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New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 186 There's a fundamental difference between mere power and legitimate authority, and that difference needs to be dragged into the center of our political discussions against Woke. Power is the raw capacity to do something, but authority is something more. It's power, which is to say capacity and permission, combined with right, which is justification. Woke movements covet power. They have no genuine authority. In that gap all the difference that matters hides. Our forefathers in the American Founding era understood this and called power without authority "arbitrary power," which they found slavish and absurd, and believed to be their sacred duty as men to resist. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay does a kind of "book club" reading from Timothy Sandefur's new book Proclaiming Liberty: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Declaration of Independence (https://link.amazon/B079Yg99D), to draw out this distinction and make it clear and relevant. Join him for an important discussion, and get the book (https://link.amazon/B079Yg99D for yourself. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Woke

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 185 Woke beliefs, including in the potential success of socialism, antiracism, etc., are held on faith. That faith is just like the faith discussed in Hebrews 11 except bogus, a false hope in something they believe is assured but unseen and a confidence in its eventual emergence. This core faith tells us a few important things about Woke, including the idea that the fulfillment of their beliefs lies in the future, not the past or present, and also that the reason they must wait for that fulfillment is primarily the hindrances and opposition of their political enemies. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks this down and offers some suggestions for how to engage in light of this proper understanding of Woke thinking. Join him for clarity and some genuinely practical suggestions. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Woke

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 184 Why does every totalitarian system enact so many and such brutal purges, even genocides, of its enemies? The reason is the logic of the systems themselves, which guarantee it. That logic proceeds on the idea that if the system is failing, it's because people who oppose or sabotage it must still be out in the world and must be stopped or destroyed. In this chilling episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay dives into the essential logic of the totalitarian mindset and makes this terrifying fact clear. Join him to understand what we're dealing with on a new, even deeper level. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Totalitarianism

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 225 We all know by now that Woke presents an inverted world and then traps people into it. The Woke mind struggles to tell true from false, right from wrong, good from evil, and real from fake. The way this inversion works programmatically is interesting, though, tying together many threads of discussion about woke over the last few years in a neat package. In this valuable episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay turns to the three elements of classical rhetoric, Logos, Ethos, and Pathos, to reveal what Woke is and how it works in a whole new profound way. In short, it inverts logic and ethics and keeps emotions pathological as the glue that holds the whole thing together. If you are against Woke, you won't want to miss this explanation. Join him to hear it. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Woke

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 183 The price of a Woke society is having a low-trust society. There's a reason for this, and it's not just that Woke is fundamentally a scam (and its programs are frauds). The reason is because Woke is intrinsically subversive in more than one sense, and it advances its agenda by exploiting the societal resource of trust. This fact is made undeniably clear in the 1987 paper "Doing Gender" (https://newdiscourses.com/2026/10/gender-ideology-transgenderism-doing-gender/) by Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, the most cited gender studies paper ever, with over 25,000 citations at present. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay extracts that point from the essay to make it extremely clear and then points out many more examples of how Woke ideology advances itself by trading against societal trust, which then undermines that trust. Join him for the discourse; you won't want to miss it! Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Society

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 224 To view the issue optimistically, the medical front of the battle against gender ideology and transgender medicine is starting to go very well and might soon see more significant victories. The ideological and social side, including the damaging practice known as "social transition," has barely been impacted at all. To dig further into the roots of this phenomenon of "gender ideology with transgender characteristics," host James Lindsay takes the listener through a frequently overlooked landmark paper in gender studies in this episode of the New Discourses Podcast. After framing the issue in a helpful way, he reads the bulk of Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman's 1987 paper "Doing Gender" (pdf: https://www.gla.ac.uk/0t4/crcees/files/summerschool/readings/WestZimmerman_1987_DoingGender.pdf ), arguably the most cited paper in gender studies, offering deep explanation. Join him to understand the thinking and history of gender ideology in a whole new way. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Gender

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 223 Should housewives be paid by the state to be housewives? In some sense, it's an issue that's in present-day news, but this isn't the first time a political movement has broached the question. Back in the 1970s, it became a major issue among Marxist-feminists, believe it or not. The Marxist-feminists of the age believed that if the state paid wages for housework, as the movement came to be known, then women would realize the laborious nature and labor-relations relevant to their station within capitalism and thus awaken to resist it. In fact, Silvia Federici launched this movement into prominence with a 1975 pamphlet called "Wages Against Housework" (pdf: https://monoskop.org/images/2/23/Federici_Silvia_Wages_Against_Housework_1975.pdf ) and argues that paying women for housework is the first step in their class consciousness and refusal, thus a necessary piece of the revolutionary movement. In this curious episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay takes you through Federici's pamphlet and brings eye-opening clarity to how Marxist-feminists (and all Wokes) think. Join him to hear it for yourself. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Wages

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 182 Before the geocentric model of the universe fell and was replaced by the heliocentric model of the solar system, the movement of the planets across the night sky couldn't be explained neatly by assuming simple circular orbits that all go around the Earth. The invention used to "correct" the model had the name "epicycles." The idea was that the planets went around in little circles on their big circular orbits around the Earth, thereby allegedly explaining the phenomenon of retrograde motion using an early, and wrong, model of celestial mechanics. This attempted patch of a bad theory tells us something about conspiracy theories: when the evidence starts going against them, they have to generate epicycles to keep themselves going. This is a way we can know a conspiracy theory for what it is, in fact, at least sometimes. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains epicycles and how we can learn to spot them to figure out which kinds of conspiracy theories (and cult ideologies) are likely to be false. Join him for a clarifying discussion. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #ConspiracyTheory

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 181 Surely you have noticed a couple of things about Woke. First, it acts like mental illness. Second, it actually valorizes mental illness for real. These outcomes are the logical consequence of having adopted the views of the postmodernist Michel Foucault, particularly his early work in Madness and Civilization (1961). Among the consequences to this civilizational catastrophe, besides the obvious, including the transgender ideological craze, is the completely destruction of anything like a "reasonable person" standard by which to judge things we see happening in the world. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains this intellectual history and its relevance to so much of what we deal with today. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Woke

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 180 Did you know the explanation for the Communist side of the Red-Green Alliance, including "Queers for Palestine," can be found on the last page of the Communist Manifesto (pdf), written in 1848 by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels? The explanation is simple and brief, "In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things." Communists of all kinds are instructed to side with anyone fighting their common enemy, which is the status quo, or the present society. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay explains the relevance of this sentence, and the one that follows, to our contemporary issues, including intersectionality, the Red-Green Alliance, and Palestinianism (or the "Palestinian Cause"). Join him for an eye-opening look at the Communist version of the friend-enemy distinction. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Communist

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 222 If we really peel back so much of the ranting and the drama around the Nazi Experiment, what are we left with? Well, the point, to be frank. In this episode of the Nazi Experiment series on the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay takes you into that point, which Adolf Hitler himself makes clear in a remarkably short chapter of his 1928 "Secret Book," which went unpublished throughout his lifetime. Meant to be something like a third volume to Mein Kampf focused on Nazi foreign policy, this short book barely saw the light of day. Here, we will learn what Hitler means when he declares himself a nationalist, a socialist, and a national socialist, and we will understand with horror his clear-eyed self-awareness that the whole future of his movement lay in the youth pulled from the children of the establishment national bourgeoisie. Join James for this short expose of Nazi vision. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 179 Woke can be summarized in a single, short way. Woke means thinking with critical theory and acting like a Leninist. That's all it really comes down to: having awakened to the alleged relevance of counter-hegemonic critical theory combined with friend-enemy tribal politics and Machiavellian permission structures. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks it all down, making Woke easier than it ever has been before. Join him for the insight needed to recognize Woke wherever it appears. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Woke

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 221 However weird you thought the Nazis were before, they're weirder than that. In fact, they were outright mystics, and the point of the Positive Christianity movement given in Point 24 of the Nazi Party platform can only be summarized as to take German Christians of all stripes, deconstruct their Christian faiths, and move them into this counterfeit mysticism and the Nazi "Myth of the Blood." Hitler's chief ideologist, Alfred Rosenberg, makes that case powerfully and undeniably in the third chapter of his very strange book, The Myth of the Twentieth Century (https://ia800405.us.archive.org/31/items/alfred-rosenberg-and-the-track-of-the-jew-through-the-ages/The%20Myth%20of%20the%2020th%20Century.pdf). In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay continues his series of readings from Rosenberg's strange tome with a fifth volume exploring the centrality of German Mysticism derived from the heresies of Johannes Eckhart from the 13th century. Join him for an alarming look at Nazi ideology like you've never seen before. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Mysticism

The New Discourses Podcast with James Lindsay, Ep. 220 In 1765, Great Britain had foolishly decided to continue escalating its attempts to recover the cost of the French and Indian War from its American Colonists by passing the infamous and odious Stamp Act upon the colonies, who famously were not represented in the Parliament that would tax them. In response, a great deal of pre-Revolutionary mayhem and energy was unleashed on this side of the Pond, and within that current came one of the most brilliant and under-recognized essays (https://www.fredbischoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Adams-Canon-Feudal.pdf) of the nascent American era, penned under pseudonym by the incredible John Adams. "A Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law," as it was called, was a hammerstroke against the twin tyrannies of an overbearing church and state, and worse yet, their confederacy. It was also a call to learning and to memory for the colonists about who they are, who they were, and why they and their forefathers came: not just for religion, but for religious liberty and a hatred of these wicked tyrannies all across Europe. In this episode of the New Discourses Podcast, host James Lindsay reads Adams's amazing essay with no less goal than to make it famous among all Americans. Join him and share the essay with everyone you can! (Get Eric Metaxas's Revolution here (https://amzn.to/4wgxMDg) and Tim Sandefur's Proclaiming Liberty here! (https://amzn.to/4cpyV4d)) Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #Religion

New Discourses Bullets, Ep. 178 Critical Theory originates in the formal sense from a 1937 essay penned by Frankfurt School director Max Horkheimer, bearing the title "Traditional and Critical Theory." In that essay, Horkheimer compares what he calls "traditional theory" against his neo-Marxist conception that he names "critical theory," thus organizing the approach behind the entire school of thought that is sometimes called Critical Marxism. In this episode of New Discourses Bullets, host James Lindsay breaks down the point of this essay and the nature of Horkheimer's comparison between these two ways of thinking. Join him for deeper clarity on this important topic. Join us for the Preserving Liberty Conference at Sea!: https://ndcruise.com Support New Discourses: https://newdiscourses.com/support Follow New Discourses on other platforms: https://newdiscourses.com/subscribe Follow James Lindsay: https://linktr.ee/conceptualjames © 2026 New Discourses. All rights reserved. #NewDiscourses #JamesLindsay #criticaltheory