Os Guinness On The Left’s Long March From Counterculture To Oligarchy

Black Bloc Antifa protesters in Washington D.C.
I recently had a discussion with British author and critic Os Guinness over the new addition to his first major work, The Dust of Death, as well as his new book, The Magna Carta of Humanity. As a decades-long reader of Os Guinness, I knew I had to discuss his work, both new and old, through the lens of our current political and cultural crises.
With his new addition of The Dust of Death, Guinness discovers the origins of America’s ruling class in the turbulent countercultural radicalism of the 1960s. Between the revolutionary ideas, riots, and political purges, the parallels are undeniable, and Guinness’ timeless book could not be any more pertinent. The solution to this political chaos, he concludes, is a distinctly Christian alternative materializing in true leadership: “We need a Lincoln.”
But we don’t have a Lincoln. How can “our side” return to the biblical roots of America’s founding and rediscover the intellectual heritage of the reformation? That’s exactly what Os Guinness’ new book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, offers, applying the revolutionary faith found in the book of Exodus to our own history. From Sinai, through the American founding, to our modern political trials, Guinness outlines the Christian alternative to the progressive mob.
Click here to watch the conversation I had with Os Guinness. Below a timestamped outline of our chat.
00:45 – Introducing the Magna Carta of Humanity
01:05 – The Dust of Death and the “third way”
02:37 – How the ’60s created on oligarchy
08:42 – We need a Lincoln
10:26 – We need Reformation. Why don’t Christians have influence?
12:35 – On the work of Rene Girard
15:58 – The Madness of Crowds
17:30 – Putting the Protestant intellectual heritage to use
20:00 – Cultural Marxism affecting Christianity
25:33 – The “populist instinctive revolt” against the elite
28:16 – Is there a danger from the right as well as the left?
32:14 – Cultural climate change
33:24 – Who can lead us?
35:25 – Conservatism of blood and soil versus the conservatism of ideas
38:42 – Patriotism versus Nationalism
41:20 – “Generationalism”
42:58 – Returning to Hebraic roots
47:10 – “A little less Plato, and a little more Moses.” Helenic philosophy in Christianity.
49:00 – Covenental societies – How the Covenent sparked the Constitution
51:09 – Christianity and social justice. Why we can’t give up on Evangelicalism.
56:10 – Christianity is both conservative and progressive
58:33 – It’s no longer morning in America – Christians need to wake up
This article originally appeared on Townhall Finance.
Jerry Bowyer is a Forbes contributor, contributing editor of AffluentInvestor.com, and Senior Fellow in Business Economics at The Center for Cultural Leadership.
Jerry has compiled an impressive record as a leading thinker in finance and economics. He worked as an auditor and a tax consultant with Arthur Anderson, as Vice President of the Beechwood Company which is the family office associated with Federated Investors, and has consulted in various privatization efforts for Allegheny County, Pennsylvania. He founded the influential economic think tank, the Allegheny Institute, and has lectured extensively at universities, businesses and civic groups.
Jerry has been a member of three investment committees, among which is Benchmark Financial, Pittsburgh’s largest financial services firm. Jerry had been a regular commentator on Fox Business News and Fox News. He was formerly a CNBC Contributor, has guest-hosted “The Kudlow Report”, and has written for CNBC.com, National Review Online, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as many other publications. He is the author of The Bush Boom and more recently The Free Market Capitalist’s Survival Guide, published by HarperCollins. Jerry is the President of Bowyer Research.
Jerry consulted extensively with the Bush White House on matters pertaining to the recent economic crisis. He has been quoted in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, The International Herald Tribune and various local newspapers. He has been a contributing editor of National Review Online, The New York Sun and Townhall Magazine. Jerry has hosted daily radio and TV programs and was one of the founding members of WQED’s On-Q Friday Roundtable. He has guest-hosted the Bill Bennett radio program as well as radio programs in Chicago, Dallas and Los Angeles.
Jerry is the former host of WorldView, a nationally syndicated Sunday-morning political talk show created on the model of Meet The Press. On WorldView, Jerry interviewed distinguished guests including the Vice President, Treasury Secretary, HUD Secretary, former Secretary of Sate Condoleezza Rice, former Presidential Advisor Carl Rove, former Attorney General Edwin Meese and publisher Steve Forbes.
Jerry has taught social ethics at Ottawa Theological Hall, public policy at Saint Vincent’s College, and guest lectured at Carnegie Mellon’s graduate Heinz School of Public Policy. In 1997 Jerry gave the commencement address at his alma mater, Robert Morris University. He was the youngest speaker in the history of the school, and the school received more requests for transcripts of Jerry’s speech than at any other time in its 120-year history.
Jerry lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, Susan, and the youngest three of their seven children.
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