“Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to fit the vision; instead, we are always changing the vision.” —G.K. Chesterton
In this episode of Armor of Truth Live, Brad and Summer unpack why “common sense” alone cannot preserve American liberty. From their experience at the Saving American Liberty Conference with James Lindsay and Michael O’Fallon, they explore the danger of new slogans like cognitive liberty, the lure of the progressive urge on both Left and Right, and the hollowness of “question everything” as a philosophy. True liberty, they argue, cannot survive without its metaphysical root in God’s Word and moral law. Without that foundation, we trade genuine freedom for counterfeits—civil religions of collectivism or authoritarian nationalism—and liberty collapses into tyranny.
⏱️ Episode Breakdown
0:00 – 4:00 | Intro
4:00 – 20:00 | The Covenant of Liberty
Takeaways:
“A republic if your can keep it” is covenantal language.
A covenant is a conditional promise:
American Liberty is a covenant promising freedom and the possibility of prosperity.
The condition is that Americans believe in the covenant and keep their end of the covenant — defend the founders vision of American Liberty.
The founders’ vision of American Liberty:
Enlightenment principles of individual liberty/agency
Grounded in and restrained by the moral law of God
Key Quotes:
“Liberty is not license. True liberty is the freedom to live in accordance with God’s moral law. License is self-indulgence that always ends in tyranny.”
“Consensus can be engineered. History shows us that when truth is reduced to consensus, liberty quickly becomes a casualty of propaganda.”
20:00 – 33:00 | Reflections from Conference
Brad and Summer recap their attendance at the New Discourses: 2025 Saving American Liberty conference in Dallas, TX with James Lindsay and Michael O’Fallon
Encouragement for James Lindsay from Charles Mackay’s poem and Isaiah 46:
"...for I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like me,
declaring the end from the beginning and from ancient times things not yet done,
saying, ‘My counsel shall stand, and I will accomplish all my purpose,’
calling a bird of prey from the east, the man of my counsel from a far country.
I have spoken, and I will bring it to pass; I have purposed, and I will do it.'"
(Isaiah 46:9-11)
Takeaway:
The Lord uses whomever He chooses for His good purposes. And from our vantage point, it is easy to see that the same God in whom unalienable rights are grounded has called you to the front lines as a defense of good truth and to be a restraint on evil. And we praise God for His mercies and for the warriors He calls from near or far to do His will in the earth. Thank you, James Lindsay!
33:00 – 55:00 | Cognitive Liberty: A Counterfeit Freedom
Takeaways:
Cognitive Liberty is NOT a grassroots movement. It arose from elitist policy/activist circles and technocratic think tanks.
Contrasts:
Liberty of conscience vs. unalienable, God-given, affirmed by the Founders.
Cognitive liberty vs. technocratic, state-managed mental autonomy.
Warning: semantic engineering, truly redefinition of known concepts:
“social” in social justice
“hate” in hate crimes
“gender” in gender violence, etc…
Detached from virtue, cognitive liberty is fragile and easily weaponized.
Key Quotes:
Summer: “Cognitive liberty is not liberty at all. It is a semantic Trojan horse—appearing noble while hollowing out true freedom.”
55:00 – 1:03:00 | How We Sharpen Our Arguments Through Challenges and Fruitful Interactions
Takeaways:
Brad and Summer reflect on a real-time experience of a fruitful criticism and interaction with Gecko Pico on Substack.
We must be able to respond to criticisms and challenges to our arguments in order to sharpen our arguments.
Blocking people on social media is necessary sometimes, however, critical thinking and well structured arguments require us to accept criticism and interact fruitfully to sharpen our overall positions,
Clarification: Our position is NOT against resisting neuro-intrusion, and mental autonomy; we are against redefining freedom.
Allowing Progressive reframing, carving out new categories, weakens the authority of universal law.
Iron sharpens iron.
1:03:00 – 1:20:00 | The Progressive Urge
Takeaways:
The tyranny of good intentions.
Many of our peers in the fight for American Liberty have assumed Progressive talking points or ideals.
Both Left and Right act like scissors cutting apart the Constitution.
J.D. Vance: seize and repopulate institutions → compared to Marxist authoritarianism.
When making arguments for American Liberty, the intellectual high ground is important but must be grounded in the moral high ground (metaphysical truths).
Key Quotes:
Summer: “The left and the right are like a pair of scissors. Both sides have been taken over by treasonous forces, and they’re just cutting up the Constitution—reaction after reaction. Whether they are working together or not, the results are the same: they are tearing the country apart.”
Brad: “If progressivism is one of our arch enemies, we cannot afford to stumble into its traps. The mantra ‘question everything’ is incoherent—it’s the serpent’s whisper in the garden. If you saw off the branch you’re sitting on, you lose the very possibility of truth itself.”
Brad: “Even the intellectual high ground isn’t enough to save liberty. Without foundations, intellectual arguments collapse into just competing preferences. An effective defense of the covenant of American liberty requires that we first secure the moral high ground—grounded in a metaphysical foundation.”
1:20:00 – 1:33:00 | Should We Question Everything?
Takeaways:
Postmodern skepticism examined: “Did God really say…?” (Genesis 3).
The Laws of Logic are metaphysical truths rooted in God’s character.
Five things that cannot be questioned:
God’s Word
The moral law written on every human heart
The Laws of Logic:
The Law of Identity
The Law of non-contradiction
The Law of excluded middle.
Endless doubt leads to nihilism; liberty collapses without truth.
Key Quotes:
Summer: “Question everything is not wisdom. It is the serpent’s whisper: ‘Did God really say?’”
Brad: “Logic is not man-made. The laws of logic reflect the perfect consistency of God Himself.”
Brad: “Without transcendent truth, liberty collapses into a counterfeit civil religion—whether collectivism on the Left or authoritarian nationalism on the Right.”
Summer: “Once truth is gone, liberty is next. The only firm ground is the Word of God, the moral law of God. To keep the covenant of liberty is to defend and live that truth—because if the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do but recover them?”
1:33:00 – 1:39:28 | Cognitive Warfare & Propaganda
Summer shares relevant and useful points made by Colin W. P. Lewis in The Soft War for Hard Minds.
Takeaways:
Cognitive warfare targets how we think, not what we see.
NATO calls cognitive warfare a new theater of war.
Hannah Arendt: when people lose belief in truth, they lose the ability to act.
Historical note: propaganda once meant propagation of faith; then it was weaponized for social engineering. -Edward Bernays.
Call to recover liberty’s foundation in God’s law, not progressive rebrands.
Quotes:
Summer: “Cognitive warfare doesn’t just target what you see—it corrodes how you think, until truth itself limps uncertain of its footing.”
Summer: “When they get you to the point where you question everything, you are lost. When you don’t know what’s true anymore, then there is no truth. And when there is no truth, liberty is the next thing you lose.”
Brad: “If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Recover them. We don’t need a new liberty—we need to keep the covenant we have inherited.”
1:39:30 | Outro
The battle for liberty is, at its core, a battle for truth. Cognitive warfare today doesn’t just target what you see, it corrodes how you think, until truth itself limps uncertain of its footing. When we are told to question everything, we replay the serpent’s whisper in Eden: “Did God really say?” Once truth is gone, liberty is the next casualty.
But the answer is not to reinvent American liberty or surrender to revisionist slogans. As Summer reminded us, when truth is lost, liberty is lost and the only way forward is to recover the foundations we have already been given. The Reformers and Founders secured liberty of conscience as an unalienable right because it rests on the transcendent authority of God, not the state. To keep Franklin’s covenant is to believe that truth can be known, to defend it, and to live it out.
If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do? Scripture’s answer is clear: we recover them. We do not need a new constitution, a new philosophy, or a new buzzword. We need renewed fidelity to the old truths that made liberty possible — the Word of God, the moral law of God, and the covenant of American liberty. That is how we keep it.
"Cognitive Liberty" May Be The Most Deceptive Rallying Cry of Our Time
When liberty is redefined, tyranny slips in - exposing the hollow substitute of technocratic control.
The Actual War Against God
From sophistry to NATO’s sixth domain of war, global elites are engineering a counterfeit faith
Erasing the Cross: How the Globalist Media Rewrites America’s Christian Foundations
Regarding CNN’s Inside Doug Wilson’s Crusade for Christian Domination in the Age of Trump jump-edited interview:
Armor of Truth Live · Saving American Liberty Conference · James Lindsay · Michael O’Fallon · cognitive liberty · progressive ideology · common sense vs truth · American liberty · moral law of God · civil religion · collectivism · true freedom · tyranny vs liberty
