the plot. Ever, to me,
conservatives had lost the plot a long time ago. And
it's really the failure of conservatism, I would say, over
several decades, which has caused this situation to occur. Because
(07:57):
for sure, what has driven what we are now seeing,
the eclipse of reason, the replacement of truth by power,
ideologies based on power relations, and all those things which
from which I think in large measure the animus against
Israel has developed. It was the left that powered all
(08:17):
that through their ideological preconceptions and obsessions. But we should
have been able to rely on conservatives to conserve, to
understand what was at stake, what was at risk, and
from where I was sitting, and I'm going back now
to you may be shocked to hear this, but even
(08:39):
in the time of Margaret Thatcher, when I was a
young journalist and I was working for The Guardian, and
it was considered by everybody on the left that she was,
you know, totally dreadful and so right wing and so on.
And it was around that time that I began to
realize something was going terribly wrong with the West, and
I decide did I realized that she didn't understand what
(09:03):
was going on at all, and that the right, the
forces of conservativesm And I'm really speaking from Britain because
from the perspective of Britain, because that's the country I
know best. But I think this kind of crosses over
to a large extent to what happened in America as well.
Maybe not quite the same time, but what happened was
that this that when the Soviet Union collapsed, when the
(09:26):
Berlin Wall fell, I remember conservatives in Britain saying, what
do we do now for an encore? We've shot our fox,
we don't have an enemy anymore. What banner are we
now going to march behind? And I remember the answer
the answer was, we will march behind the banner of liberty.
(09:47):
And at that time, at that point, I thought, oh, no,
they don't get it, because if they are adopting liberty
as their light motif, they are going to occupy exactly
the same patch of ideological ground as the left. The
left did liberty in the social sphere, lifestyle choice. Everybody
(10:10):
makes up their own lifestyle. Nobody can tell anybody that
their lifestyle or culture is better than anyone else, all
that sort of stuff. It's basically to do with the self. Me,
I am an individual whose own subjective perspective trumps facts
and evidence and reason. That was what the left was saying,
(10:31):
and it was busily collapsing Western education as a result,
because it decided that the nation's state, the Western nation state,
was born in the original sins of colonialism and imperialism
and exploitation and whiteness and all the rest of it. Now,
faced with this, the conservatives didn't really it didn't realize
this because the conservatives only saw the Soviet Union. The
(10:53):
Soviet Union disappeared, therefore there was no problem anymore. So
what we they're going to do? They were going to
have liberty as their load star. So they adopted liberty.
From the point of view of economics. They decided that
the free market was the solution to everything that was
wrong in the world. I remember missus Thatcher thinking saying,
in fact that if everything in Britain was run like
(11:14):
Marks and Spencer iconic store, which was at that time
very well run, then everything will be fine. And I
remember thinking, none of these conservatives understands that what has
gone wrong is a denial of the world springs of
Western culture and Western civilization, which is rooted in biblical values,
(11:37):
which consists of upholding a set of traditions rooted in
history going back, in the case of Britain and the West,
many hundreds of years. And if you get rid of that,
if you get rid of that scuffolding, the society and
the culture will implode. It will just disintegrate. It will
no longer know what it is, it will no longer
love what it is, it will no longer want to
(11:59):
defend itself. And that's exactly what happened. Scroll on down
all these decades and we arrive at now, and there
are elements on the on on, on what's called the right,
which do understand this. They understand that in order for
the Wester survive, it has to reconnect to its core
(12:20):
values rooted in its historic traditions, in its religion. It's
it's its religious basis, uh, and in the institutions that
have kept it going, but they understand that. But at
the same time, in America we have seen this faction
(12:40):
or this this this, this this element in in conservatism
which kind of got that I think correctly, has itself
now splintered, and we've seen the emergence of I think
you were alluding to this the Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentez,
canda own tendency, which has gone down a conspiracy theory
(13:02):
rabbit hole, which is deeply, deeply anti Semitic and has
an entirely false idea of what America is and what
the West is and how they should behave And so
America is in a state of confusion. Britain is not
in that state of confusion yet he doesn't have an
equivalent to Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. It has a
(13:24):
few fringe actors on the extreme white supremacist right, but
they really are tiny. But Britain has a different trajectory
that Britain has. Kind of if you can imagine America
as being I see it in a sort of pictorial form.
America is kind of divided down the middle. You have
(13:46):
the people who want to preserve America and Western civilization
on one side, you have the people who want to
destroy it and replace it by something else. On the
other among the people who want to preserve it, they
have shaded off into this lunatic tendency. But basically it's
a line down the middle Republicans Democrats. In Britain, we
(14:07):
don't have that line. It's not a line down the middle.
It's more a kind of diagonal line. The entire system
has slid, nobody has got it, and so we see
the arrival the emergence of a populist party reform led
by a extremely charismatic politician called Nigel Farage, who at
(14:34):
the moment is leading the polls amazingly in a two
party a very very strong two party system. According to
the polls, he become Prime minister. There's an election today.
I don't think that's going to happen, But anyway, that's
not the point. The point is that he's come from
nowhere because basically the British public has lost faith in
the entire political system. Now in America, I don't think
you have that. I think you have a division, a
(14:55):
very sharp division. So it's a different kind of situation.
But basically, can servatism has lost the plot for many,
many years, and that's why we are where we are.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
The Pen Dragon Cycle Rise to the Merlin is the
newest original series from The Daily Wire, an epic seven
part adaptation of Stephen R. Lawhead's acclaimed novels. I've watched
the trailers and they are truly breathtaking. This isn't just
another fantasy show. It's a sweeping story of belief, redemption,
and the origins of Western civilization, told through a bold
(15:27):
retelling of the Arthurian legend. The Pen Dragon Cycle Rise
to the Merlin premieres January twenty second, exclusively on Daily
Wire Plus, watch the new trailer and out at Pendragon
Series dot com. Well, I really appreciate the deeply false manser.
And again, folks, Melani Phillips, you fought Melanie on X
at Melanie Latest. She also has a substack crent new
(15:49):
book which I hold in my hand, The Builder Stone,
How Jews and Christians built the West and why only
they can save it. I very strongly do recommend it.
I spend the number of Shabots Jewish shabbitz reading it myself.
So Melanie, I there's lots of compact there. To be clear,
I'm not sure we have time for all of it.
But one thing that you said that deeply resonate with
me was this quip about Margaret Thatcher during the nineteen eighties,
(16:10):
talking about this well run department store and how that
could or could not solve solve all of our problems.
And this is something that I've been very critical of
on this side of the pond as well in my
own capacity. Is this notion that that conservatism is really
just interchangeable with classical liberalism, and that that that that
free markets could solve each and every one of our
(16:31):
problems the world over, that there is no solution for
which simply deregulating and cutting taxes is not merely necessary,
but is actually sufficient. I've been extraordinarily critical of of
this myself because it seems to me and I don't
need to I certainly don't need to describe this to
a well known British conservative commentator. But going back to
to and Burk himself in so many great conservative statesmen,
(16:52):
oftentimes from your side the pond, it seems to be
that the that the that the essence of conservatism is
this notion that we exist to conserve, as its name
would imply, and to therefore culturally preserve, as Burke would
have described it, in this social compact between the dead,
the living, and the yet unborn. And that raises then
the obvious question as to what exactly are we conserving there.
And there's a lot of ways to answer this question,
(17:13):
but I think you and I would both agree that
it really does ultimately start with the Bible. And this
is itself something of a contentious point, because you do
have some folks here, at least on this side of
the pond. Do you name some of them, folks like
Tucker Carlson and so forth, who are trying to essentially
write the original people of the book, that is to say,
the Jewish people out of the story, out of the
(17:35):
story of the United States of America, and by extension,
out of the story of Western civilization. There's essentially an
attempt in information operation to get rid of the Judeo
from the Judeo Christian in the popular term has been
used in the United States for many decades now. Now
you and I both push back on this very strongly
in our in our respective books. There I'm wondering if
(17:56):
if you could just present that argument in very forthright
Fams what is the unique contribute To be clear, we
could speak for hours about this, but perhaps in more
succinct fashion, what is the most forthright to the point
case for the unique contributions of the original people of
the book, the break tradition where generally the Torah and
(18:16):
all that that entails.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Indeed, it's a tremendously important point, not least because so
few people really understand it, even people who are sympathetic
to the Jewish people really don't understand it. The point
being the absolutely key importance and significance of Judaism to
the development of the West and to the values that
(18:39):
everybody holds deer or people who are civilized hold deer.
I mean, it's such a thing in the West that
you know, in one compartment is religion, and that stands
for all bad things, you know, people who don't have education,
people who are irrational, they're superstitious, authoritarian, And in the
other box is all good things. And that is set.
(19:00):
It's rationality, it's reason, it's science, its progress. And this
couldn't be more wrong because it wasn't the Greeks and
it wasn't imprinted in our DNA as universal values, the
values that everybody who is civilized in the West holds dear,
whether they're secular or religious, are Jewish values. Okay, Christianity
(19:22):
is the foundational creed of the West, but Christianity doesn't
come from nowhere, and the principles that animate the West,
which were brought into the West through Christian Church, are
basically Jewish values. What do I mean by that? They're
moral values. They are the values that people take for granted.
The idea that we all have should have respect for
(19:45):
every human life. Well, that's only because we believe, or
the Bible tells us that every human being was made
in the image of God. If you don't believe that,
you don't respect every human being. The idea of personal
freedom and political freedom, this is something that's not fully understood.
I mean people understand if they think about it, that
(20:06):
you know, from the Mosaic Code in the Hebrew Bible,
mediated through Christianity, we have things like compassion and putting
other people first and stuff like that, and moral taking,
moral responsibility. These are vital to the West. Without that,
the West wouldn't have been the moral and therefore the
(20:27):
civilizational force that it became. But what people don't fully
understand is that there was something else that was terribly important,
which was that the principles of that animated the people
in the eighteenth century Christian evangelicals, the Puritans, who were
the people who are political thinkers in Britain, and they
(20:49):
basically laid down the template for what became in due
course Britain's constitutional monarchy. It was where the power of
the monarch and the church were constrained by the democratic
institution of parliament. Now that arose in Britain because those thinkers,
those eighteenth century evangelicals, drew explicitly on the Hebrew Bible
(21:14):
and on the example of the Davidic monarchy in ancient Israel,
which had certain key principles, of which perhaps the most
important were two. First of all was the idea that
law which governs everybody was not something to be handed
down by a ruler and imposed against everyone's will to
make everyone do what the ruler wanted. Law. In the
(21:38):
example of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Kingdom of Israel,
law was founded in the consent of the people. Going
back right to the point where Moses came down the
mountain and said to the people, here's the law. What
do you think, will you do it? And they said,
we will do and we will hear. And this idea
(22:04):
that law had to have the consent of all the
people is absolutely fundamental to modern democratic representative democracy, and
it was revolutionary at the time it was given to
the West by the Jews. That was the first really
important point. The second equally important point was the idea
of limited government. Okay, there were plenty of monarchs kings
(22:26):
in ancient Israel who were dreadful tyrants and you know, ghastly,
but the template was limited government that the kings of
ancient Israel understood, or should have understood, that above them
was the Almighty. They were not the supreme ruler. I mean,
in ancient civilizations, the ruler was supreme. Nobody was above
(22:47):
the ruler. The ancient kings of Israel believed that above
them was the Almighty, and they were in turn surrounded
at their level by people who constrained their power, people
called prophets, people called judges, and people call priests. Now
that principle also was understood by the framers of British
(23:08):
parliamentary democracy. This idea of limited government, and the idea
that again in the King David did this. You basically
unite what would otherwise be warring tribes into a united kingdom.
These were revolutionary concepts, and those people in Britain who
(23:30):
produced the template for what became Britain's parliamentary democracy went
to America, founded America and founded your constitution. And you know,
American constitutional documents are absolutely studied with the explicit references
to the Hebrew Bible. So the importance of Judaism to
(23:51):
the development of America and the development of the West
cannot be overestimated. That's ancient Israel and ancient Judaism or
Judaism from ancient.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Times extraordinarily, Will argued again. Melanie Phillips is the author,
most recently of the book that I hold in my hand,
The Builderstone, How Jews and Christians built the West and
why only they can save it availble everywhere books are purchased. Melanie,
I'm gonna play Devil's advocate for just a moment's here,
and then perhaps we'll move on to more contemporary political issues,
of which I would love your opinion on some of
(24:22):
them as well. And the Devil's Adam. The question is
essentially this, Let's say hypothetically that I am sympathetic to
Tucker Carlson's arguments here. And one of the reasons that
I'm sympathetic is because, although, let's conceive the sake of
argument that Genesis one twenty seven, Deuteronomy seventeen, which you're
kind of alluding to, this notion that the ancient kings
(24:43):
in Israel had to write Taurus roll because they are
bound to off, let's kind of stimulate, just for the
sake of argument, that all of these things are really
important for Western civilization. You know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge,
They're really, really, really important. Okay, back to the hypothetical,
Let's say that I agree that they're important, but I
don't think that the jew Which people themselves, are necessary
anymore because Christianity itself has existed for two millennia. Now,
(25:05):
so what do we still need this Jewish Christian alliance?
What do we still need this alliance between the United
States and Israel and so forth there? How do you
respond to that particular, that particular objection, let's call it.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
First of all, Jews are Judaism is still necessary as
the underpinning the moral scaffolding of the West, even though
the West doesn't realize this. It is if Judaism were
not to exist anymore, Christianity would quite quickly implode, and
the West would follow suit. If you take away the scaffolding,
(25:39):
the whole structure collapses. But that's in the kind of realm,
of kind of the abstract thinking. More pertinently, perhaps for
the Tucker Carlsons of this world, the Jews are vital
today in Israel, the very country which he thinks is
dragging America into pointless wars which are not in America's
(26:01):
interest and from which America gets nothing. It could not
be more the other way around. First of all, in
military terms, as successive American administrations have fully understood, Israel
is the It's what's it called, you know, the the
the the aircraft carrier, America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East.
(26:22):
It is the forward salient. It's the forward troop carrier
of the defense of the West against the Islamic world.
If Israel weren't there, the Islamic world would have no
barrier between it and the West. I e America. That's
the first thing. The second thing is that America, like Britain,
(26:46):
unlike other countries which currently disdain Israel and are hostile
to it. America gains an enormous amount from Israel, far
more than it gives. Now that may see, aren't contentious.
But America relies, as does Britain, to a very great degree,
(27:07):
on Israeli intelligence, Israeli military intelligence about the region, and
not just about the region, but increasingly about Islamic extremism
and terrorism that has come already planted itself in America
to as a result of the negligence of successive American administrations.
(27:27):
And I would say British administrations too. But Israel has
the intelligence about this, or about a lot of this,
and America needs that. The next thing to say is that,
you know the famous figure or the famous argument that
America basically funds through billions of dollars every year Israeli
(27:54):
military equipment and song and you know this is just,
you know, a drain on America's resources for what, well,
this is completely untrue. I forget now the precise figure,
but it's something like America gains something like more than
one thousand times the value in terms of arms productions,
(28:17):
and heaven knows what else that goes on in America
as a result of this relationship which in which America
pays whatever it is, thirteen billion, whatever it is I
can't remember, and gets back in effect a vast amount.
More so, these things are tremendously important. And the last
(28:41):
thing to say is that far from dragging America into
fighting foreign wars, and you know, our boys are gonna
die for what for our cause in which we have
no skin in the game. This is obscene. It is
Israeli boys and girls who have been dying to protect America.
(29:03):
It is against you know, a Israel A has been
fighting a desperate existential war of defense against basically Iran
and its proxies. Iran. I mean, I don't know whether
people like Tucker Carlson even know about this, but Iran.
When the Iranian regime came to power in whenever it was,
(29:23):
seventeen nine, was it, it declared war immediately on America
and subsequently, in all the decades since then, it has
attacked American interests over and over again, American military basis
over and over again through its proxies. But it's basically
Iran and has caused the deaths of countless numbers of
(29:47):
American and other coalition forces in Iraq. Through roadside bombs
they provided, and so on. Now it's a bit of
a mystery to me why over all this time America
and the West did not respond as any normal, sane
(30:08):
society would have done to being under attack in this
way and basically fought back. But it didn't. Okay, But nevertheless,
it's been under attack all this time America. Iran has
made no secret of its continuing ambition and aim to
destroy America and the West. It has said over and
(30:30):
over again that it regards it as essential to destroy
Israel first, to kill the Jews first, because then it
thinks that the way will be open to destroy, to
attack and destroy America and the West, not least because
the Iranian regime believes that behind that, like other Islamists,
(30:52):
people who wish to inflict or impose Islam upon the
rest of the world, they believe that there may foe
is Western modernity, and they believe that behind Western modernity
is the Jews. They're not entirely wrong, and they believe
therefore that in order to defeat Western modernity, they first
(31:16):
have to defeat the Jews and the nation state of Israel,
the Jewish nation state of Israel, and then the way
will be open to attack and defeat America. So even
if the Tucker Carsons of this world really loathe them,
detest Jews, which clearly they do, and think they're of
no value to humanity, nevertheless they are demonstrably vital to
(31:40):
American interests. And in this war of the last two years,
it's been Israeli boys and girls in the Israeli Defense
Forces who have been fighting Iran and its proxies and
dying and getting terribly injured, taking the heat in order
(32:01):
to enable Israel to survive, for sure, but also serving
as the essential defense for America. It's not American boys
who are dying for Israel. It's Israeli boys who've been
dying for America.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
You know, as is often said, Melanie, you go to
the Saturday people first, and then and then to the
Sunday people. This is kind of one of those axioms
of history. One of my favorite examples to bear this
out is is Karl Marx himself, right, I mean Karl
Marx in the Communist Manifesto he in angles. They lay
out this comprehensive assault on Kristin Doman and Western capitalism.
Of you, if you go back a few years prior
(32:40):
to the Communist Manifesto, there is a deeply anti Semitic
treatise that Karl Marx pens on the Jewish question, because
even he understood, you cut to the source, you cut
to the scaffolding, as you say, before you actually get
to the broader entity. And I couldn't agree with you
more strongly that a lot, that a lot of these provocateurs,
both left and right, because certainly do well to understand
(33:01):
this most rudimentary of concepts. But while while I have you, Melanie,
I want to go on a related topic, kind of
going more into into contemporary discourse, even outside the realm
of foreign policy, because we're talking here, among other things,
about the threat of radical Islam at jihad, about the
threat of jihadism and s Trea supremacism. And one of
the things that becomes more obvious here by the day,
(33:24):
it certainly becomes very obvious from a British perspective, by
the day, by the month, by the year as well,
is the the the ever thorny question, if we can
even call it an unresolved question at this point, as
to whether or not Islam and Western civilization are are
broadly speaking compatible. This is something that my tragically assassinated
late friend Charlie Kirk was adamant about in the final
(33:45):
year or two of his life. He was arguing bothciferously
that that Islam and Western civilization and the United States specifically,
where broadly speaking not compatible. And Melanie, have to be
honest with you. I know you're you're British. I studied
and I did a college semester of studying it at
UCL University College London, right in the heart of London
in two thousand and nine. I have such fond memories.
I've not been back to London since then. I'm frankly
terrified to go because I think I'll barely recognize the place.
(34:08):
So whether but whether it's the images we see of
the streets of London, Paris, Brussels, this horrific recent massacre
on the beach, and Bandai Beach and Sydney, Australia, there
are all sorts of incidents here in the United States.
I don't want to get too dire, but you're kind
of the right person to kind of turn this question to.
And I guess the question is is as follows, speaking
here necessarily about hard jihad but about soft, surreptitious forms
(34:32):
of jihad, about jihad via immigration, there's actually a whole
kind of obscure Islamic doctrine on exactly that actually on
kind of a softer form of spreading the message. I
guess the question is this is is Western civilization salvageable
or are we so far down the rabbit hole not
just of the declining Church, not just of decline religiosity,
(34:52):
but just from a purely kind of multiculturalist perspective. Can
we actually undo Pandora's box this point.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
It's a very a good question. I'm my own view,
and call me hopelessly optimistic. It's never over till it's over.
The West hasn't begun to fight this, It hasn't even
begun to acknowledge what it's up against. It refuses to
do so. So if it carries on in this way,
the West is finished. And Islam will indeed colonize, finish
(35:21):
colonizing Britain and Europe. And I'm afraid America in due course,
more slowly, more difficultily, perhaps, but that's the way it's going.
Can it do it? Yes? It can. The problem has
been too, has been has been a double headed problem.
The Islamists, who are not stupid, and the Islamists, by
(35:43):
which I mean Muslims who wish to take over the
world for Islam. They understood a long time ago what
the West never understood, which is that of a culture
of society, a civilization destroys its religious scaffolding. It's finished.
It no longer will know what it is, it will
no longer even like what it is. It will no
(36:04):
longer be pare to defend what it is, it will
no longer even understand what's happening to it. And it
understood that Britain was very forefront of this. Britain is
the most most advanced post religious nation, I would say,
in the West, and it honed in on Britain. Britain
was where al Qaeda was formed, because Britain was the
(36:24):
most hospitable to Jihadis who Britain said, let them all in,
let them all in. It's multiculturalism, they're fine. We cannot
possibly oppose them because that's racism and Islamophobia and all
the rest of it. But nevertheless, this process happened, has
happened across Europe, and it's happening more slowly but certainly
surely in America too. So it is salvagible because in
(36:51):
this sense that it's happened because there was never a
fight put up by the West. The West basically said,
we can't assert the superiority of our values and our
culture over Islam, or over any other society because any
(37:14):
other minority in our midst because that's racism. Now, every
single minority except for one, has understood that the bargain
from the eighteenth century, from when modernity started, from when
tolerance was invented, from when church and state were separated.
In the West, the understanding has been that the or
(37:34):
Western civilization will tolerate minorities. It will say, you're welcome
to form communities of faith and communities of culture, provided
you uphold the core values of our society. We can
all discuss what the core values are, but I would
say one core value is the equality of women. Another
(37:56):
core value, even more core than that, is the idea
that the entire society is governed by one law for all. Now,
the problem has been that there's a very very significant
number of Muslims who came into Britain and Europe who
and now America, who do not accept that, who say
(38:19):
that there can be no superior authority to Sharia law,
Islamic law, because Islamic law, Sharia law is the word
of God, and consequently we do not accept any secular
authority above it. Now, I think it's very important to
say that in Britain and in the rest of the West,
there are many many Muslims who don't agree with that,
(38:39):
who have genuinely signed up to Western values, who live
in the West because they value equality and freedom and
all the good things that the West provides. But there
is a huge, let's say a minority, but it is
vast who don't sign up to those things and who
have set out to conquer the West. Now that you
(39:01):
talk about ji Had, it is the jihad she Had
is simply Islamic holy war to take over the non
Islamic world for Islam. But it takes different forms, and
they're not stupid. The Islamists. In some circumstances, they will
use force, they will use intimidation, they will use terrorism
in order to terrorize, in order to help subjugate people
(39:23):
through terror. But they will also use and they have used,
particularly through the Muslim Brotherhood, they will use the most
devastating weapon of all, which is, as you implied or
you suggested, a kind of soft g had which is
actually not soft at all. It is basically cultural takeover.
It is where they use the openness and the democratic
(39:43):
institutions of Western societies to infiltrate them and subvert them
from inside. And it's like the frog being boiled in
the pot so slowly and so gently. The frog has
no idea that it's being boiled until it's dead. And
that is what has been happening. And so now you
have this process has advanced to a very great extent.
(40:07):
And even now, I mean you talk about the terrible
atrocity at Bondai Beach. I read just today was it
or yesterday various people in Australia. I think it was
a correspondent for the ABC News and I think it
was one of their ministers saying or possibly in the
(40:28):
prime minister saying that what happened at Bondai Beach had
nothing to do with Islam, nothing to do with religion.
I mean, what do they think it was? You know,
these people were murdered for veganism. I mean, what are
they talking about? And this has been the case in Britain.
They will not accept that it's founded in the religion
(40:50):
because they think that. And it comes back to the
very first question you are are asked. That would mean that,
you know, we demonize all Muslims and we demonize Islam.
Now this has to be picked aside a part very carefully.
One should not demonize all Muslims, as I've said, there
are many Muslims who are not signed up to this.
But to argue that what we are living through, that
(41:11):
she had both terrorism and democratic infiltration and subversion. To
say that that is not being done in the name
of Islam, and to say that it's not being done
in accordance, in strict accordance with the precepts of every
jurisprudential authority in Islam is simply a lie, and it
(41:37):
is a suicidal lie from the point of view of
the West. So you know the question you ask originally,
is Islam compatible with Western civilization? For sure? Radical Islam
is not compatible. By radical Islam, I mean the understanding
(41:59):
the interpretation the religion which says it is a religious
duty on all Muslims to make the non Islamic world
and the not Islamic enough world Islamic. Now that is clearly, demonstrably,
unarguably incompatible with Western civilization, and that is what we
(42:21):
collectively in the West have harbored. So you know, yes,
there are Muslims who, you know, they get a spiritual
and moral uplift from their Islamic faith. Fine, but an
awful lot understand Islam to be as much a political
(42:41):
ideology as it is what as it is a communion
with the divine, which is how the West thinks of religion.
The West has a very Western idea of religion. It
is a communication between the individual and the Almighty, and
that's fine. If Muslims wish to interpret it in that way,
(43:02):
that's great. And if they find you know, uplifting and
positive and constructive moral principles from their faith, fine, no
one's going to object to that. The problem is the
understanding of Islam, which is rooted in the theology that
it is simultaneously a political ideology of conquest and domination
(43:26):
and war, and that, I'm afraid is its history, and
that is unarguable.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Very well said as always Melanie Phillips, So one fun time, folks.
Melanie Phillips is a calmness for the times of London.
She's also the author of The Builderstone, How Jews and
Christians built the West and why only they can save it.
It's a wonderful book. I strongly encourage it to all
of you out there. Melanie has been a real pleasure.
Thank you for all you've been doing for a very
long time now which you may be lated. Happy Hannagh
(43:53):
and hope to chavel with you again sometime soon.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Happy Hannakha to you, and thank you so much for
your time.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
You better thank you as always for watching the Dosh
Hamershire
My book earlier this year is Real and Civilization, The
Fate of the Jewish Nation, The Destiny of the West
is a book, not, as the title would necessarily imply,
just about foreign policy or anything like that. Rather, it
is a book about the foundations the origins of Western civilization. Well,
as it turns out, there was at least one other
author out there who had something of a mind melt
(00:26):
with me, and that woman is Melanie Phillips. Melani Philips
is a long standing British conservative commentator, newspaper columnist, TV presenter,
and also the author of the book that I currently
hold in my hands, in which I recently read myself,
The Builders Stone, How Jews and Christians built the West
and why only they can save it now The Builderstone
and my book is on civilization. There are some things
(00:47):
that are a little different, I think Melani and I
don't necessarily agree on everything. We'll see if there are
any areas where we disagree over the course of our
conversation here in just a few moments. But certainly broadly speaking,
we agree on the big questions. And the big question
is essentially as follows in the aftermath of the Hamas
program of October seven, twenty twenty three, And not just
(01:07):
the pagram, but the world's reaction to the Pagram, And
boy was that a horrific reaction. In the aftermath of that,
can the West recover? Can the West one understand what
it is that which built it, which above all is
a biblical inheritance. Can the West understand that? Can it
come to appreciate that? And can it come to fight
(01:29):
for that and take a stand for that? That is
the most important thing, because the reaction to the program
wasn't just quote unquote anti Israel or anti Semitic, it
was anti Western. When you are failing to distinguish between
a culture that loves life and a culture that loves death,
(01:51):
for a culture that flourishes and a culture that seeks
destruction subjugation. When you can't distinguish, when you are incapable
of logical you are morally discerning between these two dichotomous,
completely opposing forces, then you have lost the plot. And
if the West is to be saved, it must re
understand the plot at its most basic, rudimentary level. Because
(02:16):
it was the Bible that gave us Western civilization. Sure,
there is absolutely a role to be played for some
no Biblical sources, namely ancient Greek and Roman Greco Roman thought.
There's a role for that, certainly, no doubt about that, Aristotle, Cicero,
any of the greats. But the West would not be
the West where not for the Bible. It's not necessarily
(02:41):
just free speech or the marketplace of ideas or the
economic market places in general. These things are important. There
are key features of moderny is something that Melani Phillips
emphasized in her book. But the core, the absolute bedrock
of that which has made us great, and that which
alone can actually still make us great. The core is
(03:04):
the Bible. That is these shared inheritance of Jews and Christians.
That is, these shared inheritance of the original people of
the book, the original folks led by Moses who stood
there at the base of Mount Sinai during the Revelation,
the shared inheritance of the children of Issiel, the Jews
and Christiendom, the great gentile offshoot that spread the message
(03:28):
and civilized what today is known as the West. Jews
and Christians should both be proud of the role that
their religions have played in the development of the West.
But if the West is going to stand up today
against the forces that seek to subjugate it, against intersectional wokeism, Islamism,
(03:48):
and global neoliberalism. It's going to have to regain some
confidence and appreciation of what it once was and what
God willing will once again be in short order. Well,
it's the end of the holiday season and it's the
time of the year where we are all having those
deep questions as to what should we believe, should we
believe in anything at all? What is the basis of
(04:10):
our civilization? All the fun things that we discuss not
just this on of the year, but oftentimes on a
day day basis here on the Josh Hammer Show. And
it's really a thrill to bring on a long standing writer,
thinker and commentator who's been saying and writing about these
very topics for many many years now, including most recently
in the form of the book that I Hold in
my hands, The Builder's Stone. Melanie Phillips is the author
(04:33):
of The Builderstone. She's also a columnist at Times of London,
long standing British conservative commentator. I recently finished this book
and thoroughly enjoyed it. So Melanie Phillips, thank you for
joining the Josh Hammer Show.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
Thank you very much, Josh, very good to be with you.
Speaker 1 (04:48):
Well, it's really a delight. So I did recently finish
this book, as I said, and I was struck by
reading it. Melanie, I think you and I had something
of a mind meld for your book. In my book,
Israel and civilization have a lot in common. There are
some differences, to be clear that they're not exactly verbatim
carbon copy, but very broadly speaking similar books written in
(05:11):
a in a post October seventh milieu in this world,
the world where the world has been morally confused as
as to who to side with, not just between Israel
and Hamas, but more broadly speaking, between civilization and barbarism.
More generally speaking, Melli, I think I think one thing
that I would like to kind of start in and
(05:31):
to get our conversation started here. For a while, right
of center partisans such as myself, perhaps yourself as well.
I'm not sure how you would self described, but conservatives,
I think felt pretty reassured that we were unanimously on
the side of team civilization and not team barbarism. But
unfortunately here in the United States there have been some
signs that not everyone who thinks of him or herself
(05:55):
as being conservative or on the right is necessarily part
of teams civilization. I was told me that maybe you
could kind of just dive in unpack some of these strands. Here,
what is Western civilization as you can see and define it?
And then perhaps by extension, why do you think that
some folks who think of themselves as being on the
right seem to have lost the plot a little?
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yes? Well, to me, western civilization is more than just
a geographical area. Obviously, it consists very largely of the
geographical West. But to me, it's an idea, and the
idea is modernity. To me, the West became the West,
as it were, in the way that we think of it,
(06:37):
when the modern world really emerged after the eighteenth century Enlightenment,
when we had the division of church and state, the
arrival of toleration of minorities, the development of what became
democracy and the democratic nation state, and that powered what
(06:58):
we now think of as the world, which was to
be the cutting edge of technology, of science, of reason.
That's what I mean when I that's what I mean
when I talk about the West. Now, your second question
was what happened to the West and was that your question?
(07:24):
What was your question?
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Well, let's let's start there. I want to get into
also some internest sine fights happening on the right of center.
Let's let's let's start with why did conservatives?
Speaker 2 (07:34):
Why do conservatives lose the plot? Okay, so perhaps undlike yourself,
I never thought conservatives had the plot. Ever, to me,
conservatives had lost the plot a long time ago. And
it's really the failure of conservatism, I would say, over
several decades, which has caused this situation to occur. Because
(07:57):
for sure, what has driven what we are now seeing,
the eclipse of reason, the replacement of truth by power,
ideologies based on power relations, and all those things which
from which I think in large measure the animus against
Israel has developed. It was the left that powered all
(08:17):
that through their ideological preconceptions and obsessions. But we should
have been able to rely on conservatives to conserve, to
understand what was at stake, what was at risk, and
from where I was sitting, and I'm going back now
to you may be shocked to hear this, but even
(08:39):
in the time of Margaret Thatcher, when I was a
young journalist and I was working for The Guardian, and
it was considered by everybody on the left that she was,
you know, totally dreadful and so right wing and so on.
And it was around that time that I began to
realize something was going terribly wrong with the West, and
I decide did I realized that she didn't understand what
(09:03):
was going on at all, and that the right, the
forces of conservativesm And I'm really speaking from Britain because
from the perspective of Britain, because that's the country I
know best. But I think this kind of crosses over
to a large extent to what happened in America as well.
Maybe not quite the same time, but what happened was
that this that when the Soviet Union collapsed, when the
(09:26):
Berlin Wall fell, I remember conservatives in Britain saying, what
do we do now for an encore? We've shot our fox,
we don't have an enemy anymore. What banner are we
now going to march behind? And I remember the answer
the answer was, we will march behind the banner of liberty.
(09:47):
And at that time, at that point, I thought, oh, no,
they don't get it, because if they are adopting liberty
as their light motif, they are going to occupy exactly
the same patch of ideological ground as the left. The
left did liberty in the social sphere, lifestyle choice. Everybody
(10:10):
makes up their own lifestyle. Nobody can tell anybody that
their lifestyle or culture is better than anyone else, all
that sort of stuff. It's basically to do with the self. Me,
I am an individual whose own subjective perspective trumps facts
and evidence and reason. That was what the left was saying,
(10:31):
and it was busily collapsing Western education as a result,
because it decided that the nation's state, the Western nation state,
was born in the original sins of colonialism and imperialism
and exploitation and whiteness and all the rest of it. Now,
faced with this, the conservatives didn't really it didn't realize
this because the conservatives only saw the Soviet Union. The
(10:53):
Soviet Union disappeared, therefore there was no problem anymore. So
what we they're going to do? They were going to
have liberty as their load star. So they adopted liberty.
From the point of view of economics. They decided that
the free market was the solution to everything that was
wrong in the world. I remember missus Thatcher thinking saying,
in fact that if everything in Britain was run like
(11:14):
Marks and Spencer iconic store, which was at that time
very well run, then everything will be fine. And I
remember thinking, none of these conservatives understands that what has
gone wrong is a denial of the world springs of
Western culture and Western civilization, which is rooted in biblical values,
(11:37):
which consists of upholding a set of traditions rooted in
history going back, in the case of Britain and the West,
many hundreds of years. And if you get rid of that,
if you get rid of that scuffolding, the society and
the culture will implode. It will just disintegrate. It will
no longer know what it is, it will no longer
love what it is, it will no longer want to
(11:59):
defend itself. And that's exactly what happened. Scroll on down
all these decades and we arrive at now, and there
are elements on the on on, on what's called the right,
which do understand this. They understand that in order for
the Wester survive, it has to reconnect to its core
(12:20):
values rooted in its historic traditions, in its religion. It's
it's its religious basis, uh, and in the institutions that
have kept it going, but they understand that. But at
the same time, in America we have seen this faction
(12:40):
or this this this, this this element in in conservatism
which kind of got that I think correctly, has itself
now splintered, and we've seen the emergence of I think
you were alluding to this the Tucker Carlson, Nick Fuentez,
canda own tendency, which has gone down a conspiracy theory
(13:02):
rabbit hole, which is deeply, deeply anti Semitic and has
an entirely false idea of what America is and what
the West is and how they should behave And so
America is in a state of confusion. Britain is not
in that state of confusion yet he doesn't have an
equivalent to Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes. It has a
(13:24):
few fringe actors on the extreme white supremacist right, but
they really are tiny. But Britain has a different trajectory
that Britain has. Kind of if you can imagine America
as being I see it in a sort of pictorial form.
America is kind of divided down the middle. You have
(13:46):
the people who want to preserve America and Western civilization
on one side, you have the people who want to
destroy it and replace it by something else. On the
other among the people who want to preserve it, they
have shaded off into this lunatic tendency. But basically it's
a line down the middle Republicans Democrats. In Britain, we
(14:07):
don't have that line. It's not a line down the middle.
It's more a kind of diagonal line. The entire system
has slid, nobody has got it, and so we see
the arrival the emergence of a populist party reform led
by a extremely charismatic politician called Nigel Farage, who at
(14:34):
the moment is leading the polls amazingly in a two
party a very very strong two party system. According to
the polls, he become Prime minister. There's an election today.
I don't think that's going to happen, But anyway, that's
not the point. The point is that he's come from
nowhere because basically the British public has lost faith in
the entire political system. Now in America, I don't think
you have that. I think you have a division, a
(14:55):
very sharp division. So it's a different kind of situation.
But basically, can servatism has lost the plot for many,
many years, and that's why we are where we are.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
The Pen Dragon Cycle Rise to the Merlin is the
newest original series from The Daily Wire, an epic seven
part adaptation of Stephen R. Lawhead's acclaimed novels. I've watched
the trailers and they are truly breathtaking. This isn't just
another fantasy show. It's a sweeping story of belief, redemption,
and the origins of Western civilization, told through a bold
(15:27):
retelling of the Arthurian legend. The Pen Dragon Cycle Rise
to the Merlin premieres January twenty second, exclusively on Daily
Wire Plus, watch the new trailer and out at Pendragon
Series dot com. Well, I really appreciate the deeply false manser.
And again, folks, Melani Phillips, you fought Melanie on X
at Melanie Latest. She also has a substack crent new
(15:49):
book which I hold in my hand, The Builder Stone,
How Jews and Christians built the West and why only
they can save it. I very strongly do recommend it.
I spend the number of Shabots Jewish shabbitz reading it myself.
So Melanie, I there's lots of compact there. To be clear,
I'm not sure we have time for all of it.
But one thing that you said that deeply resonate with
me was this quip about Margaret Thatcher during the nineteen eighties,
(16:10):
talking about this well run department store and how that
could or could not solve solve all of our problems.
And this is something that I've been very critical of
on this side of the pond as well in my
own capacity. Is this notion that that conservatism is really
just interchangeable with classical liberalism, and that that that that
free markets could solve each and every one of our
(16:31):
problems the world over, that there is no solution for
which simply deregulating and cutting taxes is not merely necessary,
but is actually sufficient. I've been extraordinarily critical of of
this myself because it seems to me and I don't
need to I certainly don't need to describe this to
a well known British conservative commentator. But going back to
to and Burk himself in so many great conservative statesmen,
(16:52):
oftentimes from your side the pond, it seems to be
that the that the that the essence of conservatism is
this notion that we exist to conserve, as its name
would imply, and to therefore culturally preserve, as Burke would
have described it, in this social compact between the dead,
the living, and the yet unborn. And that raises then
the obvious question as to what exactly are we conserving there.
And there's a lot of ways to answer this question,
(17:13):
but I think you and I would both agree that
it really does ultimately start with the Bible. And this
is itself something of a contentious point, because you do
have some folks here, at least on this side of
the pond. Do you name some of them, folks like
Tucker Carlson and so forth, who are trying to essentially
write the original people of the book, that is to say,
the Jewish people out of the story, out of the
(17:35):
story of the United States of America, and by extension,
out of the story of Western civilization. There's essentially an
attempt in information operation to get rid of the Judeo
from the Judeo Christian in the popular term has been
used in the United States for many decades now. Now
you and I both push back on this very strongly
in our in our respective books. There I'm wondering if
(17:56):
if you could just present that argument in very forthright
Fams what is the unique contribute To be clear, we
could speak for hours about this, but perhaps in more
succinct fashion, what is the most forthright to the point
case for the unique contributions of the original people of
the book, the break tradition where generally the Torah and
(18:16):
all that that entails.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Indeed, it's a tremendously important point, not least because so
few people really understand it, even people who are sympathetic
to the Jewish people really don't understand it. The point
being the absolutely key importance and significance of Judaism to
the development of the West and to the values that
(18:39):
everybody holds deer or people who are civilized hold deer.
I mean, it's such a thing in the West that
you know, in one compartment is religion, and that stands
for all bad things, you know, people who don't have education,
people who are irrational, they're superstitious, authoritarian, And in the
other box is all good things. And that is set.
(19:00):
It's rationality, it's reason, it's science, its progress. And this
couldn't be more wrong because it wasn't the Greeks and
it wasn't imprinted in our DNA as universal values, the
values that everybody who is civilized in the West holds dear,
whether they're secular or religious, are Jewish values. Okay, Christianity
(19:22):
is the foundational creed of the West, but Christianity doesn't
come from nowhere, and the principles that animate the West,
which were brought into the West through Christian Church, are
basically Jewish values. What do I mean by that? They're
moral values. They are the values that people take for granted.
The idea that we all have should have respect for
(19:45):
every human life. Well, that's only because we believe, or
the Bible tells us that every human being was made
in the image of God. If you don't believe that,
you don't respect every human being. The idea of personal
freedom and political freedom, this is something that's not fully understood.
I mean people understand if they think about it, that
(20:06):
you know, from the Mosaic Code in the Hebrew Bible,
mediated through Christianity, we have things like compassion and putting
other people first and stuff like that, and moral taking,
moral responsibility. These are vital to the West. Without that,
the West wouldn't have been the moral and therefore the
(20:27):
civilizational force that it became. But what people don't fully
understand is that there was something else that was terribly important,
which was that the principles of that animated the people
in the eighteenth century Christian evangelicals, the Puritans, who were
the people who are political thinkers in Britain, and they
(20:49):
basically laid down the template for what became in due
course Britain's constitutional monarchy. It was where the power of
the monarch and the church were constrained by the democratic
institution of parliament. Now that arose in Britain because those thinkers,
those eighteenth century evangelicals, drew explicitly on the Hebrew Bible
(21:14):
and on the example of the Davidic monarchy in ancient Israel,
which had certain key principles, of which perhaps the most
important were two. First of all was the idea that
law which governs everybody was not something to be handed
down by a ruler and imposed against everyone's will to
make everyone do what the ruler wanted. Law. In the
(21:38):
example of the Hebrew Bible and the ancient Kingdom of Israel,
law was founded in the consent of the people. Going
back right to the point where Moses came down the
mountain and said to the people, here's the law. What
do you think, will you do it? And they said,
we will do and we will hear. And this idea
(22:04):
that law had to have the consent of all the
people is absolutely fundamental to modern democratic representative democracy, and
it was revolutionary at the time it was given to
the West by the Jews. That was the first really
important point. The second equally important point was the idea
of limited government. Okay, there were plenty of monarchs kings
(22:26):
in ancient Israel who were dreadful tyrants and you know, ghastly,
but the template was limited government that the kings of
ancient Israel understood, or should have understood, that above them
was the Almighty. They were not the supreme ruler. I mean,
in ancient civilizations, the ruler was supreme. Nobody was above
(22:47):
the ruler. The ancient kings of Israel believed that above
them was the Almighty, and they were in turn surrounded
at their level by people who constrained their power, people
called prophets, people called judges, and people call priests. Now
that principle also was understood by the framers of British
(23:08):
parliamentary democracy. This idea of limited government, and the idea
that again in the King David did this. You basically
unite what would otherwise be warring tribes into a united kingdom.
These were revolutionary concepts, and those people in Britain who
(23:30):
produced the template for what became Britain's parliamentary democracy went
to America, founded America and founded your constitution. And you know,
American constitutional documents are absolutely studied with the explicit references
to the Hebrew Bible. So the importance of Judaism to
(23:51):
the development of America and the development of the West
cannot be overestimated. That's ancient Israel and ancient Judaism or
Judaism from ancient.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Times extraordinarily, Will argued again. Melanie Phillips is the author,
most recently of the book that I hold in my hand,
The Builderstone, How Jews and Christians built the West and
why only they can save it availble everywhere books are purchased. Melanie,
I'm gonna play Devil's advocate for just a moment's here,
and then perhaps we'll move on to more contemporary political issues,
of which I would love your opinion on some of
(24:22):
them as well. And the Devil's Adam. The question is
essentially this, Let's say hypothetically that I am sympathetic to
Tucker Carlson's arguments here. And one of the reasons that
I'm sympathetic is because, although, let's conceive the sake of
argument that Genesis one twenty seven, Deuteronomy seventeen, which you're
kind of alluding to, this notion that the ancient kings
(24:43):
in Israel had to write Taurus roll because they are
bound to off, let's kind of stimulate, just for the
sake of argument, that all of these things are really
important for Western civilization. You know, wink, wink, nudge, nudge,
They're really, really, really important. Okay, back to the hypothetical,
Let's say that I agree that they're important, but I
don't think that the jew Which people themselves, are necessary
anymore because Christianity itself has existed for two millennia. Now,
(25:05):
so what do we still need this Jewish Christian alliance?
What do we still need this alliance between the United
States and Israel and so forth there? How do you
respond to that particular, that particular objection, let's call it.
Speaker 2 (25:19):
First of all, Jews are Judaism is still necessary as
the underpinning the moral scaffolding of the West, even though
the West doesn't realize this. It is if Judaism were
not to exist anymore, Christianity would quite quickly implode, and
the West would follow suit. If you take away the scaffolding,
(25:39):
the whole structure collapses. But that's in the kind of realm,
of kind of the abstract thinking. More pertinently, perhaps for
the Tucker Carlsons of this world, the Jews are vital
today in Israel, the very country which he thinks is
dragging America into pointless wars which are not in America's
(26:01):
interest and from which America gets nothing. It could not
be more the other way around. First of all, in
military terms, as successive American administrations have fully understood, Israel
is the It's what's it called, you know, the the
the the aircraft carrier, America's aircraft carrier in the Middle East.
(26:22):
It is the forward salient. It's the forward troop carrier
of the defense of the West against the Islamic world.
If Israel weren't there, the Islamic world would have no
barrier between it and the West. I e America. That's
the first thing. The second thing is that America, like Britain,
(26:46):
unlike other countries which currently disdain Israel and are hostile
to it. America gains an enormous amount from Israel, far
more than it gives. Now that may see, aren't contentious.
But America relies, as does Britain, to a very great degree,
(27:07):
on Israeli intelligence, Israeli military intelligence about the region, and
not just about the region, but increasingly about Islamic extremism
and terrorism that has come already planted itself in America
to as a result of the negligence of successive American administrations.
(27:27):
And I would say British administrations too. But Israel has
the intelligence about this, or about a lot of this,
and America needs that. The next thing to say is that,
you know the famous figure or the famous argument that
America basically funds through billions of dollars every year Israeli
(27:54):
military equipment and song and you know this is just,
you know, a drain on America's resources for what, well,
this is completely untrue. I forget now the precise figure,
but it's something like America gains something like more than
one thousand times the value in terms of arms productions,
(28:17):
and heaven knows what else that goes on in America
as a result of this relationship which in which America
pays whatever it is, thirteen billion, whatever it is I
can't remember, and gets back in effect a vast amount.
More so, these things are tremendously important. And the last
(28:41):
thing to say is that far from dragging America into
fighting foreign wars, and you know, our boys are gonna
die for what for our cause in which we have
no skin in the game. This is obscene. It is
Israeli boys and girls who have been dying to protect America.
(29:03):
It is against you know, a Israel A has been
fighting a desperate existential war of defense against basically Iran
and its proxies. Iran. I mean, I don't know whether
people like Tucker Carlson even know about this, but Iran.
When the Iranian regime came to power in whenever it was,
(29:23):
seventeen nine, was it, it declared war immediately on America
and subsequently, in all the decades since then, it has
attacked American interests over and over again, American military basis
over and over again through its proxies. But it's basically
Iran and has caused the deaths of countless numbers of
(29:47):
American and other coalition forces in Iraq. Through roadside bombs
they provided, and so on. Now it's a bit of
a mystery to me why over all this time America
and the West did not respond as any normal, sane
(30:08):
society would have done to being under attack in this
way and basically fought back. But it didn't. Okay, But nevertheless,
it's been under attack all this time America. Iran has
made no secret of its continuing ambition and aim to
destroy America and the West. It has said over and
(30:30):
over again that it regards it as essential to destroy
Israel first, to kill the Jews first, because then it
thinks that the way will be open to destroy, to
attack and destroy America and the West, not least because
the Iranian regime believes that behind that, like other Islamists,
(30:52):
people who wish to inflict or impose Islam upon the
rest of the world, they believe that there may foe
is Western modernity, and they believe that behind Western modernity
is the Jews. They're not entirely wrong, and they believe
therefore that in order to defeat Western modernity, they first
(31:16):
have to defeat the Jews and the nation state of Israel,
the Jewish nation state of Israel, and then the way
will be open to attack and defeat America. So even
if the Tucker Carsons of this world really loathe them,
detest Jews, which clearly they do, and think they're of
no value to humanity, nevertheless they are demonstrably vital to
(31:40):
American interests. And in this war of the last two years,
it's been Israeli boys and girls in the Israeli Defense
Forces who have been fighting Iran and its proxies and
dying and getting terribly injured, taking the heat in order
(32:01):
to enable Israel to survive, for sure, but also serving
as the essential defense for America. It's not American boys
who are dying for Israel. It's Israeli boys who've been
dying for America.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
You know, as is often said, Melanie, you go to
the Saturday people first, and then and then to the
Sunday people. This is kind of one of those axioms
of history. One of my favorite examples to bear this
out is is Karl Marx himself, right, I mean Karl
Marx in the Communist Manifesto he in angles. They lay
out this comprehensive assault on Kristin Doman and Western capitalism.
Of you, if you go back a few years prior
(32:40):
to the Communist Manifesto, there is a deeply anti Semitic
treatise that Karl Marx pens on the Jewish question, because
even he understood, you cut to the source, you cut
to the scaffolding, as you say, before you actually get
to the broader entity. And I couldn't agree with you
more strongly that a lot, that a lot of these provocateurs,
both left and right, because certainly do well to understand
(33:01):
this most rudimentary of concepts. But while while I have you, Melanie,
I want to go on a related topic, kind of
going more into into contemporary discourse, even outside the realm
of foreign policy, because we're talking here, among other things,
about the threat of radical Islam at jihad, about the
threat of jihadism and s Trea supremacism. And one of
the things that becomes more obvious here by the day,
(33:24):
it certainly becomes very obvious from a British perspective, by
the day, by the month, by the year as well,
is the the the ever thorny question, if we can
even call it an unresolved question at this point, as
to whether or not Islam and Western civilization are are
broadly speaking compatible. This is something that my tragically assassinated
late friend Charlie Kirk was adamant about in the final
(33:45):
year or two of his life. He was arguing bothciferously
that that Islam and Western civilization and the United States specifically,
where broadly speaking not compatible. And Melanie, have to be
honest with you. I know you're you're British. I studied
and I did a college semester of studying it at
UCL University College London, right in the heart of London
in two thousand and nine. I have such fond memories.
I've not been back to London since then. I'm frankly
terrified to go because I think I'll barely recognize the place.
(34:08):
So whether but whether it's the images we see of
the streets of London, Paris, Brussels, this horrific recent massacre
on the beach, and Bandai Beach and Sydney, Australia, there
are all sorts of incidents here in the United States.
I don't want to get too dire, but you're kind
of the right person to kind of turn this question to.
And I guess the question is is as follows, speaking
here necessarily about hard jihad but about soft, surreptitious forms
(34:32):
of jihad, about jihad via immigration, there's actually a whole
kind of obscure Islamic doctrine on exactly that actually on
kind of a softer form of spreading the message. I
guess the question is this is is Western civilization salvageable
or are we so far down the rabbit hole not
just of the declining Church, not just of decline religiosity,
(34:52):
but just from a purely kind of multiculturalist perspective. Can
we actually undo Pandora's box this point.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
It's a very a good question. I'm my own view,
and call me hopelessly optimistic. It's never over till it's over.
The West hasn't begun to fight this, It hasn't even
begun to acknowledge what it's up against. It refuses to
do so. So if it carries on in this way,
the West is finished. And Islam will indeed colonize, finish
(35:21):
colonizing Britain and Europe. And I'm afraid America in due course,
more slowly, more difficultily, perhaps, but that's the way it's going.
Can it do it? Yes? It can. The problem has
been too, has been has been a double headed problem.
The Islamists, who are not stupid, and the Islamists, by
(35:43):
which I mean Muslims who wish to take over the
world for Islam. They understood a long time ago what
the West never understood, which is that of a culture
of society, a civilization destroys its religious scaffolding. It's finished.
It no longer will know what it is, it will
no longer even like what it is. It will no
(36:04):
longer be pare to defend what it is, it will
no longer even understand what's happening to it. And it
understood that Britain was very forefront of this. Britain is
the most most advanced post religious nation, I would say,
in the West, and it honed in on Britain. Britain
was where al Qaeda was formed, because Britain was the
(36:24):
most hospitable to Jihadis who Britain said, let them all in,
let them all in. It's multiculturalism, they're fine. We cannot
possibly oppose them because that's racism and Islamophobia and all
the rest of it. But nevertheless, this process happened, has
happened across Europe, and it's happening more slowly but certainly
surely in America too. So it is salvagible because in
(36:51):
this sense that it's happened because there was never a
fight put up by the West. The West basically said,
we can't assert the superiority of our values and our
culture over Islam, or over any other society because any
(37:14):
other minority in our midst because that's racism. Now, every
single minority except for one, has understood that the bargain
from the eighteenth century, from when modernity started, from when
tolerance was invented, from when church and state were separated.
In the West, the understanding has been that the or
(37:34):
Western civilization will tolerate minorities. It will say, you're welcome
to form communities of faith and communities of culture, provided
you uphold the core values of our society. We can
all discuss what the core values are, but I would
say one core value is the equality of women. Another
(37:56):
core value, even more core than that, is the idea
that the entire society is governed by one law for all. Now,
the problem has been that there's a very very significant
number of Muslims who came into Britain and Europe who
and now America, who do not accept that, who say
(38:19):
that there can be no superior authority to Sharia law,
Islamic law, because Islamic law, Sharia law is the word
of God, and consequently we do not accept any secular
authority above it. Now, I think it's very important to
say that in Britain and in the rest of the West,
there are many many Muslims who don't agree with that,
(38:39):
who have genuinely signed up to Western values, who live
in the West because they value equality and freedom and
all the good things that the West provides. But there
is a huge, let's say a minority, but it is
vast who don't sign up to those things and who
have set out to conquer the West. Now that you
(39:01):
talk about ji Had, it is the jihad she Had
is simply Islamic holy war to take over the non
Islamic world for Islam. But it takes different forms, and
they're not stupid. The Islamists. In some circumstances, they will
use force, they will use intimidation, they will use terrorism
in order to terrorize, in order to help subjugate people
(39:23):
through terror. But they will also use and they have used,
particularly through the Muslim Brotherhood, they will use the most
devastating weapon of all, which is, as you implied or
you suggested, a kind of soft g had which is
actually not soft at all. It is basically cultural takeover.
It is where they use the openness and the democratic
(39:43):
institutions of Western societies to infiltrate them and subvert them
from inside. And it's like the frog being boiled in
the pot so slowly and so gently. The frog has
no idea that it's being boiled until it's dead. And
that is what has been happening. And so now you
have this process has advanced to a very great extent.
(40:07):
And even now, I mean you talk about the terrible
atrocity at Bondai Beach. I read just today was it
or yesterday various people in Australia. I think it was
a correspondent for the ABC News and I think it
was one of their ministers saying or possibly in the
(40:28):
prime minister saying that what happened at Bondai Beach had
nothing to do with Islam, nothing to do with religion.
I mean, what do they think it was? You know,
these people were murdered for veganism. I mean, what are
they talking about? And this has been the case in Britain.
They will not accept that it's founded in the religion
(40:50):
because they think that. And it comes back to the
very first question you are are asked. That would mean that,
you know, we demonize all Muslims and we demonize Islam.
Now this has to be picked aside a part very carefully.
One should not demonize all Muslims, as I've said, there
are many Muslims who are not signed up to this.
But to argue that what we are living through, that
(41:11):
she had both terrorism and democratic infiltration and subversion. To
say that that is not being done in the name
of Islam, and to say that it's not being done
in accordance, in strict accordance with the precepts of every
jurisprudential authority in Islam is simply a lie, and it
(41:37):
is a suicidal lie from the point of view of
the West. So you know the question you ask originally,
is Islam compatible with Western civilization? For sure? Radical Islam
is not compatible. By radical Islam, I mean the understanding
(41:59):
the interpretation the religion which says it is a religious
duty on all Muslims to make the non Islamic world
and the not Islamic enough world Islamic. Now that is clearly, demonstrably,
unarguably incompatible with Western civilization, and that is what we
(42:21):
collectively in the West have harbored. So you know, yes,
there are Muslims who, you know, they get a spiritual
and moral uplift from their Islamic faith. Fine, but an
awful lot understand Islam to be as much a political
(42:41):
ideology as it is what as it is a communion
with the divine, which is how the West thinks of religion.
The West has a very Western idea of religion. It
is a communication between the individual and the Almighty, and
that's fine. If Muslims wish to interpret it in that way,
(43:02):
that's great. And if they find you know, uplifting and
positive and constructive moral principles from their faith, fine, no
one's going to object to that. The problem is the
understanding of Islam, which is rooted in the theology that
it is simultaneously a political ideology of conquest and domination
(43:26):
and war, and that, I'm afraid is its history, and
that is unarguable.
Speaker 1 (43:32):
Very well said as always Melanie Phillips, So one fun time, folks.
Melanie Phillips is a calmness for the times of London.
She's also the author of The Builderstone, How Jews and
Christians built the West and why only they can save it.
It's a wonderful book. I strongly encourage it to all
of you out there. Melanie has been a real pleasure.
Thank you for all you've been doing for a very
long time now which you may be lated. Happy Hannagh
(43:53):
and hope to chavel with you again sometime soon.
Speaker 2 (43:55):
Happy Hannakha to you, and thank you so much for
your time.
Speaker 1 (43:58):
You better thank you as always for watching the Dosh
Hamershire
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
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
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.