You said he gets pretty shady and ignores the hard questions.

As I listened to him and Tom Ascol, who is one of my favourite theologians. I detected absolutely no shadiness or ignoring the hard questions. Could he have expanded further on those questions?
Absolutely, but with the time allotted, I think he did a good job. I assume, some of these questions are dealt with deeper in the book.

What I saw were people who in the last 10 years, had to dig deeper into what they believe on subjects like this.
Tom Ascol along with his good friend Voddie Baucham (now with the Lord), have been talking about this subject and related issues for quite some time now.

Voddie Baucham was not only theologian, he also was a Church historian.
Which is one of the reasons why I appreciated them so much.
They referred a lot to Reformers, the Confessions and others who understood that we stand on the shoulders of the people that went before us.

Many modern theologians, seem almost to divorce themselves from the past.

There are of course, people today that go too far to the other extreme. For example, I would not advocate for Rushdoony’s Reconstructionism.

During Covid, as you know there was a lot of government overreach, especially in Canada and in California where John MacArthur’s Church had to take a stand against Governor Neusom.
MacArthur’s Church won in court; but many in the Reformed Community, especially those with T4G, came out strongly against him.
I paid a price with my own family and friends. When I did not get the Covid vaccination.
Many pastors including my daughter’s pastor came out strongly against Churches and Christians that would not comply with government mandates.
They referred to Romans 13 as so called proof that, the government is within their right to do what they did.

The context of Romans 13 of course, does not give them the right to do what they did.

Tom