Existentialism, Psychotherapy, and the Art of Being Authentically Inauthentic... 'Lia Thomas Has Every Right to Live Authentically’: The Transgender Movement, Existentialism, and the Psychotherapeutic Turn R. Albert Mohler, Jr. But the most fascinating development is reported by Noah Zucker of the Philadelphia Inquirer, right there in Philadelphia, where you have an article with the headline, "Transgender Swimmer Lia Thomas Has Unfair Advantage, 16 Penn"—that is, University of Pennsylvania—"Teammates Say." And we're looking at the fact that 16 women swimmers at the University of Pennsylvania signed this letter, but they did not release their names to the public. And instead the letter was forwarded to the authorities by a former Olympic gold medalist, a woman by the name of Nancy Hogshead-Makar. And she's also the founder of what is known as Champion Women. But the text to the letter is what's mostly important. And here you have women arguing that it is fundamentally unjust, fundamentally unfair. And for that matter, nonsensical that a biological male would be allowed to completely disrupt not only the team, but the entire sport. The letter includes the absolutely astounding section, "We fully support Lia Thomas in her decision to affirm her gender identity and to transition from a man to a woman." So in other words, you have here the absolute surrender to the entire transgender ideology. And one of the things I want to argue as a Christian looking at this is that if you buy the logic, you're going to have to buy the policy. If you buy the logic that a man can become a woman, a woman can become a man. If you're going to change your pronouns and you're going to change the entire structure. And if you're going to assure by means of this letter, that everyone knows you're actually for the trans a revolution, well, you just bought a revolution, but it's the next sentence that is absolutely astounding, "Lia has every right to live her life authentically. However, we must also realize that when it comes to sports competition, that the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone's gender identity." Then this, "Biologically, Lia holds an unfair advantage over competition in the women's category as evidenced by her rankings, that it bounced from number 462 as a male to number 1 as a female." That's what I had not seen before rankings in which this individual a biological male was number 462 who competing as a male, but is now number 1, competing as a female. But in worldview analysis, one of the phrases that came earlier in that quote is really important where the writers of this letter said this, "Lia has every right to live her life authentically." Again, that's exactly how it's written. The word authentically is the biggest in issue there. What does it mean to live authentically in order to understand that we have to go back and think about how the world view of the Western world was shaped during the 20th century, by a couple of movements. And most importantly, those come down to the French philosophical movement known as existentialism, which wasn't limited to France and the modern regime of psychotherapy. And when the two of them are combined, you basically have a major engine for the modern world, as we know it. And you hear for example, many who claim a transgender identity saying they did so in order to honor their authenticity, where does that come from? Well, I mentioned existentialism. Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, others, Simone de Beauvoir in especially, the period before, and even with greater influence after the Second World War. The existentialists were very secular. Sartre was very clear about his rejection of traditional Christian morality and of Christianity itself. He declared himself very much an atheist and thus a materialist. He was also inclined towards Marxism, but the most important thing to recognize is that the existentialist said that the only meaning in life--there is no objective truth, there is no Creator--so the only objective meaning we can find in life is by seizing our experience of existence and our thrownness into any existential situation and discovering by looking within our authentic self, our authenticity, living out our authenticity, through the making of decisions and a world in which there is no fundamentally objectively right or objectively wrong decision. It is an expression of our existence and of our individuality finding in the crucible of decision making in this thrownness, our authenticity. Now it should be obvious that's a direct rejection of biblical Christianity and of course of the Creator's sovereign right to determine the meaning of his creation and of his right to identify us and tell us who we are. It's not a coincidence that Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir who were romantically linked were not particularly limited to each other. Let's just say, nor was she particularly limited to men.That was all a part of finding her own authenticity. That should tell you something right there. But then that second source of this ideal or ideology of authenticity I mentioned is the psychotherapeutic revolution where based upon many, the same fundamental assumptions, the idea was that by therapeutic means by the use of therapy talk therapy, other therapeutic approaches, the individual, the patient could come to terms with his or her authentic self and then live out bravely the authenticity they discovered within themselves. Well, you look at that and you see the confluence of French existentialism, and you say, that sounds very remote. No, it's not. It became mainstreamed throughout much of film throughout much of culture. And it really did get mainstreamed in the larger society. Existentialist ideas became very much a part of the furniture of the secular mind in the 20th century, and the psychotherapeutic revolution had impact not only on the secular world, but lamentably also within the Christian world, where many Christians just advocated our understanding of sin and self and of all kinds of behaviors and problems to the psychotherapeutic worldview. But it is a good occasion for us to recognize that at least in part, that's why you have so many people identifying as transgender saying that they're living in out their authenticity. And you see even these 16 swimmers who are saying that Lia Thomas as identified in this article should not be allowed to compete as a woman. Nonetheless, they are emphatic about the fact that they do believe in the transgender revolution and they want to go on to say, "Lia has every right to live her life authentically." But my argument is, if you accept the ideology of the transgender revolution, you're going to have to accept the new rules of that very same revolution. The New York Post has also reported that at least some of these women's swimmers are complaining about the fact that Lia Thomas as identified in the article is changing in the women's locker room. Well, very clearly what becomes evident is what I will simply say is a biological distinction that is continuing. And at least one of the swimmer said since she still presents male and still dates women, this can lead to some awkwardness in the locker room. Well, I can only guess that's true, but I have to come back to the fact that if you do accept the ideology, ladies and gentleman, you have bought the new policy.
Comparing and Contrasting the United States of America and Canada: So Truckers Are Rebelling in Canada? COVID Frustration and What the Trucker Protests in Canada Tell Us R. Albert Mohler, Jr. We're going to look today at the trucker protests in Canada. They started in Ottawa, the nation's capital. And the big fact is this kind of thing really doesn't happen in Canada. The fact that it is happening in Canada is big news on both sides of America's Northern border. Now, let's just step back for a moment and say that the United States should be incredibly thankful for the fact that we share so much of North America and this continent in land mass with the nation of Canada. Both Canada in the main and the United States in the main represent the English speaking tradition that comes from what is generally now the United Kingdom. But beyond that, a shared European tradition and a shared tradition of Western civilization. And that has been to the great benefit of the United States. And I would argue also for Canada over the course of the last 200 plus years. But the historical differences, the differences in settlement and even during the age of exploration between the nation now known as Canada and the nation now known as the United States means two different experiences on so many different issues. The most important difference is that the United States broke from great Britain in a revolution. Something Canada profoundly has not done. In one sense, this leads to a difference in the character of the two countries. America prizes a sense of revolution as a part of our national creed and identity. We were birthed in a liberation in a revolution for freedom. But as you're looking at Canada, you are looking at a contrary narrative. Canada is an independent nation but it still has status with the United Kingdom and with the British monarchy as part of the Commonwealth. Canada still has a governor general appointed by the British Crown who is in some sense understood to be the representation of that national identity that is rooted in Britain. And thus as you're looking at Canada, there is no president, as you would have a head of state even in a country like Germany which also has a chancellor. Instead, Canada has a prime minister in a parliamentary system of Western democracy. And you're just looking at two different narratives. You're looking at an ethos distinction between the United States and Canada, and you're also looking at a very different cultural history just looking at say, a couple of things. Number one, I can remember when years ago a Canadian historian said to me that we share as Americans and Canadians so much history except just thinking about American religious history, Canada never had one, much less two great awakenings in the same reshaping of culture pattern that you saw in the United States of America and in our national history. Canada has to deal with some other complexities that the United States does not have in terms of our constitutional system. For example, as you're looking at Canada, you're looking at one province, Quebec, which was more than any other settled by the French and still considered a part of the French empire far beyond what most people might recognize. And you have had movements where Quebec separatism going back for a matter of decades and even encouraged by the then president of France, Charles de Gaulle in an infamous visit. Or you could say famous in Quebec and infamous in most of the rest of Canada. Thus Canada is officially bilingual and in some sense bi cultural, you have a lot of other differences between Canada and the United States that have to do with patterns of national expansion and also of population dispersion and you have the reality that like in the United States, you have more rural areas that are generally more conservative than the more urban areas. And like in the United States, you have now a concentration an increasing concentration of the population in the metropolitan areas rather than in the more rural and agrarian areas. In Canada there is a remarkable distinction between the east and the west. And in this case you could think of something politically in the United States more like the north and the south in the sense that the west in Canada is more conservative than the east. Now, there are exceptions to everything you do have Austin right there in Texas. Similarly, you have the province of British Columbia there on the Pacific coast, that's in the west. But then again, that goes back to something we talk about regularly and that is that the closer you get to a coast, whether it's the Pacific or the Atlantic, the closer you get to a city, the closer you get to a campus, the more politically and culturally liberal and the more religiously secular the culture becomes. So just thinking about that reality in terms of culture and in politics, you could say that British Columbia is actually probably closer in some ways to the American states of Washington and Oregon than they are to some other provinces in Canada as you think about some of these patterns. Like most countries, Canadians also have a long memory. And that means that some of them at least remember as taught in history that in the war of 1812, which remember was in the main a war between the United States and Britain, there was more to it, especially on the European continent. But as you're thinking about the war of 1812, the Americans at one point thought that we were doing so well that we would basically expand the borders of the United States to include Canada. Didn't quite turn out that way, but at least many Canadians remember, that it was the thought. But what we need to remember here is that even though the United States and Canada share so much including a basically extremely peaceful, one of the most historically peaceful borders in all of international history, for that we should be so thankful. And even though our cultures have many similarities, our political systems and our cultures also have differences. And one of the differences in general has been Canadians don't do protests and Americans do. Americans actually do a lot of them at times. If you just think about all the headlines over the years about all the protests in American cities or in American territories over this or over that, that's a lot of protests. Protest are very American, not so much Canadian. It's not so much that Canadians don't get outrage. It's just that they channel that through other forms and protests are considered well, it may well be that many Canadians think that protests are just too American. But evidently the protest has caught on in Canada because huge international and headline news have been telling us about trucker protests, particularly in Canada's capital, Ottawa. But also now spreading to the American border, particularly at crossing such as the Ambassador Bridge that connects Canada and the United States at Detroit and Windsor.