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Culture War Roundup for the week of June 16, 2025

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Why doesn't Ted Cruz know the population of Iran? And what is with him generally? Or the whole upper echelons of the US govt?

I reference a recent Tucker Carlson interview with Cruz, where it turns out he didn't know said population (and has since responded with an AI meme image of Tucker asking Luke the population of the Death Star).

Turns out that the population of Iran is 92 million, I thought it was around 80. 80 would be a fairly reasonable answer. Even Yemen is surprisingly populous, around 41 million. Fun game to try - estimate the population of various countries in these areas.

I thought Ted Cruz was supposed to be super-smart, wouldn't it be natural to read up on Iran? He is on the Subcommittee on Near East, South Asia, Central Asia, and Counterterrorism. It's also relevant to US strategic choices and his particular love of Israel. Knowing about the subpopulations and relative size of the Azeris, Kurds and similar would be relevant to regime change, which is his professed goal:

Senator Ted Cruz has explicitly stated that he wants regime change in Iran. He said on Fox News, “I think it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change,” and that there is “no redeeming the ayatollah” regime. Cruz has called for collapsing the Iranian regime, comparing it to the Cold War-era strategy used against the Soviet Union, and has criticized the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, pushing for stronger actions against Iran.

To his credit he does know that Iran is Persian and predominantly Shia. And maybe being on a bunch of other subcommittees means he has to divide up his time and energy in all these different areas. But it's not like Tucker is asking really sophisticated questions about the position and integration of Azeri elites in the Tehran power structure. That really should be dealt with by an expert diplomat. But senators are supposed to be making strategic decisions, one has to have some base of knowledge to decide upon different courses of action.

Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.

Also Cruz said to Tucker "I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States”. How would this help in the context of a hostile interview, does he think that's a helpful thing to say? I can only imagine that Cruz thinks this is a winning issue, he wants to play hard rather than go down the wishy-washy 'Judeo-Christian' values route. Is declaring your devotion to a foreign country really that popular in America?

Trump also posted this somewhat ominous diatribe from Mike Huckabee (pastor and ambassador to Israel) praising Trump's divine prominence, his position similar to 'Truman in 1945' and how he has to listen to god and the angels only... https://x.com/Mondoweiss/status/1934999328583713096/photo/1

This episode reminds me of how George W Bush apparently didn't know of the difference between Sunni and Shia Islam until after deciding to invade, he brought up Gog and Magog when trying to persuade Chirac to join the war. Maybe that's false, some have disputed it. Or how Trump apparently won't read any long extracts of text and demands pictures. Maybe that's also false, lots of stories have been made about Trump policy. It's known that Biden didn't know whether people were alive or dead or what was happening much of the time. Large swathes of the Democrats can't tell the difference between men and women.

Here's another one I just found from another US congressman: https://x.com/VoteRandyFine/status/1839686465820766542

There is a reason the first time I shook @netanyahu‘s hand, I did not wash it until I could touch the heads of my children.

That's just weird!

There are serious structural problems with how America selects its politicians if this is the calibre of talent that's drawn into positions of great power. At the risk of sounding like an edgy atheist fighting a war everyone's tired of and moved on from years ago, surely theology should have no place in grand strategy. It's normal to have colourful characters in politics, some corruption, some old people who don't know what's going on, a certain level of lobbying. But this seems to be on a qualitatively different level, with serious results.

Cruz also thinks that the Bible requires Christians to support the nation of Israel, which is somewhat non-mainstream in theology: "Where does my support for Israel come from, number 1 we're biblically commanded to support Israel". Tucker tries to ask 'do you mean the government of Israel' and Cruz says the nation of Israel, as if to say it's common-sense that the nation of Israel as referred to in the Bible is the same as the state of Israel today. It seems like he's purposely conflating the dual meanings of nation as ethnic group and nation as state, which is a stupid part of English.

Also Cruz said to Tucker "I came into Congress 13 years ago with the stated intention of being the leading defender of Israel in the United States”. How would this help in the context of a hostile interview, does he think that's a helpful thing to say? I can only imagine that Cruz thinks this is a winning issue, he wants to play hard rather than go down the wishy-washy 'Judeo-Christian' values route. Is declaring your devotion to a foreign country really that popular in America?

I have so many layers of problems with this logic. Even starting by accepting that "the bible tells me so" is a good way to set up foreign policy, let's take a second and think through a few implications:

a) What kind of arrogant or ignorant person thinks that the verse can be interpreted simply and literally?

Ted Cruz says that in Genesis (well, he didn't know that, but that's where it is) God commands us to bless and aid Israel. But much of the Old Testament consists of God punishing Israel, often with foreign invasion and raiding. God is constantly using foreigners as a tool to punish Israel, especially when Israel is lead by a corrupt, selfish, venal, dishonest, cruel man who refuses to give up power at the appointed time. God seems to cause Israel to lose as often he causes them to win, to be honest as a genre-savvy gentile if I were living in Old-Testament-Superstition-Land, I'd probably stay out of it. God, to my knowledge, never punished anyone for ignoring Israel. God's blessing to Israel is as often the blessing of discipline as it is the blessing of good things, and I sure wouldn't want to get between the Father and the child he intends on spanking. Getting involved with how exactly God is seeking to bless Israel seems like a real Oracle of Delphi situation!

In fact, the one clear example where God blesses an outside nation for its aid of Israel would be...Cyrus the Great of Persia. So perhaps we can intuit that the Persians are a nation specially chosen of God to chastise and discipline Israel? It seems odd that Ted Cruz is so certain he knows God's will. But let's accept for the moment that we are obligated to help Israel:

b) Which Israel?

Is Israel its government? Is Israel the global diaspora of Jews? Is Israel the population within the borders of Israel, regardless of religion, provided they descend from Abraham? This might seem like trivia, but I'm pretty sure the verse that Ted Cruz is citing is Genesis 12:3 which reads in the ESV:

I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Which of course brings up the question: Who the fuck is you? Frequently this is interpreted, and put up on billboards by Israel lobbyists, as "blessing Israel." (Where's your Sola Scriptura, Ted?) But God makes no mention of a state or government. The more natural interpretation of the phrase (leaving aside the new covenant that "you" is the Church, which is pretty obviously correct and righteous to me) would be all the descendants of Abraham are to be blessed. I would certainly offer no privilege to Abraham's descendants who have persisted in one type of religious error over another.

But let's accept that the state of Israel, as represented by its government, is what is to be blessed, let's consider:

c) Is it blessing someone to help them commit a sin?

Some years ago I was the best man in a very relgious Evangelical wedding. Before the ceremony, the pastor gathered up all the groomsmen, and we prayed and we put our hands on the groom, and the pastor told us that our obligation was not finished when he said I Do or when the tables were cleared up, that we had taken on an ongoing sacred obligation, to bless our friend, to bless his union, to come to his aid to keep his marriage together and to keep him on the straight and narrow. I said Amen.

Today, he called me, and told me that his wife is cheating on him, that he knows where she is the guy she is there with, that he's coming to my house because he needs a gun today so he can go kill them both.

Does my sacred vow to help him and bless him obligate me to give him the gun? Am I violating my oath if I ask him any questions other than "what caliber?" Ted Cruz would seem to say yes, you are obligated to bless him and that means helping him do whatever it is he wants to do. Ted would probably say "Do you need a ride?"

I would say that's an insane interpretation or friendship, and an even more insane interpretation of blessing. I would say that my obligation in this scenario is to restrain my friend, by physical force if necessary, to prevent him from committing a horrible life-ruining and soul-damning sin. I would say that my obligation extends so far as to warn his wife, to call our mutual friends and his pastor to help me talk him down, or even if no other means were available to call the police, to prevent him from committing murder. Friendship means protecting your friends, and that includes protecting them from committing mortal sins.

In my life, when I've had a friend who was in a really bad place, I've gone to his house with a bunch of friends and told him hey let me take your guns to store them for a few months, to keep you from doing anything you might not live to regret. That is what I think friendship is.

But ok, let's say I do give him the gun, that still doesn't answer...

d) Is it blessing someone to help them make a mistake?

Let's alter the hypothetical above: accepting ad arguendo that I am obligated to give my friend a gun to kill the man that cuckolded him and his cheating wife, what if my friend's wife cheated on him with JD Vance, and my friend has no realistic chance of taking my 1911 and getting past the Secret Service (ok that may be easier than previously thought...) and killing Vance. Am I still obligated to give him the gun?

This is where knowing the population of Iran is a useful piece of information. At least within an order of magnitude! It allows you to faithfully discharge your obligation to Bless Israel with, for example, wise counsel! If what Israel needs is advice, it doesn't help them to give them weapons to help them get themselves into trouble.

I just don't see how evangelical politicians can act like the bible command leads directly and easily to using bunker busters on Iran.

I'm kind of wondering if Ted Cruz knows all of that, and is simply using "meh bible" as an excuse to do what he wants for other reasons... (ie, i'm wondering if Ted Cruz has been compromised by Israeli spies)

compromised by Israeli spies

Not being compromised, seems like it might be a shorter list.

TBH for whatever reason evangelicals tend to have nearly blind support for Israel, and that’s long been the GOP base of support. I believe this is why Israel is seen as the one country to support here. It’s more pander than anything, and not too bad so long as it doesn’t have to many negative effects on security.

Israeli spies

They're not even spies. It's just AIPAC.

They're the same picture.

You raise excellent points.

I would add that in two millennia of Christianity, the amount of blessing that the Christians bestow on Israel (e.g. the Jewish diaspora) seems pretty limited, on the level of "unlike pagans, we will suffer you to live on our lands as second class citizens (until we turn extra faithful and kick you out or murder you as a warm-up exercise for a crusade)".

I think one thing which might have changed this attitude is Christian Zionism:

Christian Zionism is a political and religious ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with biblical prophecies transmitted through the Old Testament: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant—the eschatological "Gathering of Israel"—is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.

I am by no means an expert on Christian prophecy -- my knowledge of that link was mostly due to horror movies and alt-history novels -- neither of which are known to be super reliable, but it seems that a significant fraction of the evangelicals believe that the second coming (optionally followed by the end of the world, seals breaking and all?) will happen Really Soon Now, and that the Jews being in control of the holy lands is a prerequisite to that for some reason.

More pragmatically, Christians have long cared about the holy lands, which was generally what the Crusades were fought about. From a modern Christian point of view, Israel controlling Bethlehem and Jerusalem is tolerable -- Christian pilgrims are allowed and generally not hassled too much. If the ayatollah regime took over Israel, that would likely change for the worse.

blessing that the Christians bestow on Israel (e.g. the Jewish diaspora) seems pretty limited

They're prayed for on Good Friday that they might repent their sins and find salvation through Jesus. What better blessing is there?

O merciful God, who hast made all men, and hatest nothing that thou hast made, nor wouldest the death of any sinner, but rather that he be converted and live; Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics, and take from them all ignorance, hardness of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and so fetch them home, blessed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be saved among the remnant of the true Israelites, and be made one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

What liturgical book is that from?

1549 Book of Common Prayer

Though the 1662 Book of Common Prayer is much the same

O Merciful God, who has made all men, and hate ſt nothing that thou ha ſt made, nor de ſire ſt the death of a ſinner, but rather that he ſhould be converted and live: Have mercy upon all Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Hereticks, and take from them all ignorance, hardne ſs of heart, and contempt of thy Word; and ſo fetch them home, bleſſed Lord, to thy flock, that they may be ſaved among the remnant of the true I ſraelites, and be made one fold under one ſhepherd, Je ſus Chri ſt our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

Interesting question that one. The tradcath version before any liturgical changes would be:

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that Almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts;[a] so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. ['Amen' is not responded, nor is said 'Let us pray', or 'Let us kneel', or 'Arise', but immediately is said:] Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same Jesus Christ our Lord, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.[9]

With partial liturgical changes it is:

Let us pray also for the faithless Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. [pause for silent prayer] Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost not exclude from thy mercy even Jewish faithlessness: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.

I believe it's to do with dispensationalism and particularly with Cyrus Scofield?

For the unfamiliar, dispensationalism is a theological belief - some, probably including me, would say it's a heresy - that says that God divides the history of the world up into several phases. These phases are called 'dispensations', and the conditions, both material and moral, of the world depend on the dispensation in question. Thus what is required of people in the age of grace may be different to that in the age of law, and then also different to that in the age of the church, and so on. Great events in the world may mark shifts between dispensations.

As far as that goes it may seem harmless. It's unbiblical, but if you want to invent a scheme to guide you through your understanding of history, why not?

The thing is, Scofield felt that the nation of Israel played a role throughout the various dispensations, that particular promises to it endured, and most tellingly, he identified 'Israel' in the biblical sense with a visible nation even down to the modern day (which for him was the late 19th century). This predates the establishment of the state of Israel, but Scofield was a Zionist, albeit due to his understanding of Christian prophecy.

This is in itself a somewhat unbiblical move. Notably in Romans 9, the apostle Paul distinguishes between those that are Israelite 'according to the flesh', and those included and justified on the basis of faith. He asserts that 'not all Israelites truly belong to Israel, and not all of Abraham's children are his true descendants', but rather membership of the true Israel is to be reckoned on the basis of faith. In this you may see parallels to Matthew 3:9 and John 8:39, where both John the Baptist and Jesus appear to place one's deeds and one's character above one's descent according to the flesh. So whatever it is New Testament authors are doing with Israel as a concept, it's not simply identifiable with a hereditarian group or an ethnicity, much less a political structure.

I understand Cruz to be roughly in the Scofield-ian camp, but this camp would not be recognisable to most historical Christians, including many around the world today. Cruz has a weird obsession with Israel that doesn't play well with everyone - famously he was booed off-stage by actual Middle Eastern Christians back in 2014.

For what it's worth my understanding, from a Christian perspective, is that the state of Israel is, theologically speaking, completely irrelevant. It is of no greater or lesser value than any other nation on Earth. There is no special reason to support it and no special reason to oppose it. The biblical category of Israel - and the covenant with Israel - is continuous with and contained within the new covenant of Christ, particularly insofar as Christ himself becomes a kind of microcosm or representation of Israel itself. The promises made to the Jewish people according to the flesh remain valid so far as they go, but where they were always intended to go was towards the redemption of the world in Christ. As such, insofar as contemporary Jews hold to those promises, that is good, but the promises are incomplete without their fulfilment. And any further that direction lies a more complicated discussion about what evangelism means in the admittedly unusual context of evangelising to Jews, but we don't need to get into that now.

This is an excellent summary. I'd add that while dispensationalism is common among American evangelicals, it's losing ground.

Dispensationalists often frustrate me, but I wouldn't call them heretics unless they move beyond dispensationalism into dual covenant theology. Dual covenant theology holds that while gentiles are saved only through faith in Christ, Jews can be saved by keeping the Mosaic Law. Since this is approximately the least evangelical take it is possible to have, and since dispensationalism is an evangelical phenomenon to begin with, this is mercifully rare.

The one thing I have never grasped about Christian Zionism is implication that God is waiting for humanity to gather all 7 dragon balls before Jesus can be summoned. I'm pretty sure the Second Coming is going to happen when God plans it to, and that human efforts to bring it about are at best ridiculous and at worst extremely presumptuous. Jesus clearly says that nobody knows the hour or the day, so what's the point? I'm genuinely curious, do Christian Zionists have some theological justification or rationalization for this?

I grew up around many Christian Zionists. I think they would agree that "the Second Coming is going to happen when God plans it to" but would add that (1) God puts his plans into motion largely through the actions of people and (2) the Bible sets forth the outline of what that plan looks like. Because people have free will, it's therefore important for them to choose to follow God's plan as laid out in the Bible.

To them, your critique would sound a little like if someone said: "What's so bad about murder? Everything happens according to God's plan, therefore if someone commits murder that must be God's plan."

"What's so bad about murder? Everything happens according to God's plan, therefore if someone commits murder that must be God's plan."

Don't Christians say this all the time? When good or bad things happen, it's "all part of God's plan". Either God exerts agency in this world or he does not.

Christians generally believe humans have free will that enables them to act contrary to God's will. Those bad actions are still "part of God's plan" in the sense that he anticipates them and "plans around them" so to speak, but those sinful actions are "contrary to God's plan" in the sense that he does not want them to happen.

It is the ISIS ideology of building a caliphate and invoking the return of Jesus. The idea of commanding god and ordering Jesus back to Earth is an antithesis to what pretty much 99% of Christians throughout history have believed. It is a big part of the rift between Al Qaeda and ISIS in which Al Qaeda considered ISIS to be completely out of control.

I think the whole idea is frankly pagan. I don’t think it’s very Christian to say that God has to do anything we decide he should, and the idea smacks of magical thinking.

Iran is actually pretty friendly to apostolic Christianity, so long as it doesn’t proselytize. Hezbollah controlled Jerusalem would probably maintain Christian religious sites unde the current arrangement.

Excellent post. I do have to say though, if my friend rocked up at my house, with my gun in his hand and said 'Dude, I just shot my wife and that prick she cheated on me with, the cops are coming, hide me!' and when I looked hesitant he said 'hey man if I end up in prison I might accidentally talk about the cache you have buried in the backyard', I would feel obligated to help him out, destroy the gun and give him an alibi. Not for his sake, for my own.

But then I would also hate my former friend and never trust him again and do my best to cut him out of my life asap.