Well, welcome to a special bonus episode of the Breakpoint Podcast. I am always privileged whenever I get the rare occasion to talk to the one and only the great Professor Robert P. George from Princeton University. Professor of Politics there, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Director of the James Madison Program. But our history is connected through Chuck Colson, a close collaborator of the late great Chuck Colson on things like the Manhattan Declaration and other things.
A winner of the World War Force Award, which is front and center on my mind because we're walking into our big conference this coming weekend. Professor George, it's good to see you here virtually and always good to have you on the Breakpoint Podcast.
Well, thank you so much, John. It's a pleasure to be back on. It's been a while. And thanks for recalling Chuck Coulson. He was such great.
Man, such a great Christian leader, and you know, I think about him so often.
Sometimes I still find myself wanting to pick up the telephone and call him. I wish I had that direct line, but I I know he is continuing to be with us and especially with Breakpoint and Spirit. And thanks for the wonderful work you do, John, to carry on Chuck's legacy.
Well, it is an honor and it's an honor to talk to you today about something that I think is just a fantastic idea. Every once in a while, you see something and you're like, that is a great idea. And I got to confess to you, the noise and the chaos of the last decade or so of annual Junes, the annual month of June, when the message of pride has been front and center. Many times feels like there's a megaphone just kind of blasting it in our ears. But you have proposed over the last couple of years something better to celebrate.
And it made me think of Chuck because Chuck always talked about the fact that we not only oppose, we propose, right? We offer something better. We invite people to the feast that is in the gospel and in the truth of Jesus Christ and so on. And every good gift comes from his hand. It's worth celebrating.
And you proposed a couple of years ago the idea of Fidelity Month. And I just want to give you a moment here just to describe what do you mean by Fidelity Month and why do you think it's so important?
Well, the idea of Fidelity Month began back in the spring, early spring of 2023 when I happened to Read a news story in the Wall Street Journal about some new polling data. It had just been released. And the data showed that the faith of Americans, the belief of Americans, in certain traditional values, values that were very important historically to our national unity and strength. had diminished what were these values? Belief in the importance of God and of religious faith, Belief in the importance of marriage and the family Belief in the importance of Patriotism Our country, are communities.
In fact, the only Value that Americans' faith in or belief in the importance of. had increased was money.
Now, there's nothing wrong with money. We all need money. I want people to prosper. I think one of the great things about living in America is that we. uh enjoy um historically unprecedented Economic prosperity.
You know, we have our ups and downs, but as a whole, we're a very wealthy society. But I'll let you in on a little secret. Money's not ultimately what matters. And it pales in c importance to things like faith. And family, and friendship, and country, and knowledge, and beauty, and integrity, and honesty.
So I was alarmed by these data reported in the Wall Street Journal, and I was alarmed for this reason, John. What? historically, have been the fundamental sources of our nation's unity and strength.
Well, notice that our nation is different from most nations. Not necessarily better, not necessarily worse, different. How are we different? Our national unity and our strength. has historically not been rooted in shared bonds based on blood or soil.
or throne and altar. We Americans, my goodness, we come from many different ethnic backgrounds, many different racial heritages. Many different religious backgrounds, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Eastern faiths. We come from many different cultural heritages. We're not bound together, are Strength and unity cannot be founded on Race, ethnicity.
Even a shared religion, a shared cultural heritage. But we need strength and unity. Where are we going to find them?
Well, historically, we've found them in basically two things. Number one, a shared commitment to our constitutional principles. But not just that because there's a number two. And that is Americans across all their other divisions, across the divisions of race. ethnicity.
religion, cultural heritage. have shared a belief in the importance of God. One nation under God. as Lincoln prayed at Gettysburg. Our national motto is In God We Trust.
We proclaim ourselves to be a nation under God. in our pledge of allegiance.
Now Those aren't just historical accidents. Belief in God has been one of the pillars of our Republican civic order shared by Protestants and Catholics, Christians and Jews, People of all the different traditions of faith, and certainly people of different ethnicities, and racial backgrounds, and cultural heritages.
Now what else? Faith in the importance, belief in, Marriage and the family. and the importance of fidelity in marriage, of faithful marriages, of being good spouses, of being good parents. That's not a distinctively Christian idea. Are Jewish?
fellow citizens. our fellow citizens who come from Buddhist or Hindu, traditions, other traditions of faith. They shared that belief in the importance of strong families founded on the fundamental conjugal union of husband and wife in marriage. And then number three, again, whether you're Protestant, Catholic, black, white. Male, female.
Croatian or of Indonesian background, wherever your ancestors came from, Americans have believed in patriotism. You go to Memorial Day Parade or Veterans Day. Event, you're going to see, it's like the United Nations. You're going to see Asian faces, you're going to see Italian faces, you're going to see Northern European faces, Middle Eastern faces, all as American as apple pie. Why?
Because as Americans, They are faithful patriots. The blood that has been shed to retain our freedom. In all the wars we fought, beginning all the way back with the Revolutionary War, The blood that has been shed has been blood of many different ethnicities.
Southern Europe, Northern Europe. Africa. Asia. Middle East.
So these have been our sources of unity. and strength. Faith in God Faithful spouses and families. Faithful patriotism.
So, Fidelity Month is all about faith. It's about restoring and renewing faith, rededicating ourselves. To these principles of fidelity to God, Fidelity to spouses and families. Fidelity to our country and our communities. Just the concept fidelity, and I'm going to give you a chance to define it, but it seems to me too that it's in stark contrast to two.
Lies, really, of our age. You know, one is the idea of fidelity: that I have a responsibility to be faithful and to show loyalty to my church, to my community, to my God, to my family, and so on. That stands in pretty stark contrast to kind of the narrative that the government has all the answers for all of our problems. Like, in other words, there's a level of personal responsibility that I think that encourages. And that's one of the reasons I thought it was such a great idea, because you just went over an incredible amount of territory, and it all boils down to.
What are we responsible for? What have we been asked to care for? And how do I care for others and take responsibility? But it also flies in the face of the kind of the popular narrative, you be you, live your truth, follow your heart. Carl Truman just wrote a book about, right?
This expressive individualism, that my primary responsibility is to myself and to be quote unquote true to myself. No, no, no, no. You're turning our attention outward and upward. You're turning our attention away from asking the state to provide all of our needs, to say, you know, take responsibility and care for one another. You know, I just thought it was really profound.
Can you tell us why you chose the word fidelity for that? I mean, I guess at some level it's obvious, but it's not a common word today. It's a virtue. And so, yeah, why did you choose that word?
Well, the American Republic has never been a republic based on collectivism. It's never been a republic that says the government is responsible for solving all our problems. No, we've always said we ourselves, not just as individuals, but as Communities in civil society, as families, as churches, as civic associations, as every sort of private voluntary group from Little League to Boy Scouts and on and on, are what make. Our system so special. They're what sustained this grand experiment, as our founders called it, an experiment.
In ordered liberty and republican government. At the same time, though, John, we've never been a radically individualistic nation either. You want evidence for that? That we're not just expressive individualists. Carl Truman, the wonderful Carl Truman.
I'm so glad you pointed to that magnificent book that he's written. We Americans have never bought this radical individualism, this expressive individualist stuff. I mean, the evidence that we haven't. is on the beaches of Normandy. And at Iwo Jima.
and at the bulge. You know, those men sacrificed their lives. For something they considered greater. More important for their families, for their children, for their future grandchildren. For their communities.
So we have an obligation, it seems to me. To be faithful in the ways that we need to be faithful, faithful to God, faithful to our spouses and families, faithful to our country and communities. If we want to continue and have our children continue and our grandchildren continue to enjoy the blessings of living in this blessed land, in this blessed republic, enjoying all the freedoms and all the opportunities that. we enjoy. And Fidelity is really a two-way street.
It's My loyalty. To The person or the institutions to God, to my spouse, to my children, to my country. It's my loyalty to them. And it's their ability to trust me. If I'm not faithful, I can't be trusted.
I need to be loyal to you.
so that you can trust me and you need to be loyal to me.
So that I can Trust you.
So that's what it's all about. And we need it. I mean, it's that simple. I chose the word fedori because what do we need today in this country? What are we missing?
What did those polling data show that I mentioned a little while ago from the Wall Street Journal? They show that we're collapsing Because of a lack of fidelity.
Well, let's build it back up. And we can coast the darkness all night. It's not going to do any good, John. We got to light a candle. Fidelity Month is lighting a candle.
That's what it is. It's doing something about the problem.
Well, and there's wonderful resources at fidelitymonth.com, and we'll talk a little bit about those in just a second. But there are those, I think, that would be skeptical and cynical that this younger generation in particular have the moral capacity for this. You know, when you talk about storming the beaches of Normandy, I mean, I mean, was that a different time in a different place? Is there hope that we can recapture that again? Anyone who's skeptical.
Come along. You have a standing invitation. Come along over to Princeton University. Come sit in on one of my classes. Sit in on one of my lecture courses on constitutional interpretation or civil liberties or one of my classes on moral and political philosophy.
Meet the young men and women that I have the privilege and the blessing to teach. And you're going to meet some kids who are not only brilliant, but are brave, who are courageous. Who are willing to stand up against the dominant orthodoxies of the day if they think they are wrong and say, nope. I stand for a different set of values. You know who some of my students are, or have been.
You know, people like Ryan Anderson and Melissa Moskella and Sharif Gary Girgas and Anna Samuel and Daniel Mark and Rabbi Meir Solovechik and Father Brian Henry. I mean, it just goes on and on. And it's those young men and women. that inspire me. I teach them that they inspire me.
And they give me hope. Come to my class, sit in, listen to what they say, listen to them challenge these. These fashionable orthodoxies, and then tell me that you're giving up hope on the next generation. You won't be able to because they will inspire you. I just got to tell you, that's a dangerous move.
Our audience might take you up on that. You might actually have some folks. I just want you to know it might actually happen. I probably build some university rule there, but we'll sneak them in. Yeah, that's right.
There you go. I mean, listen, occupational protests are apparently welcome on many college campuses these days.
So these will be the good kind. Could you talk, though, a little bit about the contrast with pride? I mean, it's not lost on me. I don't know if that's what you had in mind or not when you did it, but that one of the things that stood out to me, just because, you know, pride is a vice that we have been celebrating. And there's also been though in the last maybe two years.
It seems to have gotten quieter in the month of June, where many corporations kind of have backed off their activism in particular. But fidelity obviously stands in stark contrast as a virtue that's worthy to be celebrated. But did you have that contrast in mind?
Well, you know, pride is not something I know a whole heck of a lot about. I mean, I haven't been involved in it. It doesn't. I mean, I see stuff on TV. I see flags on highways or in front of churches.
You know, the liberal denominations buy these. fly these flags and uh and and so forth.
So I don't pay a lot of attention to it. My sense is that it's running out of gas. I also have the sense that it's expressive individualism on steroids. you know it's kind of like all about my sexual satisfaction and you know being You know, who my desires make me to be. I've never thought of.
Identity as something that can legitimately be built on desires.
So, you know, I, that's just not my. Uh, world at all, but it's free country.
So, you know, people who believe in that are free to express it and have parades and fly their flags and have their events. But we're free too. You know, those of us who have a different view, like I do. are free to celebrate the what we regard as the true virtues, like like fidelity And we can fly our flags and we can have our events and we can celebrate what we believe to be a virtue. That's the great thing about it's being a free country.
I want to stress though, that Fidoli Month is not a negative thing. It's like not against something. I don't do the pride thing. I don't believe in that. But the Fidelity Month is not supposed to be a counterweight to that.
It's supposed to celebrate something worth celebrating, something very important. It's meant to encourage us to rededicate ourselves to these values that are ultimately. in this blessed land are ultimate sources of Unity and strength again, John, because we cannot rely on common ancestry. We can't rely on, except the common ancestry of Adam and Eve, you know, as human beings. But we can't rely on being all from Croatia historically, or all black or white, or some other race.
Or we can't rely on being, you know, Methodist or Eastern Orthodox or Jewish or whatever, because Americans are all different religions. We're all different ethnicities. We're all different racial backgrounds.
So if we're going to be united, We're going to need something other than race or denomination, religious denomination, or ethnicity or cultural heritage to rely on. And historically, We did rely on fidelity to God. to spouses and families. To your country. That's what made America great.
You talk about make America great again. I'll tell you how to make America great again. My own view is that it's not fundamentally an economic problem. I know some politicians think, well, you're great if you're rich and powerful.
Well, I like being rich and powerful. That's very good. I hope we use our money well. I hope we use our power well. But you're great.
You're a great country. If you're a country whose people are faithful to God, whose people build and maintain strong families. whose people Operate not just for their own individual good, but look to the common good of their country and community. That's a great country. Yeah.
I mean, it's, you know, I think it was Oz Guinness who said, we say, make America great again without asking what made America great in the first place. And that's what strikes me about Fidelity Month: you're looking back and saying, look, this is what is profound. My guest today is Professor Robert P. George from Princeton University and also the founder of Fidelity Month, which you can find more about at fidelitymonth.com. There's all kinds of ways to actually show support.
And I think it's hopefully something that can become a catechizing force in our culture. Can I mention one thing there, John? I'm sorry to interrupt, but one thing that everybody can do, right? Everybody who's on social media can do. Go to fidelitymonth.com.
and you'll have easy access for free. to our Fidelity Month logo. I ask you, I invite you, I encourage you for the month of June, beginning June one, For your social media accounts, for your profile picture, use the Fidelity Month logo. I'm going to be doing that. I hope you will do that, John.
And I want all of your viewers and listeners out there to use our Fidelity Month logo. It's a beautiful logo. It features the myrtle leaf, which historically, going all the way back into antiquity, has been the symbol of fidelity. I didn't know that. I have been encouraged.
I posted it for the last two years, 23 and 24, and was really encouraged to see, you know, the movement's growing. There's more people, there were more people in 24 than 23, and what a lot of fun that is. And, you know, you're a professor of politics. Politics. We talk a lot about politics as the way to make America great again, but this is right up Chuck Colson's alley.
You know, these are things: family, community, voluntary associations, what Burke called the little platoons. And he'd love to quote that. And this is what we would call upstream from politics. In other words, These aren't fundamentally political problems that we face, and therefore the solutions aren't fundamentally political solutions. They're upstream from that, aren't they?
Well, we do need political solutions as well. I don't want to downplay politics, John, or deprecate politics in any way. And I want to encourage people to be active politically. It's very important. And I want people to make the self-sacrificial activity.
Contribution of going into politics.
Some of my students, I'm proudest of, are pursuing political careers themselves. We need that, but that's not the whole story, see? That's what people have to understand. It's got to be both. It's got to be the institutions of civil society and the political institutions.
And we need outstanding, dedicated, faithful leadership. In both of those dimensions. Yeah. Well, listen, I love this idea. I've always loved this idea.
I love the fact that you and your team there have created some really low-hanging fruit, ways to get involved. Download the logo. Post it on social media. There's some wonderful reading here on the website, fidelitymonth.com, describing what it is that this is really all about and the idea of fidelity. You've also got some events coming up.
Do you want to talk any about some of the events that people can participate in in the days ahead?
Well, we've got one coming up. You'll find them there on the fidelitymonth.com webpage. We have one coming up that will actually be in the Congress. With some leaders from Congress speaking at the Fidelity Month event. I do wanna encourage, again, all your viewers and listeners, John.
to get in touch with their political leaders. You're a local mayor. Please ask your Mayor to put out a proclamation recognizing June as Fidelity Month. Your state legislator, your member of Congress, your your senator. Write a letter, be in touch, send an email message, go visit them in the office and say, hey, you know, I want you to put out a statement, read a statement endorsing Fidelity Month into the congressional record.
That's the way we can get this movement to grow.
So I'd like more municipalities to endorse Fidelity Month and recognize it. I'd like city councils to do that. I'd like state legislatures to do that. And that happens when the people themselves reach out to the legislators or to the mayors or other public officials and say, You know, you really should do this. Has it happened?
Have we had municipalities? Yeah, we've had a few, and we won't have a lot more this time. We're gonna, we're pushing to get a lot more this time. And again, this is not this is non-partisan. You don't have to be Democrat, Republican, you don't have to be Jewish or Christian, or you know, it doesn't matter.
You know, this unites Americans across all these divides. Isn't that a beautiful thing? It's across the racial divides and across the ethnic divides and across the denominational and religious divides. We can all be part of this as long as we acknowledge, we understand that we're never going to be a great country again unless we do renew our fidelity. To God, to building strong, Marriage-based families into rebuilding the ideal of patriotism, being proud of our nation, and being a contributor.
Not just being a taker, John. That being a giver. John F. Kennedy, right? Here's Democrat, liberal.
John F. Kennedy. in his inaugural address, famously said something we now have forgotten and we have to remember it. What did he say? You're too young to remember.
I was I just did not remember. It was not there, but I know what you're talking about. And what he said was, My fellow citizens, ask not What your country can do for you Ask what you can do for your country.
Now there's a great idea. Let's stop being takers or just takers. and start being givers. What can we do for the United States of America? and renewing our fidelity to God.
To our spouses and families, and to our country and communities, is the best gift that we could give this country. I mean, it's really not hard to imagine, is it? It's way easier than all the things that John Lennon told us to imagine. To imagine. That's exactly.
It's not impossible because we did it for generations. But to think about the political problems. the economic problems, the class divisions that would be solved or just You know, incredibly reduced or mitigated if people were faithful to God and people were faithful to their families. I mean, our friends at the Institute of Family Studies have done incredible work just looking at the hard, fast numbers. You know, you stay married, and this is the long-term potential on average of children.
It just makes all the difference. And Child Manage is the greatest anti-poverty program ever created. And it was God's idea, so that makes sense, right? You don't need to be a string theorist in physics. or have an IQ of 170.
to figure out that people are going to flourish. If you got a mom and a dad. in a loving bond, a marital bond with each other, Bringing up the kids, looking out for each other, looking out for the kids, modeling for the kids what it means. To have a strong marriage. No, we all can't have that.
Disasters happen, and we have to do the best we can when the disasters happen. But this should be the norm and what we aspire to. And again, you don't have to be a genius to figure that out. No, I mean, you can just, everyone can imagine. I don't know what raising the fidelity quotient would mean mathematically, but if we just were a little bit more faithful, the long-term effects would just be, would be amazing.
I love this. I love the fact that individuals can be involved. And if you go to fidelitymonth.com, there's just a very easy link there. Get started as an individual, as an elected official, as a family, as a church. And it's all laid out there.
We mentioned that there is an event there in DC.
So if you're in that area, on June the 9th, there's a webinar, June the 17th, about faithfulness and fidelity and the idea of the vibe shift that we've been talking about.
Some on Breakpoint, there's a description of the symbol of. Fidelity Month, the wreath, prayers that you can pray with your family and your church. I just, and then some endorsements there. I am just thrilled to tell our people about it each and every June. We'll continue to do that.
It's a movement. Chuck Colson always believed that Christianity is not just what you believe, it's how you live out what you believe. And this is low-hanging fruit. This is stuff we can be involved in. This is a collaboration or what he and you guys call it an ecumenism of the trenches.
You know, this is an opportunity for all those things all at the same time. Again, the website's fidelitymonth.com. And so pleased today to talk to Professor Robert George of Princeton University, Professor of Politics, the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Director of the James Madison Program. And the one who came up with this idea to begin with, didn't come up with the idea of fidelity, that's God, but you came up with the idea of Fidelity Month, which is fantastic. And thank you for doing that.
Really happy to have you here on the Breakpoint podcast today.
Well, thank you so much, John. Again, it's just such a pleasure to be back on your show. For those who are interested in my own work, I've got a new book that'll be coming out in just a few weeks. I think you can order it online now. It's called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth, and it's being published by Encounter Books, Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth.
You know, I wasn't planning on talking about that, but I did see that. That's kind of the fruit of your attempt to kind of talk across the aisle and to be faithful to your community, right? I mean, is this the collaboration book with Cornell West? No, that's a different book, which is also out. And the collaboration with Brother Cornell West is called Truth Matters.
So Truth Matters is available now. It's out in both softcover and hardcover. And then my own individual personal book is called Seeking Truth and Speaking Truth. You can order it now for delivery when it's released next month.
Well, listen, maybe we should have you back on here in a month or so to talk about the content of that book. It's really hard to keep up. You do so much. You're among the most, as one writer wrote about Abraham Kuyper, the great statesman, theologian, pastor, that he was an energetic multitasker. And I feel like that is a good way to describe Chuck Colson, a good way to describe you.
Boy, that's a much greater comparison than I deserve with legendary Abraham Kuyper, a statesman and a scholar. That's right. That's right. As are you. And we're grateful for your leadership.
And thank you so much for being a part of today's program. My pleasure, John. Thank you. God bless you.
