Flipping Tables

Thank you to my patrons for your continued support of the show. Subscribe for ad free episodes at patreon.com/montemader.
A sticky sweltering Tennessee courtroom in 1925 would change the course of Christian conservative perception of "persecution" for the next 100 years. Tennessee's passage of the unconstitutional Butler Act in March of 1925 was fertile soil for a challenge by the ACLU who offered to represent any teacher prosecuted under the law. It was also prime opportunity for the ailing town of Dayton to draw in some much needed publicity to stimulate a strangled local economy.

John T Scopes, a substitute biology teacher would stand trial for teaching evolution from the state approved textbook. The prosecution was led by William Jennings Bryan, lawyer and presidential nominee and the defense was led by Clarence Darrow, the greatest defense attorney of his time. A Christian nationalist judge refused any testimony or experts for the defense and in a desperate move Darrow called prosecutor Bryan to the stand. The interrogation of literal interpretations of the Bible would not win the case, but it would cast Christian conservatives opposition to science into humiliation across the country. Journalist HL Mencken would exacerbate the embarrassment by mocking the "backwoods" people nationwide.
The humiliation didn't change them, it changed their strategy. They decided Christians in the US were being persecuted, formal education was the enemy and they withdrew from society and began to found their own institutions that would lead to Christian colleges, media platforms, conglomerates, PACS, and production agencies. The rhetoric of Christian persecution would fuel the rise of the radical right, the moral majority and the neo nazi platforms we see today.

Sources:
Armaly, M. T., & Enders, A. M. (2022). The sources and consequences of Christian nationalist victimization rhetoric. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, 8, 1–15. 
Armaly, M. T., & Enders, A. M. (2023). Experimental evidence on persecution narratives and violence. Political Behavior, 45(2), 345–367.
Burke, K. J., & Hadley, H. (2025). Christian nationalism and educational policy in the United States. National Education Policy Center.
Darrow, C. (1904). The Resistible Rise of Democracy. Public lecture, later reprinted in Darrow's collected writings.
Du Mez, K. K. (2020). Jesus and John Wayne: How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and fractured a nation.
Ginger, R. (1958). Six days or forever? Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes.
Halbrook, P. N. (2015). The Scopes Trial in educational perspective [Master's thesis, North Carolina State University]. NC State Libraries. 
Hart, R. P. (2016). H. L. Mencken and the mythology of American journalism. American Journalism, 33(4), 432–450.
Jones, P., & Cooter, A. (2024). White Christian nationalism after January 6. Middlebury Institute, CTEC Research Series.
Larson, E. J. (1997). Summer for the gods: The Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion.
Larson, E. J. (2005). Understanding the Scopes Trial 100 years later. Vanderbilt Law Review, 78(2), 571–590.
Marsden, G. M. (1980). Fundamentalism and American culture. Oxford University Press.
Mencken, H. L. (1925). Newspaper dispatches from the Scopes Trial. Reprinted in Pierce, J. K. (2000). The Scopes Trial. American History Magazine.
Moore, R. (2001). The lingering impact of the Scopes Trial on high school biology textbooks. BioScience, 51(9), 790–796. 
Perry, S. L. (2025). Secularism, sorting, and Americans' political knowledge. Social Forces, 103(2), 835–857.
Pierce, J. K. (2000). The Scopes Trial. American History Magazine.
State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, 154 Tenn. 105 (1927).
State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, Trial Transcript (1925). Reprinted in Famous Trials Project.
Whitehead, A. L., & Perry, S. L. (2020). Taking America back for God: Christian nationalism in the United States. Oxford University Press.

This episode is brought to you by Ground News. Subscribe for 40% off their vantage plan at groundnews.com/tables
Lets examine the birthplace and ideological architecture behind Project 2025 and the modern conservative movement driving it, tracing its roots through theology, institutional strategy, and political power . What is framed as a “Second American Revolution” is not merely transition planning but a coordinated effort to concentrate executive authority, weaken democratic safeguards, and embed a hierarchy-first moral framework into federal governance. We walk through the founding and evolution of The Heritage Foundation its key figures such as Paul Weyrich, Edwin Feulner, Kevin Roberts, Paul Dans, and Roger Severino, and analyzing how theological commitments to natural order and authority have been translated into policy blueprints.
Lets explore the projected human impact of Project 2025. We outlines how proposed changes would affect undocumented immigrants, people of color, the unhoused, women seeking reproductive care, people living in poverty, LGBTQ communities—especially trans individuals—and Indigenous nations. Across issue areas, it identifies a recurring pattern: civil rights reframed as bias, equality recast as disorder, and harm justified as restoration. Policies targeting health care access, environmental protections, voting rights, labor standards, and social safety nets are presented not as isolated reforms but as part of a coherent effort to shrink democracy until it no longer obstructs a predetermined moral hierarchy.
But people are pushing back morally, legally, and politically. Leaders such as Reverend William Barber II, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Women’s Law Center, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, LGBTQ advocates, and Indigenous organizers, and highlight counter-visions rooted in pluralism, shared power, and inherent rights. RESIST.
American Civil Liberties Union. (2023). Project 2025: Threats to constitutional governance and civil rights [Issue brief]. American Civil Liberties Union. https://www.aclu.org
Arendt, H. (1969). On violence. Harcourt, Brace & World.
Barber, W. J., II. (2018). The third reconstruction: How a moral movement is overcoming the politics of division and fear. Beacon Press.
Bendix, R. (1977). Nation building and citizenship: Studies of our changing social order. University of California Press.
Bonilla-Silva, E. (2018). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (5th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.
Brugge, D., deLemos, J. L., & Oldmixon, B. (2016). Exposure pathways and health effects associated with chemical and radiological toxicity in Indigenous communities. Environmental Health Perspectives, 124(8), 1232–1240. https://doi.org/10.1289/EHP.1509889
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2019). Work requirements do not cut poverty, evidence shows. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. (2021). How immigration enforcement harms children and families. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org
Critchlow, D. T. (2007). The conservative ascendancy: How the GOP Right made political history. Harvard University Press.
Davis, J. (2022). How the public administrative state became the enemy [Conservative legal and policy commentary on the “administrative state,” 2016–2022].
Feagin, J. R. (2013). Systemic racism: A theory of oppression. Routledge.
Feulner, E. J. (1986). The conservative vision. The Heritage Foundation.
George, R. P. (1999). In defense of natural law. Oxford University Press.
Gorski, P. S., & Perry, S. L. (2022). The flag and the cross: White Christian nationalism and the threat to American democracy. Oxford University Press.
Goss, R. E. (2009). Queering Christ: Beyond Jesus acted up. HarperOne.

This is not an error! Because of the recent release of the Epstein files I felt sharing my true crime show Highway to Hells 2 part series on Jeffrey Epstein would be valuable bonus for people.
If you are a true crime and travel fan please subscribe and listen to Highway to Hell wherever you get your podcasts. Part 2 comes out next Tuesday on Highway to Hell.
**Please forgive some slight quality changes as this had to be recorded remotely*
3 million more Epstein files were released and yet in the US there has been no further investigation, no arrests. Files that detail the rape, murder, cannibalism of children result in no arrests.
The release of the files almost extend Epsteins story- a man of deception, greed and who skated through his life with absolutely no accountability. The middle class Jewish boy, born into an average Brooklyn jewish family but who called himself "poor, smart, and desperate to be rich". Desperate for the elite and the luxury of New York, and then the world.
A man, who with no college degree who was hired to teach at the elite Dalton school anyway because of his proficiency at math. He was inappropriate with teenage girls but removed quietly- no accountability, no embarrassment for the school. But a parent who met him there brought him into Bear Sterns, with no degree, no qualifications, and when his deceit ran out, he was released quietly. Epstein then shaped himself as the financial advisor of the elite of the elite. He only needed one client, and he found it in Leslie Wexner who gave Epstein all of the keys to his kingdom. When Epstein misappropriated funds, basically gave himself a New York mansion, they settled quietly out of court- no accountability, no embarrassment.
If any single person had exposed Epstein for who he was, the files likely wouldn't exist. And when he finally did get caught for abusing minors, the district attorney and FBI cut him the sweetheart deal of a lifetime. 12 hours a day in jail for 13 months, getting to work in his private office, privacy and a non prosecutorial agreement for all his friends who participated in trafficking and raping minors. They went so far as to lie to his victims about it.
No accountability. No embarrassment. Boys will be boys after all.

FULL LIST OF SOURCES AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST
[email protected]

Metro Surge in Minneapolis brought with it horror and conflict. Civilians and US citizens were killed, migrants were abducted without warrants, legal observers were tear gassed, people were held in extended detainment without help. Federal officers murdered without investigations, the DOJ and DHS broke federal law without any recourse and it left people wondering "what can I legally do?". It's also become progressively more important to understand how our immigration system works in the US, how its flawed and what all of our rights are.
Daphne Delvaux, is a former immigration attorney and now educator who helps people know their rights and understand how the system works. She is also an immigrant herself and shares her story of going through the system in the US, one that denied her the first time because she and her husband chose not to mix finances. Here she tells her story, teaches us about our rights and gives us some hope and gentle mothering towards the end. Something I desperately needed.

Today we explore the radicalization of young men. How do authoritarian movements especially capitalize on men and bend them to their will?
How does a kind, average boy grow up to be ordered to kill and say "I was just following orders"? Why do particularly conservative men buckle so quickly under perceived "more masculine" authority?
The reality is that there are a lot of reasons. And they are the same reasons that men are living in a system that makes them feel lonely, invisible, unable to access emotions, and kills them young.
Today we explore patriarchal systems, how the narrowing of masculinity rips humanity out of the hands of men. And how movements like the Nazis were able to weaponize disenfranchised, disappointed, and angry men and transform them into weapons of genocide.

Sources:
Browning, Christopher R. Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland. HarperCollins, 1992.
Browning, Christopher R. Remembering Survival: Inside a Nazi Slave-Labor Camp. W. W. Norton, 2010.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.
Welzer, Harald, Sabine Moller, and Karoline Tschuggnall. Myth of the German Comradeship: The Wehrmacht and the Politics of Memory. Cambridge University Press.
Welzer, Harald. Perpetrators: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide. Princeton University Press, 2015.
Bloxham, Donald. Genocide on Trial: War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Memory. Oxford University Press.
Koonz, Claudia. The Nazi Conscience. Harvard University Press, 2003.
Koonz, Claudia. Mothers in the Fatherland: Women, the Family, and Nazi Politics. St. Martin’s Press, 1987.
Neitzel, Sönke, and Harald Welzer. Soldaten: On Fighting, Killing, and Dying. Alfred A. Knopf, 2012. (Based on secretly recorded conversations of German POWs)
Biddiscombe, Perry. The SS Hunter Battalions: The Hidden History of the Nazi Resistance Movement 1944–45. Tempus.
Biddiscombe, Perry. Werwolf!: The History of the National Socialist Guerrilla Movement, 1944–1946. University of Toronto Press.
Lower, Wendy. Hitler’s Furies: German Women in the Nazi Killing Fields. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.

Heinemann, Isabel. “Rasse, Siedlung, deutsches Blut”: Das Rasse- und Siedlungshauptamt der SS und die rassenpolitische Neuordnung Europas. Wallstein Verlag.
Bartov, Omer. Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich. Oxford University Press, 1991.
Bartov, Omer. The Eastern Front, 1941–45: German Troops and the Barbarisation of Warfare. Palgrave.
Fritz, Stephen G. Frontsoldaten: The German Soldier in World War II. University Press of Kentucky, 1995.
Manstein, Erich von. Lost Victories. Zenith Press.
(Primary source memoir; ideological but useful for studying mindset)
Himmler, Heinrich. Posen Speeches (1943). Primary documents; available in English translation via Holocaust Research Project / Nizkor / German Federal Archives.
Yad Vashem Archives. Testimonies of perpetrators and victims, Einsatzgruppen records, postwar interrogation files.
Lifton, Robert Jay. The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide. Basic Books, 1986.
Staub, Ervin. The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Genocide and Other Group Violence. Cambridge University Press.
Bandura, Albert. Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm and Live With Themselves. Worth Publishers, 2015.
(Not Nazi-specific but foundational for understanding perpetrator psychology)
Kelman, Herbert. “Violence Without Moral Restraint.” Journal of Social Issues.
Arendt, Hannah. Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin, 1963.
Rees, Laurence. The Nazis: A Warning from History. New Press, 1997.
Rees, Laurence. Auschwitz: A New History. PublicAffairs, 2005.
Haffner, Sebastian. Defying Hitler: A Memoir. Picador, 2003.
Snyder, Timothy. Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning. Crown, 2015.Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin. Basic Books, 2010.