TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: Should Jews Leave America? | Princeton Prof. Robbie George Offers a Catholic Perspective
Date: 10/25/2026 Length: 00:56:51
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (00:01)
Welcome, Happy Warriors, and thank you for being on the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show, particularly for this very special episode of a special series. The special series is entitled Should Jews Leave America? But as the subject has expanded beyond the specifics and moving perhaps a little away from the idea of the Jewish community as the canary in the gold mine or in the coal mine.
I think what we're actually questioning now is whether we should be worried about the coal mine rather than the canary. and that is Jews all very well, but what about America? And nobody better to talk about that with than somebody that Susan and I have admired for many, many, many years and whose friendship we've cherished, and that is Professor Robbie George at Princeton University.
I'm not going to give an introduction on the basis that almost anything I say is going to detract from the reality. And if there actually are any recent immigrants from out of Mongolia who don't know you, Professor George, they can very easily with about ninety seconds on the internet find out just what an American hero you have been and how much you have stood for throughout your whole life.
Thanks for being with us. And with your permission, we don't wanna waste a minute. We've got so much we wanna ask you.
Professor Robert P. George (01:25)
well, thank you very much. It's such a pleasure to be with you, Rabbi and Susan. so I'm grateful for this opportunity. Fire away.
Susan Lapin (01:33)
Okay, well, we really we know especially it's the beginning of the school year, so we duly really appreciate your time. I'd like to start with something that s may sound like it's off topic, but I think it's actually a gateway to the topic, where you have sometimes asked your the students in your class a question having to do with what they might have done had they been part of a slave owning family in the South in the 1800s, maybe 1840 or 1850.
And I was hoping you would share that first of all because I think it's brilliant, but I also think it is a gateway to what we want to discuss.
Professor Robert P. George (02:09)
Yes, thank you, Susan. Yes, I sometimes ask my students that question to get them thinking about what we sometimes call what the historians call presentism, that is judging people in the past by the standards that we've adopted for ourselves today. And so I ask, if you were a white person living in the pre-Civil War South when slavery was still a flourishing institution, and of course there was very little opposition really anywhere in the country to slavery, and especially in the South. well, what would you have done? What would your position have been? Would you have spoken out against slavery? Knowing that to do that would have put your standing in your society at risk, perhaps your educational professional opportunities at risk, perhaps made you subject to vilification, per perhaps even personal attacks, even physical assaults. abolitionists weren't well thought of in the South in the period of slavery before the Civil War and the abolition of slavery by the Thirteenth Amendment. And of course the initial reaction of the students is to say, well, I would have been an outspoken abolitionist. I would have stood up against this evil because I'm a social justice person. Now, of course, we all know, and eventually they will bring themselves to see, that they would have done nothing of the kind. The vast majority of my students would have been like the vast majority of people in the antebellum South. They would have gone along with it, they would have benefited from it in the material sense, they would not have lifted.
A finger, even if they had doubts against it, to stop it. Abolitionists, people who actually believed that slavery should be abolished, were very, very thin on the ground, and they were subject to vilification and discrimination, and they really were mistreated. So it's a way of bringing my students around to appreciating the virtues of intellectual humility, of self-criticism, of
Trying to understand that we are to all to some extent shaped by our circumstances. Now we're also free creatures. And there were people, very small number, very small number, but there were people, even in the antebellum South, who spoke out against slavery and suffered the slings and arrows that came from it. But the overwhelming likelihood is in any individual case, it wouldn't have been you or me. so it's a it's a way of both teaching my students and trying to inculcate in them certain virtues, especially the virtue of intellectual humility, the virtue of self-criticism.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (04:50)
Have you been asking the question for long enough to be able to measure a change? you know, today's incoming freshmen were in high school during COVID, and are they showing different qualities with respect to this question and generally than you were seeing perhaps fifteen years ago?
Professor Robert P. George (05:10)
yes, I think what has dampened Rabbi Daniel is the fanaticism of the more left-wing or woke students. There was a period from, I don't know, roughly 2018 or so, 1718, to about twenty twenty-four, during which there was what can only be s described I by the term I just used, fanaticism among students who were willing to condemn anyone who didn't go along with the not only the substance but the language of the of the so-called woke agenda Black Lives Matter, transgenderism, DEI, all of that stuff. There has been, I think this is fair to say, among our students,
A vibe shift. That's the term that the kids themselves use. And that vibe shift consists in a dampening of that fanaticism and a greater willingness, openness to consider criticisms of the woke agenda, to entertain the idea that, well, the Black Lives Matter movement might not have been such a great thing. Or the DEI agenda might have had some serious flaws. Or maybe transgender ideology is not self-evidently true and may have defects of its own. So I'm grateful for that openness. Educationally, it makes an enormous difference. I mean it's hard to teach students when their minds are so closed around certain dogmas that they are simply unwilling to consider counterarguments or alternative positions. So that's been relaxed and that's a good thing.
Susan Lapin (06:52)
that's really nice to hear. I'm not sure I'm not sure we were aware of that. So it's that's really a positive thing to hear.
Professor Robert P. George (06:58)
yeah, it's a thing. and as I say, the kids call it the vibe shift. So for example, in class, students will speak up about issues that they might have just two years ago or three years ago self censored about. So students are willing to question the idea that, well, biological men should be able to play in women's sports or be assigned to women's spaces in prisons or shelters or other locker rooms and so forth, people are willing to entertain questions about the abortion agenda. Here again, that was an issue where, you know, students who did harbor pro-life sentiments and thought that the wanton killing of unborn children was a bad thing, two, three years ago, and for some period of time before that, they would have been very careful not to make their views known. They'd keep them hidden in their in their hearts. Well now they're more willing to speak up about them. And of course that means the quality of the discussion in the classroom is much better. And if the quality of the discussion is much better, guess what? Learning happens. So it's the vibe shift has been a great benefit from the purely educational point of view. Lay aside anybody's particular perspective on any of these issues, just with respect to the question, are we properly educating our children? The answer is we're doing better now because students are willing to entertain in a way that so few had been just a few years ago, the best that has been thought and said on all sides of controversial issues.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (08:37)
So it's not just educators of course, it's parents and so what advice can you provide any real world guidance to the parent or the educator who's encountering a student or a child who believes fervently that standing up for transsexual rights, standing up for abortion, standing up for Palestine and regarding Israel as an apartheid genocidal regime. all of these things or standing for socialism in general, all of these things are contemporary twenty first century equivalents of standing up for slaves in the nineteenth century.
Professor Robert P. George (09:17)
Yes, so my technique is simply to begin by asking the student, what have you read on the other side of the issue? Who are the thinkers you have considered who are critical of transgender ideology or of the pro-abortion position or of Hamas? g give me the names. And of course, they haven't read a thing. If they'd read anything on the other side of the issue,
They wouldn't be the dogmatist that they are now. So to try to pry their minds open, Rabbi, I first asked the question: what have you read? Can you replicate for me the best argument in opposition to your view? Now, let me show you how it's done. why don't you just challenge me with the same question? Professor George, I know that that you're strongly pro-life. I know that you're a supporter of Israel.
Susan Lapin (10:08)
Can I say Israel, how can you support an apartheid genocidal state, Professor George?
Professor Robert P. George (10:12)
Yeah. And that's exactly the kind of question I now invite them to ask me, and I will give them my argument. But here's something more to the point. I will represent their argument better than they can, which will then show them that I've arrived at my position not out of ignorance of the alternative point of view, but after having fully understood the best arguments on the other side.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (10:40)
That's a terrific technique.
Professor Robert P. George (10:40)
And then I can say, you please now go away and do the same. Come back to see me when you have read Elizabeth Anscombe on abortion. When you have read Paul McHugh on transgender ideology, when you've read the best thinkers on the other side of questions on which you hold strong positions, we're going to have a conversation then.
Susan Lapin (11:03)
Good. That's very good. So if we can so that was why I felt that the civil right the slavery issue was this segue because there we all want to think of s of ourselves as good people, first of all. And it's very
Professor Robert P. George (11:16)
Yes, that's right.
Susan Lapin (11:17)
easy to say I'm a good person. And especially when you're young, the fact is that we want to belong to a group. It's very uncomfortable to stand away from your group. Are you finding that the college campus, what you're hearing, is in your classroom. And I know that there's a tremendous amount of respect from your students to you. So I would imagine people who choose to be in your classroom start off by respecting you, which gives you a way to speak. Are you finding on the campus itself as a whole that there is an openness or are just the whole rallying, the whole idea of college campuses? And I don't know Princeton in particular, but the whole idea of getting together a rally on a college campus is by it in itself somewhat of a bullying thing to do, because it's hard to be the person standing apart from that. So does this go beyond your classroom is what I'm asking.
Professor Robert P. George (12:11)
yes, I think it does. So Susan, I've been teaching at Princeton now, finished 41 years last May, but I'm still I'm still going. I'm in my 42nd year now. so I've had a lot of experience, you know, in different time periods with our students. now what you say, especially your point about students, especially young people generally, Feeling the desire to be accepted. That's very important. That's very important all the time. For my entire 41 years, that has been considered very important, wanting to be accepted. As a matter of fact, in my own experience, students who dissent from the progressive dogmas that are dominant on the campus fear less retaliation from faculty members, like being given a bad grade for disagreeing with the professor, than they fear.
The disapprobation of their peers and their exclusion from friendship circles, from organized groups, perhaps being labeled, especially on the internet, as a bigot or a homophobe, or, what Zionist now. Zionist has become a term of opprobrium. so they worry about that, they worry that that.
The damage to their reputation could follow them through their careers. I'll let you in on a little secret, Rabbi Daniel and Susan. Princeton students are very ambitious. Now you probably didn't know that, but they're very ambitious. They've got it all planned out. I've got to graduate Magna cum Lauda and I've got to go on to Harvard Law School, and then Supreme Court clerkship, and then on to Sullivan and Cromwell or Goldman Sachs, and know, or whatever. so they worry about the damage to their reputation if they believe something that is unpopular and it gets out and they begin to be labeled for it. So part of my job, and this is for students across the spectrum, whether they happen to be on my side, myself I'm a conservative, as you know, but whether they're conservative or liberal, wherever they come down, part of my job is to encourage them, literally encourage, put courage in them.
To speak the truth as best they understand the truth. Now, whether I agree with it or not is not the point. It's they believe it. And if they believe it, and especially if they believe it based on a consideration of the best arguments on the competing sides, then they need to have the courage to speak it. See, our job, our vocation as teachers, is to help the young men and women, entrusted by their families to our charge, to our care, to form themselves to be determined truth seekers and courageous truth speakers.
If we're not producing students who are determined truth seekers and courageous truth seekers, we're failing in our duty. We're not fulfilling our vocation. And that means we have to take on the challenge of encouraging them. And that means we can take note, of course, of their feeling of a need for acceptance, but we also need to inculcate them in them the virtue that would enable them.
To take the risk and bear the costs of speaking out when speaking out will alienate them from friends, exclude them from certain groups, perhaps even diminish their educational opportunities or career options. I hope those bad things don't happen to our students, but if they do, it comes with the territory.
It's still better for them to be determined truth seekers and courageous truth seekers who don't get into Harvard Law School than it is to be a coward and to go to Harvard Law School. I I think here we need to bear in mind the biblical teaching, which is also the teaching, of course, of the great ancient philosophers in in Greece and Rome, that we need to prioritize our values and assess our lives from the perspective of our mortality from our death.
What's gonna matter at the end of the day? Is it gonna matter that I graduated Magna cum Lauda from Princeton and Clark and went to Sullivan and Cron? No. What's going to matter is that I was a person of that I was a person of courage, that I was a faithful husband, that I was a loving father, that I was a loyal friend. It's those personal virtues that ultimately matter.
Susan Lapin (16:31)
Along the line of it's hypocritical and ineffective to say do as I say, not as I do, you yourself have stood up. About a year ago, you resigned from the Board of Heritage Foundation. And can we discuss that a little? Because that was something that had to have been a difficult decision, I think. And was a real show of courage. Would you be willing to discuss that a little? Cause I do think you get validity in your students' eyes because you have done something where you've walked away from a group that you were affiliated with.
Professor Robert P. George (17:05)
Well, Susan, it was wrenching. I had been involved in one way or another with the Heritage Foundation going back for quite a long time. I'd been a member of the board since 2019, and I believed in the values on the basis of which the Heritage Foundation was founded, you know, back in the nineteen eighties. those principles of the American civic order and of the Western tradition of Western civilization on which the Heritage Foundation took its stand. And it's when I perceived the leadership of the organization veering away from one of those key principles. That when I couldn't succeed in preventing that from happening, I simply had no choice but to resign from the board. Representations were being made in the name of the Heritage Foundation, which I felt were un or were inconsistent -- inconsistent with the Heritage Foundation's values, at least as I understood them.
Susan Lapin (18:17)
Would you mind unpacking that a little bit for people who may not be that familiar with the incidents?
Professor Robert P. George (18:22)
Sure. Tucker Carlson had invited onto his show a, I don't know how to describe him other than to say a white supremacist and a neo-Nazi named Nick Fuentes, who misrepresents himself as a Catholic, of all things.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (18:46)
We wouldn't know anything about Jews misrepresenting themselves as Jews.
Professor Robert P. George (18:51)
Yes, of course you know. So and I should add I myself am Catholic, which made this all the made Fuentes' appearance on that show all the more repulsive to me. but Tucker Carlson had this evil person, there's no other word for it, on his show and gave him a puff ball interview. Now
If Tucker Carlson wants to turn his show into Jerry Springer, it's free country, he has the right to do that. If he wants to have this lunatic on, he has the right to do that. I suppose if instead of actually challenging his deeply, deeply unchristian, unbiblical, evil views, instead of challenging them, he wants to give him a puffball interview. I suppose it's free country, and that's his right as well.
But what I really objected to was that the president of our foundation, who's a good man, someone I'd worked with, someone who I voted to make president of our organization, Kevin Roberts. Kevin Roberts put out a public statement, a video, in which he not only defended this puffball interview that Tucker Carlson had given this neo-Nazi, but had criticized the people who were critical of the interviewer. And he criticized them in very unfortunate terms. Kevin Roberts is not an anti-Semite. I know the man. But he used terms that are traditional tropes of anti-Semites, saying the critics of Carlson's interview with the neo-Nazi were globalists and were motivated by I I'm trying to remember exactly how he put it venomous. They were part of a venomous coalition. I think that's what he said. And he declared in the name of the Heritage Foundation, not just himself personally, but in the name of the Heritage Foundation. All this is public, by the way. I'm not sharing anything. I can't share anything. It's private from our board discussions. All public. He speaking in the name of the Heritage Foundation, not just his own name, said that Tucker Carlson was and would always be a friend of the Heritage Foundation. I couldn't accept this.
I have nothing against Tucker Carlson, but I could not accept this. the Heritage Foundation that I joined always stood for the principle of the profound, inherent, and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family. It was not a religious organization, it was a political organization, but it was founded on this biblical principle of the human being made in the image and likeness of God, each and every member of the human family.
Therefore, it is a bearer of profound, inherent, and equal dignity. So racism, anti-Semitism, these are utterly incompatible with what I believe and what I thought and still hope the Heritage Foundation believes. But when you come to the defense of that interview, and when you criticize the critics of the interview in the terms in which President Roberts had criticized them, this is unacceptable to me. And so Rabbi and Susan, I spent three weeks fighting within the organization to get that statement repudiated, either by President Roberts himself, or if he in conscience couldn't do it, our board, because he spoke for us, not just for himself. It's one thing if he wants to say Tucker Carlson will always be my friend. Talking about himself. If you say friend of the Heritage Foundation, well, ultimately it's the board that has fiduciary responsibility for the Heritage Foundation. I'm a member of that board. That means it was speaking for me. And I don't accept what he said. Now, President Roberts, to his credit, was willing to apologize for some of the language he used, which is good. And as I say, he's a good man. We all make mistakes, and this was a doozy, but I think well of him. But
This was we were in different places on this, very different places on this. And so Susan, at the end of the day, I just after three weeks of trying and not being able to get the organization to repudiate the statement and take down the video, which is still up, by the way. Last I checked anyway, I had no choice but to resign. It was it was it wasn't as if I thought, well, I might resign, or I don't I just felt I had no choice. I mean, it was I mean it's like
or are you going to are you gonna get up in the morning or something? I mean, you it's not something you have a choice, but you're awake, Well I I had no choice but to resign and
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (23:18)
Have there been any pieces of fallout to you as a result of your resignation?
Professor Robert P. George (23:25)
nothing I've personally suffered. I've been criticized obviously. I mean there were there were critics and they ranged from people who were themselves supporters of Nick Fuentes, especially online. You know, they are themselves Nazis. So as you can imagine, I could care less I couldn't actually care less. I mean it's impossible to care
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (23:43)
Yes.
Professor Robert P. George (23:44)
less than I care about criticisms from anti Semites and white supremacists and so forth.
Because I do so fundamentally believe in the profound inheritance and equal dignity of each and every member of the human family. But there were other people within the conservative movement who thought that we should be a big enough tent to include, if not Nick Fuentes himself, people who would fraternize with Nick Fuentes or followers of Nick Fuentes. And I don't believe in that big attempt. I just don't.
I'm with Bill Buckley, the late William F. Buckley, one of the great founders of the modern conservative movement. There have to there has to be a line you can't cross. And for me, anti-Semitism, racism, anything that denies the Imago Dei, Rabbi, anything
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (24:32)
Yes.
Professor Robert P. George (24:33)
that is contrary to the principle that each and every human being, no matter how weak, no vulnerable, how poor is nevertheless made in the image and likeness of God. That is a l rejecting that, violating that is a line we cannot cross, at least in any conservative movement or any political movement that I'm going to be a part of.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (24:51)
So in trying to arrive at a sense of what were, if you like, the Buckleyan conditions or the Imitatio Dei painted onto a larger political canvas that made America so hospitable to Jews. you know, and I'd say constitutional liberty, biblical literacy, strong families, voluntary religious institutions, freedom of conscience, respect for religious difference, and a conviction that rights come from the big G of God, not from the little G of government, then it would be true, I think, that the disappearance of those conditions is bad news not just for Jews,
But it means that America the entire American experiment itself is changing. So in this series of which you graciously agree to be a part, should Jews leave America, maybe the real question we should ask is if America ever became a country in which serious Jews could no longer comfortably raise their children, practice their faith, express their beliefs.
And live publicly as Jews, wouldn't that tell us something much bigger than the condition of American Jewry? Wouldn't it mean that America had ceased to be the sort of country in which serious Catholics and evangelical Christians could confidently raise their children as well? In other words, should Christians view the security of American Jews as one measure of the health of the American civilization they themselves need in order to flourish, if if that makes sense.
Professor Robert P. George (26:45)
Well, the image that you t talked about at the beginning of our time together today is the right one. I think American Jewry is the canary in the coal mine. in this sense. if American Jewry is flourishing, if American Jews feel that they are part, fully part on equal terms, part of the American civic order alongside people of every other faith, what that tells us is.
The environment is healthy, that we are living in accord with our foundational principles, the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution, that we're living in line with our principle that all men are created equal, that they're endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But if American Jewry reasonably feels that there's not a place for us here.
We can't be ourselves, we can't express our faith, we can't lead our lives as Jews. That means that we as a nation have lost the plot when it comes to our historic principles, the principles of the Declaration and the Constitution. What made America such a great land for Jews, Rabbi? Here's my thought about that.
It begins with that principle that all men are created equal. It doesn't say all Christians are created equal, or all rich people are created equal, or for that matter, all white people are created equal. Our founding fathers themselves knew that slavery, which some of them not only supported but practiced, including the author of those words, the principal author, Thomas Jefferson, they knew it was wrong. Jefferson himself said.
Commenting on the incompatibility of the Declaration of Independence with the existence of slavery, he said, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just and that his justice will not sleep forever. So if American Jews honestly feel, reasonably feel, they cannot be Jews, that they're not being accepted, that they have to hide their Jewish identities or their Jewish faith, or the practices of the faith, that means we've lost the plot on our
Principles that we're no longer living up to those. So, first there's the principle of the declaration that all men are created equal, Jews as much as anybody else. That means the dignity that we bear as human beings is inherent. It's not acquired. You don't get it by reaching a certain age. You don't get it by reaching a certain level of intelligence. You don't get it by reaching a certain level of wealth. You don't get it by becoming a member of this religion or that religion or something else. You have it inherently. And if it's inherent, it's also equal. We have it equally.
Second thing, very importantly, about a dozen years after the Declaration, we got our constitution. And even in the original unamended Constitution, before we get to the Bill of Rights, Rabbi, we have a crucial provision pertaining to religion. And that is the provision prohibiting religious tests for public office. Religious tests, even in some of the colonies, had prevented.
Dissenting Protestants, those who were dissenting from the mainstream Protestant positions, all Catholics and all Jews from holding public office. What that no religious tests clause in the original unamended Constitution meant was: Catholics and Jews and dissenting Protestants and everybody else are equal. You cannot be excluded from eligibility for a public office, an office of public trust, all the way up to the president of the United States.
Based on religion. Absolutely crucial. And then, of course, very shortly after a couple of years after the ratification of the original Constitution, we get the first Ten Amendments. We get the First Amendment, which says that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Again, the message to Jews here is we are equal.
We're not just here on sufferance. We're not just being tolerated. We are equal because there is no established Christian church. There's no established Anglican church. There's no established church or religious body. We're all on the same level as citizens. And not only will there be no established national church, we will all enjoy the free exercise of religion.
And what that means, Rabbi, is not just that we have the right to practice our faith in the synagogue or the church building or the mosque or at home at the dinner table or the bedtime. We have the right to take our faith with us into our public lives, into the public square. You can identify yourself as a Jewish man with the kippah I see you're wearing right now.
You can Susan, if you want to wear a Star of David to indicate your Jewish identity, you can do that. Or a Christian lady can wear a cross. We can advocate on the basis of our faith. Rabbi Lapin can go into the public square, even in political discussions, and he can cite Isaiah and Nehemiah and Hosea, and he can proclaim Genesis 1. A Christian pastor can preach from the Sermon on the Mount.
And say we should be acting differently, we should have a different policy with respect to this issue or that issue, because we're taught in the Gospel of Matthew that blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are the meek, blessed are the poor in spirit, and so forth. Martin Luther King can go into the public square and say, We are all brothers under the universal fatherhood of Almighty God.
Susan Lapin (32:56)
So can I ask a follow-up or a continuation? Because we have been in this series, we've spoken to many people, including a man who grew up Muslim and is now a Christian, and including a woman who lived in Egypt for many years as part of the Muslim community. And they are issuing warnings and they're saying Islam is a religion and a political movement. And we did we were able to say, you know, communists, you don't get to become - we can be wary of you as communists. It's a political movement. Today we have Muslims coming into public office. The coming elections may bring more of them. And May I must sharpen your question, because I was thinking the same thing while Professor George was talking. The question is first of all, all men are created equal, and that's and that's true. And the peasant, the uneducated peasant living in Somalia is also created equal, but that doesn't mean I should welcome him into this country. Jews are created equal. It's just that I don't know that they should be in this country. That's one thing. And the second thing is Wait are you saying that's what we hear we're it's something we think. Yes, I'm asking that. And the second is did the founders ever dream that their words that you've been quoting would be used to allow somebody to swear in as a member of the United States Congress on the Quran.
Professor Robert P. George (34:28)
Well, I think it's very important to distinguish a religion from a political movement. So Islam is the religion and there are many variants of it. Islamism is the political movement. What I want to know of any person who wants to come to our country, whether he is Christian or from a Christian culture, whether he's Jewish, whether he is Muslim and from a Islamic culture.
Is does this person honestly and sincerely subscribe to the principles and institutions of the American civic order? To be a citizen, you must sign on to those. If you come as an immigrant. Now, interestingly, because we have birthright citizenship, you can be born in America and be and automatically be an American citizen. And then if you decide you don't believe in the Declaration of Independence or you don't believe in the Constitution, your citizenship is not revoked. But I have a son-in-law who comes from an English background and he went through the whole citizenship process and has been made a citizen, thank God. but he had to swear to the principles of the American civic order. so yeah if the person is an Islamist, then I don't see how Islamism is compatible with respect for the American Civic Order, the principles of the American Civic Order, any more than if a person is a communist, that person can subscribe in good faith to the American Civic Order. If you've read a little Marx, you will know that that that Marx's teaching is incompatible with the proposition that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (36:09)
Totally.
Professor Robert P. George (36:13)
certain inaul rights. I mean, Marxism is an atheistic philosophy. when we look at the Muslim world, there are movements within the Muslim world, including some large movements, for example, in Indonesia, which give me hope that there are forms of Islam that are far enough from Islamism.
That the assimilation process of Muslims who share that belief is highly doable. In the same way, although for many Protestants it didn't appear such, Catholic belief was actually compatible with the American civic order. In the 19th century, especially in light of some of the teachings of the 19th century popes, which I think We have to understand in a certain context and make sense in a certain context, but out of context don't make sense at all. But anyway, it's understandable that there were some Protestant Americans who wondered whether Catholics really could be good, loyal, faithful Americans. They worried about dual loyalties. Just as there are some people today who accuse Jews of dual
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (37:15)
Yes. About Jews. Yes.
Professor Robert P. George (37:19)
loyalty. You know, you can't be loyal to Israel and to the United States. Some of the 19th century popes had condemned democracy, had condemned the concept of religious freedom or the separation of church and state, and just on their faces, you know, abstracted from the context, I can understand why a Protestant American would say, Well, wait a minute, if you don't believe those things, those are in the Constitution. We are a republic, we're a democratic republic. If you, if you condemn democracy, how can you be a good citizen? We have a First Amendment. Doesn't use the word separation of church and state, but it does say Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. So if you completely reject the separation of church and state, the idea that there's that the institutions of the state and the institutions of the church need to be separated, how can you be a good American? Well, of course, here's where the context really matters. Those popes are writing in response to the horrible events of the French Revolution and the persecution of the clergy and the persecution of the church by the French revolutionaries. And the French revolutionaries are proclaiming things like democracy and freedom of religion and separation of church and state and so forth. So the whole question is: what did those French revolutionaries mean by those concepts? What did they mean by democracy? What did they mean by religious freedom? And of course, the church is condemning what they meant. Now that doesn't mean that they meant what the American founders meant. And as a matter of fact, there's a chasm separating what the American founders meant by, for example, republican government. Or separation of church and state or religious freedoms. It chasm between what they believed and what the French Revolutionaries believed. So eventually, when the Catholic Church got round to considering the question in a formal way, and this was at the Second Vatican Council, in a great document on religious freedom, the Declaration on Religious Freedom, known as Dignitatis humanae, the church draws these distinctions and says, no, we can endorse, for example, religious freedom so long as it's understood.
To mean essentially what the American founders have in mind, not what the French revolutionaries have in mind. The French revolutionaries have in mind the idea of religious indifferentism or subjectivism, or there's no such thing as religious truth, or all religions are equally true, or all religions are equally false, or things like that. Obviously, the Catholic Church, no religious person of any faith could believe.
Those things. And those are what the French revolutionaries had in mind. But the American revolutionaries, the American founders had a very different concept of religious freedom and of republican government and of separation of church and state, which, as the Catholic Church clarified, is compatible with the with Catholic teaching. And I'm hoping that some of those reform movements, for example, in Indonesia within the Muslim world, will.
Point the way for a philosophy of Islam that is in line with American civic principles. Some of the work being done by scholars at the Muslim Liberal Arts College out in California called, Zaytuna College, points in this direction.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (40:28)
So seeing this speaking of this gap between Islam and Islamism, you know, Susan and I aspire to become as cool as you. And so and we're going to adopt the term is it vibe shift? Okay.
Professor Robert P. George (40:45)
Ha ha ha.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (40:46)
I want to ask about and I may be misunderstanding this, but there seems to be a vibe shift between Rome and the pews. I mean you've taught us about Nostra Aetate, which as we understand it sort of really settled in nineteen sixty five the whole issue of Jews. Why
Professor Robert P. George (41:03)
Absolutely.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (41:04)
why has it not settled the matter?
For a vocal slice of self identified online Catholics.
Professor Robert P. George (41:14)
For the same reason that the churches, the popes, the bishops, the what we call the magisterium of Catholic Church, for the same reason that the church's leadership, despite its clear, unequivocal, consistent representations about the importance of the sanctity of human life or marriage as the union of husband and wife, has not persuaded. Even a majority in the United States of Catholics, or at least self-identified Catholics, to be pro-life or to support the concept of marriage as a as a conjugal union of husband and wife. There is dissent from the official doctrine of the church that's widespread among Catholics on those issues, just as there is, unfortunately, on the question of Judaism and Catholics' relationship to the to the Jewish people. The key thing to understand, though, is that the church's teaching on these issues, whether we're talking about the sanctity of human life, whether we're talking about marriage, or whether we're talking about the church's understanding of and relationship to the Jewish people, is crystal clear now. And it is unequivocal. It's not vague. Anti-Semitism is condemned full stop in all times, all places, whatever the reason, it is a grave. What Catholics call mortal sin. That's now the official and unbreakable Catholic teaching. There the there was this was a disputed question for a long time. It's no longer a disputed question. And there's no turning back.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (42:47)
Are there different branches? For instance, if Rabbi Agatha from the Berkeley Reform synagogue makes a statement, people will sometimes say to me, How can a Jewish rabbi say something like that? And I say, Well, it's you know she takes her guidance from the gods of wokeness, and I take mine from the Torah. We're not compatible. I is there something similar going on here? could somebody say, well, Yes, I don't follow the teachings of the church on this, but I'm no less a Catholic for that.
Professor Robert P. George (43:21)
No, this is a this is a difference between Catholicism on the one side and Judaism and Islam and Protestantism on the other side. What's different about Catholicism is there is a formal institutional structure that enjoys the authority to resolve definitively questions of faith and morals. You can speak as a rabbi, but there is no one above you and the reform rabbi in Berkeley who can declare definitively for all Jews which of you is right. Yes,
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (43:57)
More's the pity.
Professor Robert P. George (43:59)
you could use such a thing, yeah. But the Catholic Church has it. That's what the magisterium is. That is the Pope teaching in com compati in cooperation with the bishops. And at the absolute highest level.
There are the teachings of what are called councils, sometimes known as ecumenical councils. The word is misleading there. This doesn't mean Catholics' relationships with non-Catholics, but ecumenical in this sense means the Pope teaching in relation with all the bishops when they are gathered together in one spot to resolve questions of faith and morals. This is what the Second Vatican Council was.
And the two most controversial documents of the Second Vatican Council, which have no less authority because they were controversial, they settle the issues, were Nostra Aetate which, among other things, is the church's definitive state statement on its understanding of Jews and Judaism, the Jewish people, and the church's relationship to Jews and Judaism. so one was Nostra Aetate, the second was that Declaration on Religious Liberty that I talked about a moment ago, Dignitatus.
Humane. And not only, Rabbi, does the document on the non-Christian religions, including Jewish tradition, not only does it declare definitively that anti-Semitism is a grave sin, always and everywhere, it also declares that the church's relationship with the Jewish people is based on the unbroken covenant, an unbreakable covenant between God and the Jewish people. So the church does not replace the Jews in God's affections or in the witness that it gives to the world.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (45:46)
Has replacement theology started gaining a little traction in the Protestant world over the last few years?
Professor Robert P. George (45:55)
I believe it has. and even among poorly educated wayward Catholics, it has. You still see that some in in both the Catholic and Protestant online communities. But again, the difference between Catholicism and Protestantism here is there's no authority to definitively resolve the question for the Protestants. But for the Catholics there is, and again that it couldn't be it couldn't be clearer. I mean, that it's not there's no ambiguity here, Rabbi. John Paul II went to the great pope, the great pontiff, the great Polish Pope, you know, went across Rome to the great synagogue and there he declared that the relationship that the Catholics
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (46:31)
Yes. Remarkable. Yeah.
Professor Robert P. George (46:34)
have with the Jews is unique because our religions are the Jewish religion is not extrinsic to us, the way Islam or Buddhism or Hinduism is extrinsic to us. It's intrinsic to us. There the Pope said, You are our brothers and indeed, in a certain sense, our elder brothers in faith. By elder brothers, he here wasn't
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (46:56)
in historic.
Professor Robert P. George (46:57)
he wasn't trying to say that you're the elder brother like Esau and Jacob. He was saying that the witness that the that the great revelation was given first to the Jews. And then again to quote the Second Vatican Council, which is in turn quoting that that early Jewish Christian Saint Paul, the Gentiles, that's the rest of us Christians, the Gentiles are grafted, we're the wild shoots grafted onto the good olive tree. What's the good olive tree? It's the Jewish people.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (47:28)
Any thoughts on this is out of left field, but Catholics are dramatically overrepresented in Congress and let alone the Supreme Court. Any thoughts on on on how that has come to pass?
Professor Robert P. George (47:43)
Well, that is very interesting. I don't really have a good explanation for it. I do know this you're
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (47:48)
We'd like to see you on the Supreme Court.
Professor Robert P. George (47:51)
You're too kind. Country has enough problems without me in high office.
But I think I can explain at least how that Protestant suspicion of whether Catholics could be good citizens was finally erased. And I think the answer is
The first and especially second world wars. it was the valor of Catholic soldiers fighting alongside Protestant, Jewish, other soldiers on the battlefield, their willingness to make the ultimate sacrifice, give the last full measure of devotion to quote Lincoln, just like their fellow citizens. It was that, I think, that proved to America to American Protestants that yes.
Catholics can be good, loyal, faithful, patriotic Americans. So I don't think it was the teachings of the of the Pope or even the visits of popes to the United States, which we've now had. I think at the end of the day, the explanation for the acceptance of Catholics, which is the predicate to their being overrepresented in public office, came with the service of Catholic soldiers during the wars.
Susan Lapin (49:00)
This may be it is an uneducated question, but maybe you can help me formulate it. So when there's a convert, Candace Owens, right, is speaks about her being herself being a convert to Catholicism and somehow she's now the spokeswoman for Catholicism. And you shake your head at it, but a lot of younger, a lot of people watch and say, yes, I'm Catholic and I believe what Candace believes, not I believe what the Pope believes or says.
I believe what Candace believes. How can the church react to that? In other words, when you say there's a gap between the pew and the church, but the people in the pew are the ones who vote. They're the ones who affect their neighbors and the institutions that we all count on.
Professor Robert P. George (49:45)
It's exactly like Susan when Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi says, I'm a Catholic and I support a woman's right to abortion, or I'm a Catholic and I support same-sex marriage, or I'm a Catholic and I support assisted suicide, it's exactly the same thing, except this is c considered more Candace Owens is considered a right wing figure, although I don't know why, but a right-wing figure. And Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden are considered to be left-wing figures. And I think the church has to react to those deviations and scandals. They really are scandals in the technical sense. I mean, they weaken the faith of the Catholic people, they weaken the Catholic people's understanding of what it means to be a Catholic. I think the way the church has to react is by forcefully reasserting its teaching. And where appropriate, but only where appropriate, that there's a there's a complicated legal structure taking disciplinary action, especially against, for example, clergy who misrepresent the teaching of the church or take upon themselves the role of being Pope. you know, your local parish priest is not the Pope. He does not have the authority of the Pope, nor does he have the authority to contradict the Pope on a settled issue of faith and morals, where the Pope is teaching in line with the bishops scattered throughout the world and with the broader historic Catholic tradition. Now on the question of anti Semitism. Here I have to praise, I have to single out for praise the US Catholic bishops. They've really been exemplary on this. I have not always praised the Catholic bishops. I sometimes found them weak and not having enough backbone. And I've sometimes been pushing on them to speak out a little more loudly, especially when people like Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden get up to some of their shenanigans. But on the anti-Semitism question, they've been great. If you go to the website you for the US CCB, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, you'll find the magnificent video of Archbishop Sample from Oregon speaking on behalf of the whole body of Catholic bishops in the United States condemning anti-Semitism and any manifestations of the replacement theology stuff and all that. They're doing a good job on this, and I think in this case, really deserve to be commended.
Now, on the other hand, they do not have influencers. There aren't figures like Candace Owens that have millions of followers. But anybody who has any influence, the little that I have, I try to use, should be supporting the bishops on this. They should be reminding the flock of what our shepherds are teaching us, not as their own personal opinions, but as the official established unalterable teaching of the church.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (52:34)
I think we're coming to our last question. I well let me leave it to you. Okay.
Susan Lapin (52:42)
America the speed at which things happen seems to be moving at a faster pace. this and it is with technology, with all sorts of things, Do you see reasons for optimism or Well, you're an optimistic person, so I'm sure you do, and you're a person of faith, so I'm sure you do. But with what is going on, where do you think people have to really wake up and start becoming more vocal? And where do you or where do you think and say, you know what, we may be going through a rough period, but I think we will come out of it because what is your vision of the future?
Professor Robert P. George (53:18)
Well, I am by temperament an optimistic person. You're right, Susan, I'm guilty of that. but it's not optimism that really matters here. It's something very different. Optimism is a matter of optics. It's how you see things. the relevant issue is not optimism, it's hope. And hope is not just a matter of optics, it's a virtue. It's one of the three great in the Christian tradition we call it the three great theological virtues: faith, hope, and love. And as a virtue, it means it's an active thing. It means it's a motivator for us to not give up. No matter how bad things look, we have to hold hope. we have to be prisoners of hope. we have and that means we have to go out there and work to make a difference. So I want to say just as clearly as I can to the Jewish community. No, this is not time for Jews to leave America. This is the time for Jews to lock arms with their Christian and other brothers and sisters and to work for fidelity to our nation's founding principles and institutions. This is the time when we're talking not just about the Bible, not just about this or that religious doctrine, when we're talking about the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. We need to be arm in arm in making sure that the conditions in the coal mine are conditions in which the canary is flourishing and singing out. And that's really, at the end of the day, up to us. We can't abandon our posts here. This is why I get very nervous at the at the question: should Jews leave America? We need the Jewish witness, and not just the Jewish witness in the sense of the scriptures. Or not just the Jewish witness as it's been scaled, as my friend Eric Cohen says, scaled by Christians who, took the Hebrew scripture and brought them to the world. We need the Jewish witness of the Jews. We need the Jewish witness of Jewish people. So my arm and your arms need to be locked together, we as brothers and sisters, in the fight for America's founding principles.
For the principles that have allowed Jews and Catholics and people from every other tradition to flourish here in the United States as full and equal citizens of this grand, unprecedented experiment in republican government and ordered liberty. It can't succeed without us. I mean, I'm that's just the bottom line. It cannot succeed without us. If we flee the country, or if we flee the battle, we might remain in the country but go silent. We become quietist. We could hurt turn politics over to somebody else. This experiment will fail. There's no guarantee that that America will go on for another 250 years. We've made it for this 250 years. Been a darn close-run thing a couple of times, 1800 especially, and then most especially 1861. But we have made it. republican government, ordered liberty, has long endured. But for it to endure into the future. It needs our work and our witness.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (56:29)
Amen. Gosh, we'd love to talk ever so much longer, but we so appreciate the time, Professor George, and we wish upon you God's blessings for you and your family, and for your dedication and your holy work. Thank you.
Professor Robert P. George (56:43)
Thank you, Rabbi Daniel. Thank you, Susan. I look forward to next time.
Rabbi Daniel Lapin (56:47)
We look forward to that very much indeed.
Professor Robert P. George (56:50)
Bye bye.
