Welcome to the Good Faith Podcast on your host, Curtis Chang, and the Good Faith Podcast

is a production of redeeming babble.

We are friends who are following Jesus who help each other make sense of the world.

One of the puzzling questions to try to make sense of in the political world over the last

10-15 years is what has happened to the conservative movement?

If you go back 15-20 years ago and compare the conservative movement from then to now,

it's hardly recognizable. You go back 15-20 years ago, there were many elements

substantively in terms of the issues which I would have agreed with. I would have identified like I

with those particular substantive takes of the conservative movement now not so much.

What has happened substantively to the modern conservative movement?

Now I think a quick answer would be, well, Donald J. Trump. But I don't think that explains the

substantive transformation of the conservative movement because Trump is not an original

substantive thinker. He's simply channeling sentiments that have been brewing and existing for a

long time, giving them a particular voice and abrasiveness to him, but he's not an original

innovative political philosopher by any means. And another reason why I think we need to look

beyond Trump is we have to realize that the transformation of the American conservative movement

falls right in line with the transformation of conservative movements across the West.

That globally, there has been the rise of the far right movements across the West,

across Europe in many, many countries that has a lot of genetic similarity and then obviously

transcends Trump. Now some of the factors driving the radicalization of the right are the same factors

driving the radicalization of the left. You have social media that are creating homogenous

communities and echo chambers that lead to greater radicalization. But again, those are factors

...