Allen Jackson NOW

Allen Jackson: I'm excited today. I get to introduce you to a new friend of mine. In fact, we're going to get acquainted together while the cameras are rolling. For those who don't know my guest, he is a veteran. We'll talk more about that—U.S. Army Special Forces, Green Beret. He has impressive credentials. He served in the legislature in Virginia. You've been in the political arena, the military, the podcasting world. You are a tough guy.

Nick Freitas: Politics is like war, but without any honor.

Allen Jackson: That'll work. Just so I don't get busy and forget, you've got a new book. It's called *The Man Book*. What's it about?

Nick Freitas: I basically talk about a lot of the things I've learned being a man, a husband, a father, a soldier, and in elected office. I didn't design it to be a ten-step guide to being the best man. It was more of, these are just things I've learned, oftentimes the hard way, about being a man. If I had to do it all over again, these are the sort of things I'd want to know.

Allen Jackson: You looked at all your buddies and made a book about what not to do based on their lives? Did you tell their names? That's what I want to know.

Nick Freitas: No, I'm generally praising the people I thought were good influences. There is one guy in there whom I don't name, but the advice he gave to me about raising daughters I found to be very helpful and useful.

Allen Jackson: After 9/11, you joined the Army Special Forces, Green Berets?

Nick Freitas: Yes. I had actually enlisted in the Army right out of high school in 1998, and I thought I was going to get out. I had been in the 82nd Airborne Division, which was a great unit, but I didn't have a great deal of love for the peacetime Army. There was a lot of running around and painting rocks when I thought I was going to be doing other things.

I remember I was going to get out and my wife, who's the sensible one in the marriage, was like, "Well, we really haven't saved any money because you're a private," so there was no money to save. She asked what would happen if we reenlisted. I told her if we reenlisted, for the first one you can kind of go anywhere you want. I asked if she wanted to go to Italy or Hawaii. She wanted to go to Hawaii. I reenlisted, got to Hawaii, and about four months later 9/11 happened.

I looked at her and said, "Well, I know what I'm doing now." I ended up volunteering for Special Forces after I saw the operations they were conducting in the early days in Afghanistan. I had the privilege of serving in the 1st Special Forces Group and did a couple of tours over in Iraq.

Allen Jackson: The military in general feels like there's a complete tone change with this administration and Secretary Hegseth.

Nick Freitas: It's funny because JD Vance was an E-4 when he left the Marine Corps, which is a corporal or a specialist in the Army. We used to refer to the "E-4 mafia" in the United States, and there are a lot of things JD Vance will do every once in a while where we're like, "That's E-4 mafia stuff right there."

Then Pete, too. Pete very much had his experience in the military shaped by being a junior officer, and then I think he got out as a major. He was an infantry officer, and so that's a combat-focused MOS. That's why you see Pete focusing on things like you're going to be in shape. Our job in the military is to kill people and break things. We're not a petri dish for social engineering. Ultimately, that's what we do here.

Allen Jackson: I like clarity. It's good. I don't want a military that's an expert in DEI. It doesn't help anybody.

Nick Freitas: No. I remember watching General Milley, who was Chief of the Joint Chiefs. You see the Special Forces and Ranger tabs and all that, and you're very impressed. The thing that was shocking to me is that Special Forces is a fairly small community. If you don't know someone, you know someone who knows someone.

He was the first guy I ever went into our Special Forces chat rooms and asked, "Who served with this guy, and does anybody have anything nice to say about him?" Typically what you'll find is someone saying, "Well, when he was a team leader he was a pretty good guy," or "When he was a company commander I thought he was pretty decent, but then he got political." Everyone was like, "Nope, he was political from the beginning," and that's what he is—a political creature.

But when Pete got in there, he ruffled some feathers. You saw these articles saying senior leadership has lost faith in Pete Hegseth. Senior leadership? You mean the people that oversaw the withdrawal from Afghanistan? I'm thrilled that those guys are mad at him because we need to clean house. Whenever you're cleaning house, are there things that you do or things that you say that potentially ruffle other feathers of people who are actually decent guys? Sure.

But my response to them would be, "How about you put on your big boy pants and recognize that we have a huge problem to solve right now?" Sometimes you might get offended in the course of actions that are required to follow it. The proper response there is to say, "I support what's going on, but sir, maybe we should consider this or that," not to do anonymous calls to the *Washington Post* to complain about the new Secretary of War telling you to get in shape.

And by the way, he'll do the workout with you and kick your butt. You saw this other thing they lied about where they said, "Look, Pete Hegseth can't even bench press two plates." No, Pete was actually engaged in a multiple-exercise, multiple-level event where you're supposed to reach muscle failure. Yes, when you reach muscle failure, you can't bench press as much. This just goes to the lengths they're trying to go to defame this guy.

Allen Jackson: You don't think the media would report something that wasn't completely accurate or unflattering?

Nick Freitas: No, that would be against their journalistic integrity. I learned a long time ago—people ask me how I got involved in social media—I learned the hard way in the legislature that the press will deliberately lie about what I say or what I do. The only way I could explain what I actually believed was to go directly to the people.

If the mainstream press is trashing you, there's a good chance you're doing something right. I think on the whole Pete has been excellent for the military and restoring its sense of mission, purpose, and camaraderie.

Allen Jackson: I agree. It seems to me it's going to take more than Trump's administration to really bring the full change that needs to happen. It's really important what happens in the midterms and then in '28 to keep the momentum that we've started to establish.

Nick Freitas: The midterms are going to be essential because if we lose control of the House, then all we're going to see for the next two years is a bunch of tribunals against the President and calls for impeachment. You're going to see active measures because the House controls the budget to defund DHS, to defund ICE specifically, and to probably try to hold a bunch of committees and hearings against individual ICE agents in order to create a culture where law enforcement is afraid to actually do its job if it looks bad on TV.

The whole purpose of the left with people like Renee Good or Alex Pretty was to elevate the temperature to a point where they could get something that looks bad on TV so they could then come back and say, "Look how horrendous this is." If we don't have good conservative leadership past the midterms, then you're going to see a very different next two years.

Allen Jackson: I've had multiple conversations across different departments in the last few weeks where there are either executive orders or Pete signs some order, but the bureaucracy is doing everything in their power to not comply. They have a tremendous impact. They can slow things down significantly.

Nick Freitas: That's why the Loper decision you just saw in the Supreme Court was so essential. What it actually did is it reinforced what Trump was saying through what they call Schedule F. To give everyone a quick preview here—and I say this as someone that served in elected office and saw how influential bureaucracies can be—most people have this impression that the President is the Chief Executive, so anybody in the executive branch he can hire or fire. No. He has hiring and firing authority over a minuscule amount of the federal government.

What Trump was trying to do with one of his executive orders was say, "Look, I can't run the federal government if I can't fire people that refuse to actually do what the President says." It's not like he was opening up the entire federal government to be hired or fired at will. He was largely opening up things like GS-15 positions. There are 15 positions in the GS scale. He was talking about senior guys that had the ability to impact policy by essentially not doing what they were told.

Allen Jackson: They're given a directive, refuse to do it, and yet you can't touch them.

Nick Freitas: The whole reason they set up this civil service thing is because once upon a time, people would run for President and they would offer people federal jobs as favors to get elected. But this was back when the number of federal jobs was minuscule. Now, it's obviously hundreds of thousands or millions of positions.

Donald Trump is essentially saying, "If I'm the Chief Executive, I get to hire or fire people that are essential to me carrying out my duties and responsibilities." Thank God we had people like Justice Alito and Justice Roberts who essentially said that the executive branch falls under the purview of the Executive. A lot of people are concerned about the "spoils system." You're right, that is a legitimate concern. Do you know what's a really good way to make that not a legitimate concern?

Significantly reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy in accordance with Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution and the limited and enumerated powers of the federal government. If you do that, all of a sudden you get what the Founders intended. I am so sick of hearing about the poor federal bureaucrat. The federal government is way too big. What DOGE uncovered was—I wish the only thing DOGE uncovered was fraud, waste, and abuse.

The most pernicious thing DOGE actually uncovered was that our tax dollars were being used in wholly inappropriate ways to push left-wing ideology, not just in this country but around the world. Now that all of a sudden that funding has gone away, you're telling me that Planned Parenthood can't keep their clinics open unless they get to steal my tax dollars in order to use it to kill babies? You're telling me, "Who will fund the trans operas in Colombia?" I don't know, but it shouldn't be me.

Allen Jackson: I have a question. How can Christians be so stinking naive? They look at us and say we have to separate the church and state, and we say, "Oh, thank you," and we demurely withdraw from the stage. They're taking our tax dollars and funding an ideology that's every bit as much a religion as Christianity. It's the same kind of adherence. But somehow Christians—it's like their brain turns to mush, or we don't have the courage to stand up for what we believe.

Nick Freitas: Christians send their kids off to be educated by leftist elites who train the faith and the conservatism right out of them. Voddie Baucham said it best: "You can't send your kids to Caesar for their education and be surprised when they come home as Romans." It's the same thing here. When someone says, "Separation of church and state," I like to look at them and ask, "Who told you that?" Was it God? Did God say that He's not interested in civics?

You didn't hear it from the Hebrew prophets. It wasn't from the prophets, wasn't from God, wasn't from Christ, wasn't from Paul, wasn't from the disciples. So who did you learn it from? Their response will be, "Isn't it in the Constitution?" No. What the Constitution says is the federal government shall not make any law establishing a religion.

God is the only entity in the universe that has the moral authority to command you to believe in Him, and yet He gave you the agency to choose otherwise. So yes, government should not assume for itself a power that God does not grant to government and that God does not exercise on His own behalf. I don't want the government to impose religion. Does that mean religion cannot play a part in civics? No.

One of the dumbest things I will hear people say—and oftentimes it comes from Christians—is, "Well, Nick, you can't legislate morality." I've spent ten years in the legislature. Let me see how many bills I voted on that were not predicated on a moral premise. Zero. They were all predicated on a moral premise. So are you honestly telling me that Christians are not allowed to have a say in what the moral premise constitutes? Who do we hand that off to? Secular atheists? That's who I want?

I want the people that have no objective standard for determining truth or morality to be the sole people that can issue opinions on what our laws should look like? That is so mind-numbingly stupid. You wonder how Christians come to this place. It's being cowards.

Allen Jackson: Yes. I've spent my life in the Christian world. We'd rather go have a polite Bible study about Paul in first-century culture than talk about twenty-first-century culture and our need to stand up.

Nick Freitas: I want to look at Antonio Gramsci. He was an Italian communist in the '30s, and he essentially said, "I want what Karl Marx wanted. I want a stateless, classless society where no God and atheism and no traditional norms exist. I want all of that." But Karl Marx clearly got something wrong because it's not happening the way Marx said it would happen. So what did Gramsci offer as an alternative? He said if you want to overthrow Christian bourgeois capitalist culture, you need Marxist culture.

Marxist culture is the sort of society where the culturally shaping institutions elevate Marxism as opposed to Christianity. How do you do that? You infiltrate the culturally shaping institutions, and you either utilize them for their social capital that they possess, but then you manipulate them to either demoralize the culture as it currently exists or to reshape the culture in the direction you want it to go. You're either trying to subvert the cultural norms or take over the culture, but both of them with the eventual goal of taking over the culture.

If we look at the culturally shaping institutions, which are generally associated with the family, the church, politics, arts and entertainment, media, and academia or education—is the church dominant? Is biblical worldview dominant in education? No. Is it dominant in journalism? No. Is it dominant in Hollywood? No. Is it dominant in your kids' public school? No. Is it dominant in politics? No. Is it dominant in the family? For a fraction of the families.

Is it dominant in the church? For about 60% of it. So then why are you confused that you're living in the sort of country now where grown men and women can throw off their clothes, get naked in front of children, and dance around in a fountain in front of them in Seattle and face zero criminal charges? I'll tell you why. It's because while you were telling your kids that it's not polite to talk about religion and politics in society, they were telling their kids that's all you have to talk about.

Because they don't have enough of their kids, they realized they can't win elections unless they educate your kids. Now we find ourselves in this situation, and I'm still looking at Christians that think, "Well, this is just not our province." You weren't taught that by scripture.

Allen Jackson: Let's do this differently because I get agitated when we start down this road, and it's easy to sound like I'm scolding. I don't think that's where we are. I don't think we need to get all the Christians in a room and shake our fingers at them. I think we've got to get in a room and say it's a new season. Noah built the boat and had a temporary zoo, but God doesn't call all of us to do that. Moses went up a mountain and came down with the law and had to shape the people into a crew.

We don't all do that. Samuel was the leader of Israel as a judge, and he traveled around. David was the leader of Israel, and he was a king with a palace and a capital city. Isaiah had a message for the king of Israel that said the Assyrians are coming, but I'm going to send them back home; you don't have to worry about them. Jeremiah said the Babylonians are coming, and there's not a dang thing you can do about it.

The messages aren't the same in every generation. The gospel is the same, and it doesn't change, but the messaging around the gospel has to change for the season. We're in a different season. We don't live in a culture any longer dominated by a biblical worldview or a Judeo-Christian set of values. We can't huddle in our churches and have polite Bible studies and expect the world to stay on autopilot and be okay.

We have to engage in a more aggressive, assertive, intentional way to take back higher education, the public square, and entertainment. Hollywood used to make movies that taught you to love your country. Now we don't even have politicians that love our country. I think your message is spot on, but we've got to start saying to the Christians that I'm not condemning you; I'm telling you it's not that season anymore.

Nick Freitas: It's knowing what time it is. Know what time it is and, guess what, be encouraged. Get your butt up and do something. 70% of young men right now—and this is always the indicator that you want—70% of young men right now are saying, "Alright, I realize that I've been lied to. I'm looking for truth." Many of them saw Charlie Kirk and said, "That's a guy I respect."

When Charlie Kirk was maligned, those men were saying, "I'm ready to give church a shot. I'm ready to give the Bible a shot." What they were really looking for is, "What is the truth, and am I going to find men that actually believe in it and are willing to fight for it and die for it the way Charlie was willing to die?" What I tell pastors is that this is a great opportunity for you. You should be thrilled that you are living in such a time as this because you now have the opportunity to shift the direction of an entire generation.

We've been on cruise control way too long. Is there a little bit of "What the heck are you doing?" Absolutely. But I'm doing it because it's not just because I'm angry about what's going on; I'm encouraged about what's possible. I feel like God has given us an opportunity, and I don't want to miss it. God will use whoever He needs to use in order to achieve His objectives, but in so far as He invites us to join Him, are you really telling me that a desire for comfort is going to dissuade you from doing what God wants you to do?

Allen Jackson: Well, if you worship at the idols of comfort and convenience, it will, because serving God is not comfortable or convenient. But I think that's exactly it—that God has given us an opportunity. The question is what will we do with it. If we say no, I think He'll respond to us the same way He responded to the generation that said, "The promised land is wonderful, but it's really hard work, and we don't want to do it."

We've got to unwind this notion about Christianity that it's primarily focused on eternity—that you get saved so you don't go to hell, but you've done all of your significant God business. How you live your life really isn't—God wants to make you happy, upgrade your car, and let your kids go to a better private school. There's no real challenge left.

Nick Freitas: There's a Bible study my wife and I recently went through that I loved called *The Story Formed Life*. That reoriented this idea that when we talk about Christianity now, it's all about what God did for you, what Jesus did for you. You're the main character in this story. No, you're not. God is the main character. He's the author, and you get to be a part of God's story.

You get to play this incredible role, and you are so important to Him that He did create something for you, but it was also for Him. He went to these incredible lengths to both give us agency and to save us from ourselves. Once you start to embrace that you are a part of God's story, and He's not a part of yours in the sense that you're the controlling figure or the main character, it is a much cooler story.

Once again, we find in that a sense of identity, meaning, and purpose that people are hungry for right now, which Christianity offers in a way that nothing else offers. But if we don't even believe that, and if we don't even project that in the way that we live our lives or the way that we preach our sermons, then why should we expect anybody else to? The greatest honor of our lives is being invited to serve the Lord.

Allen Jackson: I agree.