POSOBIEC DEBATES AT UNH: A 'true conservative Christian movement and voice is really foreign' to New England

Human Events Daily host Jack Posobiec reported live from the University of New Hampshire for Thursday’s edition of the show, speaking on the Turning Point USA Pick Up The Mic event he hosted on campus earlier that day. He brought on Caleb Brower, the chapter president of TPUSA UNH, to talk about the event, and the falling religiosity of the region.

Posobiec said there was a “huge crowd” for the event, and said that he was out there for three hours and “I could have done more, I could have done two hours more. I could have kept going.”

He said that attendees were asking “good questions,” and that there were “a lot of supporters” and “some haters too, you know, it is what it is. It comes with the territory. We don’t mind that. We like the haters.”

“But yes, we also had a lot of supporters. A lot of people coming up saying, you know, we really support what you're doing. We support Charlie. We support Turning Point. And you know, definitely had some contention. Definitely had those moments of friction.”

Posobiec brought on Brower, who said he had not expected the event to be as big as it was. “The University of New Hampshire can be not the most political place, frankly, with Saint Anselm kind of taking the New Hampshire political center, we don’t really get a lot of it. But we saw a tremendous turnout, especially for our biggest and first event of this kind.”

Posobiec said there was an “interesting strain” in the crowd, people saying “you shouldn’t be here,’ and they were saying, you know, even if we agree with you, that you shouldn’t be on this campus. And I'm thinking, well, you know, maybe they view it as a disruption of the, you know, the school thing.” He said he wasn’t doing a Jubilee-style event are “just kind of fact dumping on each other.”

Brower said it was a “totally good faith situation,” adding that there isn’t really a presence of “militant leftism” on campus.

Posobiec said that most people had respectful conversations, but there were a few people “who kind of revealed themselves halfway through a question, you know, and then they start cursing. They start yelling ‘you shouldn't be here.’” He added, “And it seemed to me though that they seem to think that if you have a conversation about something where people disagree, that even the civil exhibit of that is somehow problematic.”

Brower said that militant leftism “is the problem,” and brought up that New England is “as blue as it gets,” and even the Republicans are socially liberal. “I mean, this is the real belly of the beast.”

“So I think it's very much in line with what most of New England thinks, at least from the leftist perspective, conservatives tend to be more libertarian in the way they think. So a true conservative Christian movement and voice is really foreign to this part of the country.”

Posobiec said that sometimes the conversations would brush on theology, “and I noticed that in those cases, they really hadn’t encountered some of those arguments before, or even considered that way of thinking.”

Brower said that New Hampshire has one of the lowest church attendance rates of the county, adding that Granite Staters “aren’t used to Christianity being public” and “they think of it as like gross. It's foreign. It's alien. It's not really in line for what we do here. Which of course, historically speaking, ridiculous. I mean, this place was founded by Puritans. There's a first Episcopal, first Congregational church on every block.

Posobiec said he had mentioned seeing churches everywhere, adding, “what you’re saying is there’s an empty church.”

Brower said, “I mean, we've got liberal churches here. I'm not going to denounce people's religions, but, you know, sort of the historic traditional Christianities that guided America, especially at its founding, really just are absent from” the state.

Speaking on the division between politics and religion, Posobiec drew parallels between New England and England, in which he had attended the first CPAC UK event. He said that at the event he “gave my regular spiel, and you know where in American politics certainly you make appeals to God,” and afterwards, British press asked if it was “strange” to reference God. “We don't mix politics and religion ever,” he said of the Brits.

Posobiec asked what it would take to restore these values to New England.

Brower said, “I think it's hard. I mean, I think we have a very, I mean, obviously with all the universities, we have a very high level of college education, and with that comes a degree of increased atheism.”

He later added that a “long march” is needed “through the institutions” of New England. “We need to get into the places where powerful decisions can be made, and we need to need to enact the decisions that we want to make.”