All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 20, 2019 - The Ben Shapiro Show
58:10
Allen West | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 34
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
My dad told me, you know, never see your skin color as a hindrance or an obstacle.
And that's why the name Colin all the other Mickey Mouse doesn't mean anything to me.
You know, I don't hear names.
I've been shot at.
Okay, names don't bother me.
Hey, welcome to the Sunday Special.
We have on as our special guest today, Lieutenant Colonel Alan West.
He's awesome, you're going to love him.
We'll get to him in just one second.
First, let's talk about the Teeter Inversion Table.
Listen, I get back pain and neck pain sometimes.
With a teeter inversion table, you use gravity and your own body weight to decompress your spine and relieve pressure on your discs and surrounding nerves.
Decompressing on a teeter inversion table for a few minutes a day, it's a great addition to anyone's daily routine to maintain a healthy spine and active lifestyle without the pain.
My personal trainer actually uses a teeter inversion table all the time for himself.
If you've got back pain, even if you've been lucky enough to avoid back pain, actually, you need a teeter to invert every day and keep your back and joints feeling really good.
I feel totally better once I use the teeter inversion table again.
It decompresses that spine.
It's great for the shoulders, too.
I've done my homework.
This is the best inversion table on the market, which is why over 3 million people have put their trust in Teeter.
They've been the best known name in inversion tables since 1981, and they right now are offering a terrific deal just for my listeners.
For a limited time, you can get the brand new 2019 Teeter FitSpine Inversion Table model with a bonus accessory and free pair of gravity boots.
So you can invert at home or take the boots with you to the gym.
Teeter Inversion Tables have thousands of reviews on Amazon.
They're rated at 4.6 stars.
And with this deal, You'll get $150 off when you go to teeter.com slash Ben.
Again, you get free shipping, free return, 60-day money back guarantee, so no risk to try it out.
And you can only get that new 2019 Teeter Fit Spine Inversion Table plus that free pair of gravity boots by going to teeter.com slash Ben.
That's T-E-E-T-E-R dot com slash Ben.
Lieutenant Colonel West, thanks so much for showing up.
I really appreciate it.
It's good to be here.
And I probably need one of those inversion things, you know, all those jumpers out of airplanes I've done.
Let's start by me asking about your military career a little bit.
So for folks who don't know anything about you, you grew up in Georgia in a democratic family and then you served for 21 years in the military.
So can you kind of give your background, your life story in a nutshell?
Well, you know, I grew up in the same neighborhood that gave us Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
It's called the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia.
And my elementary school was right across the street from Ebenezer Baptist Church.
And to grow up in a family where, first of all, unlike many young black kids today, I had a great mother and father in the home.
My dad was a corporal in World War II.
My mother worked with a Marine Corps headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
They would probably tell me my hair is too long right now, but God rest their souls.
And I will never forget, at the age of 15, my dad challenged me to be the first officer in our family because my older brother was a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps doing Vietnam.
He was wounded there, but he got out okay.
So, my trek started in high school, junior ROTC, went through ROTC at the University of Tennessee, got commissioned 31 July 1982, and I still try to live up to that commission and that oath to support and defend the Constitution.
And the great thing is that, you know, my nephew now is a major in the Army, following in my footsteps as a paratrooper and artillery officer, continuing that service, sacrifice, and commitment that we've done in our family.
Well, what do you think are the military set of values that differentiate so many folks in the military from sort of the mainstream American population, the vast majority of whom not only have never served, I mean, I never served, you know, and thank God for folks like you who did, but who don't even know people who have served.
What do you think differentiates that value system?
It's two things.
It's service above self and a no-quit attitude.
You know, I always tell people, folks ask, who's your greatest military, you know, hero and everything.
I'll talk about Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
And if you study the Battle of Gettysburg, and here was a guy who was just a simple professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Maine.
But because he was an educated man, he got a commission, he was put in charge of a regiment, the 20th Maine Regiment.
And on that second day at Gettysburg, when the ammunition is running out, casualties are mounting, the 20th Alabamians still charging the hill, and they fix bayonets.
The first bayonet charge in the Union Army.
And they saved not just the day at Gettysburg, but they probably saved this Union, because if Lee and an army in northern Virginia had been successful at Gettysburg, they would have marched on.
So here's Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, just a simple man, a professor of rhetoric, ends up being awarded the Medal of Honor, becomes a governor, two-time governor of the State of Maine.
That's what America produces.
And I think that if we can get back to that, people that believe that there's something greater than just themselves or a selfie or iPhone, iPad or whatever, and understand that commitment to a core set of principles and values.
Like I said, I took an oath to the Constitution.
Every one of us need to be committed and convicted for something.
And that's why you're such a great, brilliant young man, because you know what you believe in.
You know those fundamental principles and values.
You've committed yourself.
To make sure you pass on a better America to your daughter and your children.
And that's what it's all about.
So how did you move into sort of conservative politics from the military?
So your parents were Democrats.
You grew up in a Democrat area, obviously.
What drove you toward the Republican Party?
Well, see, that's the amazing thing.
People don't understand philosophically.
And when you talk about principles, the black community has always been a conservative community.
It has always been about faith, it's always been about family, individual responsibility, until Lyndon Johnson came along with the Great Society.
It has always been about service to the country, as I talk about, four generations out of my family.
It has always been about quality education, but we don't see those things continue to permeate now in the black community, and like I said, When Johnson came along in 1964-65 with his Gray Society programs, he eroded many of those fundamental principles and values.
So when my parents, John Lewis was my congressional representative growing up in Atlanta, and it was so funny when I was sworn in up there, and I was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and I told him, it was an honor to meet you because you were once my representative.
He was a guy, he was campaigning against me.
Because he didn't know my background.
He didn't know I was from Atlanta.
But if we can get people to think more about philosophy of governance and not about political parties, understand that right and true relationship between the individual and the institution of government, I think we correct things.
And so how my parents brought me up, it was just natural for me to see myself as a very conservative person.
But the Republican Party, when you talk about it, they need to understand.
What their fundamental principles and values are.
You talk to most Republicans, Ben, and they don't know why the Republican Party was established in 1854.
It was just one issue.
The issue of slavery.
The Republican Party has always been about individual liberty.
And we can talk about the history of the other political party, and it's the complete antithesis of that.
But they are able to dominate the narrative.
Where do you think the Republican Party has gone wrong in doing its outreach to minority communities?
Because it seems like Republicans are winning a diminishing share of the black vote, a diminishing share of the Hispanic vote.
What are they doing wrong in reaching out?
Is it a problem with Republicans?
Is it a problem with the media?
Where do you see the problems?
It's a problem with, I remember talking to Reince Priebus once, and I told him how much I despised and detested the word outreach.
Because what outreach means is that you show up in Black History Month, or Hispanic American Month, or Asian Pacific American Month, all of these balkanized months that we created, and you act like you're a part of the community, and then they don't hear or see you again until 60 days before an election, when you show up and you say, vote for me.
What really needs to happen is policy inclusiveness.
What really needs to happen is a connection and understand people Basically, who they are and what they believe.
Everybody wants to be a part of an American dream.
I don't believe that people wake up every day in life and say, I want to sit here in Section 8 housing and get a check from the government.
But if that's the only message that they hear, if that's the only people that are going into those communities and talking to them about being victims and not victors, then the Republicans are always chasing their tail.
So I think it's so important when you look at quality education, you look at the inner cities.
And how that aspect of education is falling apart.
Think about this.
In 2009, Barack Obama cancelled the D.C.
school voucher program.
But he sent his kids to the very prestigious Sidwell Friends.
But he told deserving minority kids, you can't be here.
What an incredible winning issue for the Republican Party to connect.
When you look at, as I said, when I was born in 1961, a two-parent household in the black community, 74 to 77 percent.
Today it's 24 percent.
What a great issue to talk about how we want to restore the sense of family and restore small business entrepreneurship.
And you talk about urban economic empowerment zones and all of these things.
Well, go in there and start showing people what you mean by that.
Are Republicans at a systemic disadvantage to a certain extent with this?
Because for Democrats, you can put Democratic-oriented social workers in a lot of these areas, or you can put a welfare office that cuts a lot of checks in areas.
And this has nothing to do with black and white, actually, because there are downtrodden white communities where the same thing is happening.
But for Republicans, where the basic message is that if we provide you the freedom to rise, then you should rise.
I mean, it's your job to rise if we're providing you the freedom.
What should Republican politicians be doing?
What sort of policies would you prefer to see where there is that face-to-face contact?
Because as you say, if you're only seeing a Republican once every election cycle, it's a lot less likely you're going to vote for them than the people who are presumably interacting with you on a daily basis.
Well, it's amazing.
A lot of people gave President Trump a lot of, you know, guff about him saying, what the heck do you have to lose?
Well, that was the true nature of what needs to happen.
You know, engage with the black community, say, look, you've been going down the path with these guys 95% of the time.
And what has it gotten you?
And so we need to challenge the status quo, and we need to have a wholehearted effort to go into these communities and show ourselves and show these policies.
And I'm not just talking about, you know, at the federal government level.
I'm talking about city councils.
I'm talking about school boards.
I'm talking about those local representatives that can go in there, and the party needs to support that.
You know, it was so funny, I was talking to Lake Highlands Republicans Women's Club there in Dallas, Texas, and I was saying these exact same things.
And they said, that's easy for you to say that because you're black.
We can't go into a black neighborhood and say that.
I said, but why do white liberal progressives Go into black and Hispanic neighborhoods and they say what they have to say.
You're self-censoring yourself.
You're already saying that we can't, you know, have any relationship here.
And I think that that's one of the horrible things that happened.
If George Soros can write all these checks and create this organization like a Black Lives Matter, which really is oxymoronic to me, it's just the lives that the liberal progressive left believes that matters in the black community.
Where are the benefactors?
On the conservative side, they're saying, we're going to get in here, and we're going to show, policy-wise, what we can do.
And we're going to have these connections.
We're going to have after-school programs for kids.
And we're going to support the local law enforcement.
And we're going to develop more police athletic league programs, support those type of things.
You've got to show them something different.
Now, how do Republicans overcome the generalized perception the media puts out there that they're a bunch of racists?
And you see this because there are certain situations in which Republicans say things that are quite awful and that draws fire.
So, for example, in the last couple of weeks we saw what Steve King said in Iowa and Senator Tim Scott, the only black senator, came out and said the Republican Party's been too easy on this sort of stuff in the past.
Do you think that that's true?
Do you think the Republican Party has been too easy on sort of polarized or racially tinged or quasi-racist language in the past?
I think the Republican Party has been reactionary to it and not been proactive.
You know, we just recently had, last year, the people there in the Dallas City Council decided to take down the statue of Robert E. Lee.
And I spoke there before the City Council saying, you know, statues don't keep you from going to school or getting a job or being successful.
The left is very good at saying, you know, these statues or these things, these parts of history are bad.
But yet, when was the last time you had anyone talk about the founder of Planned Parenthood?
Margaret Sanger, a known white supremacist, a known racist, a person who spoke at Klan rallies.
And when you look at the fact that, you know, close to 70% of Planned Parenthood clinics are located where?
In minority communities.
And so what we need to be saying is that, hey, sure, we don't want to deal with this white supremacy or anything, but let's be very honest.
You guys have a black eye as well.
And let's start calling this as it is.
And when we have these assertions, you know, the president being a racist or whatever, someone needs to be on these shows, CNN, MSNBC, whatever, and speaking out against it.
I cannot tell you how many times I've been called Uncle Tom, sellout, white man's porch monkey, all of these things.
For whatever reason, white liberals think that it's open game on Hispanic, black, female conservatives, but yet all of a sudden they have this, you know, this force field of protection that, you know, keeps them from any type of scrutiny.
We've got to break down that force field.
What do you make of the philosophy that's now rearing its head on campus and is moving the mainstream of intersectionality?
You see mainstream Democratic candidates now talking about intersectionality, the assumption being that basically if you're a member of particular groups then you are inherently victimized by American life and that this means that we ought to take your opinion more seriously on particular issues of public policy.
What do you make of that?
Well then, once again, that's about them creating people to be victims and not victors.
There's a great clip I was speaking at Northwestern University last spring semester.
And I was talking about the Iranian nuclear agreement and Middle Eastern foreign policy.
I thought it did a pretty good job for a boy, you know, born and raised down South.
And the first question from a young black female was, do you identify as black?
I mean, you can see the video clip.
I mean, I was just floored.
Because I'm thinking, out of all the things I just said, That was the only thing that you could bring about, because there's this effort on college campuses to say that if you're Jewish, you're supposed to think a certain way.
If you're black, you're supposed to think a certain way.
If you're female, whatever.
And if you don't think that way, you're bad, or you're confused, or maybe you're mentally disturbed.
But what we want to do No matter where you come from.
We need more people to be victims.
Why?
Because the left needs more people to be dependent upon them.
And the only people that can have validity in the mindset of the left are people that have been victimized.
Because if you are not, you know, even though I was brought up in inner city, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, those kind of guys, they can't, you know, speak for me.
I don't need anyone to speak for me.
I mean, my wife has a PhD.
She was a business professor, MBA.
She is the daughter of people that immigrated here from Jamaica, legally.
Her dad served 24 years in the United States military.
He's buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
But those aren't the stories that the other side wants to have.
And that's why venues and platforms like yourself, those are the stories that we should be talking about.
The stories of people that came here legally.
The stories of people that, you know, when they did run into hard times, they understood that maybe they needed a safety net.
But the safety net is there for you to continue to climb to whatever amount of success you want.
Because the other side wants people to just lay around in a hammock, and that's not what America's about.
So in a second I want to ask you about what role you think racism does play in American life.
But first, let's talk about a New Year's resolution you can actually keep.
Stop going to the post office to send letters and packages when you don't have to.
Save time and money this year.
Instead, use stamps.com.
Stamps.com brings all the amazing services of the U.S.
Postal Service Directly to your computer.
Stamps.com is faster, it's more convenient, it's the easier way to get postage.
You simply use your computer, you print official U.S.
postage for any letter, any package, any class of mail, anywhere you want to send it, and the mail carrier picks it up.
No more lugging mail to the post office, no more hassles.
Stamps.com not only saves you time, it saves you money as well.
With Stamps.com, you get discounted postage rates you can't even get at the post office.
Not to mention, it's a fraction the cost of those expensive postage meters, and there's no equipment to lease, no long-term commitments, We use stamps.com here at the Daily Wire offices because we don't feel like schlepping down to the post office and because we spend an awful lot of money on our postage.
Right now, you too can enjoy the stamps.com service with a special offer that includes a four-week trial plus postage and a digital scale.
So, start the new year off right.
Go to stamps.com, click on that microphone at the top of the homepage, type in promo code Shapiro.
Again, that's stamps.com, promo code Shapiro.
We use it in the Shapiro household.
We also use it at Daily Wire.
That's stamps.com, promo code Shapiro.
So, Lieutenant Colonel West.
Whenever I talk about these issues with folks on the left, what they say is you are giving short shrift to the real role of both historic and current racism in American life.
You don't understand racism and that's why you're not quick enough to denounce racism.
So to take the Steve King example, Steve King for years said stuff that was very borderline and could be interpreted a couple of different ways and I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt and then he said something in the last couple of weeks that is just inexcusable and there's no way for me to give him the benefit of the doubt anymore.
According to the left, they would say, well, why did you give them the benefit of the doubt in the first place?
If you truly understood how evanescent racism is, how present it is, then you wouldn't be giving people the benefit of the doubt.
You'd be coming down on them when they say something that could even be construed as racist.
How should we deal with racism in American life?
How prominent is it?
And what's the best way to fight it?
Well, I think that we have seen this resurgence of the word and the term racism and racist here recently because the left has used it as a tool to get people to self-censor.
As a matter of fact, we just recently had the new freshman Democrat representative from the state of Washington, Representative Javapal, talk about the whole thing about this border wall is because, you know, Donald Trump wants to keep America pure, that it's all about racism.
Well, you know, say that to the young legal immigrant police officer, Ronil Singh.
That had nothing to do with racism.
A criminal legal immigrant killed him.
Or Jamil Shah, from right here in California.
Or any of the other instances where we have seen Kayla Cuevas, and then also Nisa Mickens, who were killed by MS-13 gang members.
So, I think that what has happened is that when the left wants to try to get people to shut down, they throw out the racist word.
I mean, if you disagree with Barack Obama, you are a racist.
Or if you disagree with Eric Holder.
And I'm tired of us, you know, the boy that cried wolf.
Is there racism in the United States of America?
Of course there is.
You know, there are people that are going to have inherent prejudices.
But the great thing about America is that this America now will do everything it can to squash And not allow those type of thoughts or perspectives or philosophies to have any impact or influence in our society.
And I think Steve King has really relegated himself to insignificance and irrelevance.
And I would be very surprised if the people out in Iowa were to vote for him again.
I mean, because it just gets to be too much too often.
But I also think that we need to combat a racism that we have seen in what I call and some people call the soft bigotry of low expectations.
You know, someone could look at a program like Affirmative Action and say, that's racist.
To say to me that, well, you probably can't achieve it, so we're going to lower the standards so you can get out there and play.
That was the great thing that my dad taught me about the military.
He said, son, when you go into the military, it ain't about the color of your skin.
It is all about what you can do out there on the battlefield.
And that's how it should be.
And Martin Luther King talked about that.
It's about characters, not about color of the skin.
But for whatever reason, America has reversed and we've gone back to talking more so about the color of the skin issues instead of the character people.
So Steve King, you know, this is not so much about, you know, skin color.
It's about his lack of character and lack of integrity that would have him saying something as foolish as he did.
So I want to ask you a little bit about military policies.
One of the things that's happened inside the Republican Party, even since you left the military, is a movement away from a more hawkish interventionist Republican Party and toward a sort of isolationist perspective.
Now, you served in Iraq.
The prevailing opinion seems to be, not only in the mainstream media, but now inside the Republican Party, that the war in Iraq was a horrible mistake.
What's your perspective on the war, having served there and having made policy about it in Congress?
Well, I will tell you that having been there on the ground, I mean, there were things that you gave opportunities for, for the people in Iraq that they never would have ever had.
You know, folks ask me, what was the greatest achievement that you had in your 22 years or so in the military?
And I will tell you, when I was in Afghanistan and seeing little girls go to school, That was the most special thing that I could ever think of.
Now, the problem with our military and the problem with the civilian leaders that we have over the military and political leaders, they don't understand nation building.
We don't need to be in the business of nation building.
There are enemies out there, and when you're dealing with Islamic terrorism, we need to be denying that enemy sanctuaries.
We need to be focused more so on strike operations.
When you look at what is going on in Syria right now, You work with, you know, a local allied force, like the Kurds, and you provide them that support and the resources to be able to go down there and do what is necessary, instead of being bogged down and worrying about, you know, the Syrian civil war or, you know, building roads or what have you there.
And I think that that's what, you know, we have lost our sight in Afghanistan.
In Afghanistan, if you're not going to do something about the terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan, then you might as well leave.
Because, you know, the two and a half years that I was spent in Afghanistan, we knew exactly what was happening.
When the snows melted and the passes opened up, they came right out of Pakistan, back over into Afghanistan.
They stayed there.
They fought us until, you know, the snows set back in.
They went back over, rearmed and refitted.
The exact same lesson we learned in Vietnam, Ben.
Laos and Cambodia.
We were allowing the enemy to stay there and come in and attack us.
So, you know, as George Santayana attributed to him, said, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
We need to understand and figure out what are we going to use our military for.
Our military is not there for nation building.
Our military there is as a credible deterrent force.
And I think that too often people just believe, let's put the military out there and let's figure out as we go along.
We want defined and set goals and objectives and strategies that enable us to achieve victory.
But I tell you, when I see what's happening with Iran out there in the Persian Gulf and the harassment they're doing of our warships, that's got to end.
What do you think of, you know, the declaration by President Trump, for example, that the war in Iraq was basically lost?
I mean, he essentially called George W. Bush a war criminal in the middle of the campaign.
He suggested that people who had been killed in action in Iraq had basically wasted their lives.
What do you think of, you know, a Republican Party that's moved in this more very harshly isolationist direction, at least in rhetoric, if not in practice?
Well, I think it's really interesting when people or private citizens, what they say, and then all of a sudden they sit there at the Resolute Desk and they get those briefings.
They come to understand, you know, military affairs, national security, and foreign policy.
They take a different perspective.
The United States of America can't completely withdraw from the world.
We all know that.
But what the United States military and the United States should be doing is building those key relationships and partnerships.
When you look at Eastern Europe, you know, we should be, you know, better relations with Poland, with the Baltic States, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania.
What more can we do with the Ukraine?
When Vladimir Putin saw us kind of wash our hands with the Ukraine, that's when he went in and he took the Crimea.
When he saw us decimating our military capability and capacity, he, Xi Jinping, North Korea, Hassan Rouhani and the Iranians, the Ayatollahs, they saw that as the window of opportunity.
The thing is that you don't want to go out there and seek to fight every single person, but you need to have that credible deterrent that prevents people from seeking those aspirations that are antithetical to liberty and freedom all across the world.
If I could have gone 22 years of my military career, Ben, and never had to look at my wife and my daughters in the eye and say, hey, I gotta go, and not know if I'm coming back, I would have been happy to do that.
But it's a volunteer military, and I raised my right hand, and I understand the consequences that go to that.
But all I want are for people up in Washington, D.C., those elected leaders and officials, to understand, if you're going to employ the military, give us the left and right limits to be able to go out and do what's necessary.
I'll give you a case in point.
We sat down with Benjamin Netanyahu back in August of 2011, and he, congressional delegation, he said, if you withdraw all of your troops out of Iraq, you're going to create a vacuum.
And something's going to fill that vacuum.
That's what you need to go back and sincerely tell President Obama.
He didn't listen.
And look what happened.
And just the same as we outsourced our military resources to terrorists in Libya.
And look what happened.
So I just wish we would think a little bit smarter.
And one of the things I believe, we've got to get more veterans.
More veterans that have been on the ground and they understand the tactical level that can help us make the right strategic level decisions.
And we've got to have those people that haven't been in the military that are willing to listen to them.
What do you think are the proper set of rules of engagement?
So obviously you came to National Motoriety originally because of controversy over rules of engagement in Iraq.
I wonder if you could tell that story and also what you think the normal rules of engagement should be for our military.
They seem to change rapidly and almost randomly based on headlines.
Well, one of the things you cannot do, it should be a consistent steady state when it comes to national security.
It shouldn't be left or right.
I mean, that should be a constant.
And you even see that in Israel.
They can disagree on domestic policies, but they're constant on national security.
What happened with me is that we had information about an Iraqi police officer that was feeding intel over to Saddam Fedayeen.
He was not forthcoming with any information.
You know, I just improvised, adapted, and overcame, and used a psychological intimidation trick, told him I was going to shoot him, I was going to kill him, and I actually just fired a pistol over his head, and he, you know, divulged some information that helped us out, kept my guys alive.
But understand it, I colored outside the lines, I reported myself.
And about a month later, you know, they came down and investigated.
I admitted to everything.
And I think that's the most important thing about being a leader is you take responsibility for your actions.
And I'm here today.
I'm a retired Army Lieutenant Colonel.
I have all the ranks and benefits and privileges thereof because it was not conduct I'm becoming of an officer.
Everyone knew the action that I took was to protect my men.
When I think of some of the rules of engagement that you can't fire upon the enemy until they fire upon you.
Two to three seconds, someone loses their life in a firefight.
And if we can clearly identify the enemy, we should engage them.
Think about, you know, everyone always asks questions about IEDs.
Why are there always these IEDs around?
Why?
Because some lawyers said that unless you can prove hostile intent, a guy in the middle of the night with a shovel, with a projectile that's about yay big, with little cylindrical wires coming out of it, he's not showing hostile intent.
And then the next thing you know in the morning, someone gets blown up.
So again, we cannot cede over the battlefield to lawyers.
This is not a law enforcement operation.
You don't collect someone up and, you know, question them and interrogate them and try to charge them with something.
We've got to get them off the battlefield.
And I think it's so important that we get, you know, that steady state of people that come in and understand, I don't care Republican or Democrat.
These are young men and women that are out there protecting our way of life.
And if you're going to commit them into an engagement, then allow them to go out there and do what needs to be done.
That's why you don't hear about ISIS.
Because President Trump understood, I'm going to allow the military commanders to do what needs to be done.
So we've talked about some of the shifts inside the Republican Party.
When you first came into Congress, you came in in 2010 with the Tea Party wave, and it's really interesting because now you've seen that the Republicans have basically continued to blow out spending, despite what the Tea Party wave was all about.
What do you think the Tea Party was about?
Because the leftist take on the Tea Party is that it was simply anger at President Obama, channeled toward a false end of smaller government.
And then as soon as Obama was gone, we didn't care about spending anymore.
We were happy to blow out the spending ourselves.
What do you think the Tea Party was?
And do you think that that sentiment is still alive?
Well, I call it constitutional conservatism.
And the Tea Party was all about fiscal, fiscally responsible government and government that operated within the parameters of the Constitution.
But yet, when you have a Republican Party that, you know, just late last year, they passed a 1.3 trillion dollar omnibus spending package.
That's a mixed signal.
So again, it comes back to what we started out talking a little bit about earlier.
The right relationship between the individual citizen and the institution of government.
And I think that relationship is getting turned upside down.
Being a progressive has nothing to do with R&D.
After your name.
Being progressive has everything to do with how do you see the relationship of government to the individual.
If you think government is preeminent, then the individual is small and you're going to tax them ad nauseum ad infinitum to sustain that entity up in Washington, D.C.
And someone somewhere has to come around and reverse that cycle.
And get this government to be back where it was intended to be.
And yet I hear people talk about 70% top tax rate, 90% top tax rate.
What is that going to do to production?
Individual production in the United States of America?
So I think that there is still a desire to have true constitutional conservatism in this country.
There's still a desire to go back to our founding document and our rule of law.
But the thing is that do we have the people that have the courage to go up there to Washington, D.C.
and stand against it?
Look, the Republicans redistricted me out in Florida, you know, and I was always a team player.
But the thing is this, when you start to get more attention and show that some people are not standing up for what they say they're going to stand up for, then they don't like that.
And so America has to, you know, once again create those founding father type of leaders that were visionaries.
And we're not there yet, but hopefully we can get there.
One of the things that's been really fascinating is there's been this open debate that's now broken out maybe in the last couple of months particularly over kind of the direction of the Republican Party in terms of what the government should do.
So it was really led off by Tucker Carlson who gave this monologue on Fox News in which he suggested that the breakdown of family structure was due to a bunch of people in the American economy being left behind by economic choices that have been made.
And the counter argument was that the breakdown of the American family and the breakdown of a lot of our societal institutions was really a moral issue that started in the 1960s, was more linked to welfare policy than it was linked to government failures on tariffs, and that these problems can't necessarily be cured by more government interventionism, that this is actually a problem of the American soul.
Where do you come down on that?
Do you think that we have more of a moral problem in America, or do you think that this is all just sort of economics translated into a moral problem?
People who can't afford to get married, for example.
No, it's a moral problem in the United States of America.
And it's a moral messaging problem where, you know, people have devalued family.
I mean, they've devalued life.
I mean, you think about since Roe v. Wade, almost 18 million black babies have been murdered in the womb.
And that's something that should be unconscionable to people.
You want to talk about genocide.
And so again, when I look at the breakdown in the black community of the family, and the fact that you had a government program that said, we're going to give a woman a check from the government if she has her child out of wedlock.
Continue to give her a check.
But the caveat is that she can't have a man in the home.
So the maybe unintended, but I think somewhat intended consequence is that you remove the responsibility of the man in the home in a community where the man had always been that responsible figure.
I mean, what got the black community through slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, all of these things?
It was that solid black family.
It was that sense of community.
And now that's been decimated.
So do I think that another government program is going to repair that?
No.
I think that there has to be awakening within each and every one of us to say that we can do better than that.
I mean, we can protect our unborn.
We can restore our families.
But until we get, you know, the Hollywood and the culture back on track.
That's going to be an uphill battle.
In a second, I want to talk to you about Texas because your book is Hold Texas, Hold the Nation.
I want to talk to you about that in one second.
First, let's talk about your impending death.
Well, hopefully not that impending.
Hopefully it's a long time before you die.
But when you do plots, you're going to wish that you had life insurance.
And at least your family is going to wish that because you don't want to be buried in a pauper's grave.
You don't want to leave your family without any options.
But getting life insurance is kind of intimidating.
There are a lot of options.
It's hard to know where to start.
Making sure your family is financially protected, it's too important to avoid.
So Policy Genius created a website that makes it easy for you to compare quotes, get advice, and get covered without extra fees or commissioned sales agents.
PolicyGenius is the easy way to get life insurance in minutes.
You can compare quotes from top insurers to find the coverage you need at a price you can afford.
From there, you can apply online, and the advisors at PolicyGenius will handle all the red tape for you.
They'll even negotiate your rate with the insurance company, all part of their best price guarantee.
And PolicyGenius doesn't just make life insurance easy.
Whether you're shopping for disability insurance or homeowner's insurance or auto insurance, they can help you get covered fast.
If you've been intimidated or frustrated by insurance in the past, you're not alone.
But try starting your search at PolicyGenius.com.
In minutes, you can compare quotes and apply.
You can do the whole thing on your phone right now.
In fact, do it.
Pull over, take your phone out, go to PolicyGenius, and give them a try.
It's the easy way to compare and buy life insurance.
Go check them out right now at PolicyGenius.com.
It is the responsible thing to do.
It's what's going to ensure that your family is OK if, God forbid, something happens to you.
Go check them out right now, PolicyGenius.com.
OK, Lieutenant Colonel West, you have a new book out.
It's called Hold Texas, Hold the Nation.
What's the basic premise?
Why is Texas the key to the nation?
Because the two biggest electoral vote states, California and Texas, and the left, without a doubt, have their sights on Texas.
As a matter of fact, their mantra is, turn Texas blue.
And if you followed the election results from this past November, they really were close to it.
As a matter of fact, I live in Dallas, Dallas County, woke up, my congressional representative was gone, state house, state senate, a lot of the judicial appointees, gone.
And what is happening is that the greatest export that comes out of California is not avocados, wine or walnuts.
It's progressive socialism.
And if you look at what Nevada used to be, you look at Arizona, you look at Colorado, you look at New Mexico, and for whatever reason people are leaving California Because of the failed tax and regulatory policies, but they're migrating to states that used to be red states, and they're flipping them because they're, you know, once again, holding on to these same failed policies.
So even though Texas, with the incredible economic vibrancy and the economic opportunities you have there, all the right tax and regulatory policies, all the businesses and corporations that are moving there, Texas almost elected a far left progressive socialist as a senator.
Came within three points of winning.
How does that happen?
Because when you look at these major population centers, the Dallas, the Austin, the San Antonio, the Houston, the El Paso, it's all trending toward the blue.
And even though Texas has 254 counties, if all of that population centers in the I-35 corridor and some other places, it's just a matter of time.
And if the left is successful and turn in Texas, the national level elections are done.
You're never going to be able to reverse that cycle.
One of the scariest things that I saw about the polling from Texas in the aftermath of Cruz's narrow win over Bob O'Rourke, as you call him, is that the polls tended to show that immigrants from other parts of the country actually tended to vote for Cruz, that it was homegrown Texans, young homegrown Texans.
We're voting actually more and more in favor of Democrats.
Why do you think that's happening?
Well, that's the young people.
And of course, when you go to like a place like the University of Texas, and of course, Representative O'Rourke was at his event skateboarding and what have you.
But you're also seeing a lot of people that are coming into Texas.
The heads of these corporations understand why they're moving.
But yet, they're not talking to a lot of the employees.
Now, without a doubt, there are people that are coming from California, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey that say, I've had it with the policies there, especially the tax policies.
But you also are having people that are coming in within the last year, two years, they don't know the history of Texas.
But yet, they're able to immediately come in and vote.
And I think it's so important that it's almost like a proactive marketing venture that Texas has to go into to say, you know, welcome to Texas, but why are you here?
And they also have to talk to those young people, those future generations, to say, you know, what future do you want to have?
A future of liberty?
I mean, you think, think about this, Ben.
Last September, they had to have a special session for the Texas State Board of Education because someone came up with the idea of removing the word heroic in reference to the defenders of the Alamo in Texas history books.
How does that happen?
And there are people in Austin who want to change the name of the capital of the city of Texas because he wants own slaves.
And so I think it is, yes, young people, but I think that there's also a demographic that is coming in.
And you've seen that happen, like I say, in Nevada, in Arizona, in Colorado.
And the politics in Colorado dictated Denver and Boulder, pretty much.
And also New Mexico, where Albuquerque and Santa Fe dictate the politics.
And think about what is happening on the other side of the Mississippi River.
Where it used to be, you know, a very red state, Virginia, the state that gave us many of our brilliant founding fathers.
Now, all because of one county, basically, Fairfax County, right across the river from Washington, DC.
It dictates the policies.
I mean, they have not had a statewide Republican victory in Virginia for, I think, going on now nine years.
Well, what exactly should Republicans be doing differently in Texas, per se?
Especially because when you look at Texas, it's interesting.
I had Governor Greg Abbott on my show a little while ago, and he has been winning a pretty significant percentage of the Hispanic vote.
If you look at how California has moved in terms of the Hispanic vote versus Texas, it's really quite stunning.
The Hispanic vote in California goes 70-30 Democrat.
In Texas, it goes like 55-45 Democrat.
It's a lot closer between Democrats and Republicans.
What do you think that Texas Republicans have been doing that California Republicans have not in terms of the Hispanic vote?
Well, I think that the difference is that many of the Hispanics that are coming into California are coming, you know, centered around an illegal immigrant philosophy.
Where many of the Hispanics that are coming into Texas, and there have been some studies about this, more about the small business entrepreneurship, they still have those basic conservative values about family, they want better education opportunities.
And so they understand that connection with the Republican Party.
I mean, Hispanic programs in Texas are very strong.
And I think you see that reflected.
And then of course, you know, Governor Abbott has a Hispanic wife who, without a doubt, being the first lady of Texas, I mean, she's a great person to go out and deliver that message.
But I think that overall, not just in Texas, but everywhere, Republicans have to get back into the major population centers.
They wrote them off for so long, and now that's where the left is bringing everyone into.
And those policies in most of those urban areas are failing.
Even in red states, they're failing.
Again, in Georgia, when Stacey Abrams won, she had the Atlanta metropolitan area, then all the rest around it was red.
But she came within, what, two points of winning.
So I think that's where someone in the Republican Party needs to sit back and look at the big map and say, how do we start penetrating, you know, quote unquote, the blue wall in these, you know, major population centers?
I heard one person say that, you know, Pennsylvania, you've got Pittsburgh on one side and Philadelphia on the other side, and in between is Alabama.
Okay.
So how do we start figuring out getting that message into Philadelphia and Pittsburgh?
Think about it.
I mean, the sugar tax, the soda tax in Philadelphia, who does that hurt the most?
The people in those inner city areas.
Illegal immigration, the sanctuary city policies, who does that hurt mostly?
The minority populations there.
Look at what is happening in the South Side of Chicago with the rampant gang violence.
That's where we need to be.
And if we don't take that seriously, I mean, it's just a matter of time.
And that's why I'm fairly pessimistic about 2020.
I want to get your thoughts on this, because in 2018, the Republicans showed up.
I mean, they showed up to vote, and then they got swamped.
Basically, all the red areas got redder, all the blue areas got bluer, and all the purple areas got very blue.
Yes.
Very quickly, all those suburban areas got very blue.
If Republicans keep doubling down on this narrow base, they're going to lose.
I think that a lot of Republicans have fallen into the trap of thinking that because Trump pulled a rabbit out of the hat in 2016 by winning 80,000 votes in the correct three states while losing the popular vote by 3 million, that that's replicable.
And I'm having a hard time seeing exactly how that's replicable over the long haul or even over the short term.
No, you're absolutely right, and I think, and you and I had this discussion also, is that the American people are very visual, and you can have all the right policies and everything like that, but, you know, President Trump has to understand that there's an optic, and his personality can turn a lot of people off, and that's why you've seen a lot of Republicans, and we had that happen.
In the state of Texas, where you had the, you could break up your, you don't have the straight line ticket voting.
Right.
And there were a lot of people that were picking and choosing in there.
And so what we need to do is have someone that is that standard bearer that does portray that leadership image and the policies relate back to it.
Because the left is going to go back into those places where he thought that he will have that success again.
I mean, look at Wisconsin.
I mean, we were not successful in Wisconsin in 2018, this last election cycle.
So what exactly should Republicans do?
to do everything they can to not allow that to be replicated in 2020.
So what exactly should Republicans do?
Because it seems like President Trump isn't changing his stripes anytime soon.
I think Republicans have to talk about the economy.
They have to talk about, and they have to do this in the inner cities.
They have to talk about how they can make things better.
School choice, school vouchers, education.
Those are better things for the Republicans to talk about in the inner cities.
I think that, once again, we need to talk about, you know, Americans are safer.
We haven't had these, you know, flurry of terrorist attacks like we did in the eight years of the Obama administration.
I'm sure a lot of people here still remember what happened in San Bernardino.
Back a few years ago in December.
So those are the type of things we have to really talk about.
But again, it cannot be this outreach thing.
It has to find those policies that bring people to understanding that right relationship between themselves and the institution of government.
The fact that this should be playing over and over and over.
When the president last State of the Union address announced that black unemployment was at an historic all-time low, and they panned over to the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and they just sat there stoically.
Those are the type of images you need to show to the American people.
If you really want to win on this illegal immigration debate and the thing about the wall, get the angel moms out there.
Get the people that have been victimized by illegal immigration.
What I would say is, President Trump, you're doing great things, less of you on camera, okay?
And let these stories tell themselves, and let the American people tell some of these stories instead of you trying to do it.
So, Lieutenant Colonel West, you were in Congress for a couple of years.
Do you have any intent to go back into politics?
Are you enjoying yourself too much?
I tell you, Ben, I have a heart of service to this country and my arm has been broken so much about, you know, running again.
I don't try to reset it anymore.
So that was a topic of discussion with my wife and my two daughters.
Over the holiday period.
My oldest daughter is about to graduate from physician assistant school and my youngest daughter will graduate college this summer.
So that frees Angela and I up to, you know, consider some other things.
That'll definitely be interesting.
Well, I wanted to get your take also on some of the issues culturally that seem to have cropped up.
We've talked about racism already, but the other one that has cropped up is what seems to be sort of a war on masculinity.
Now, you seem to be a pretty good example of traditional masculinity in American life.
Obviously, a military man, a couple of kids.
What do you make of the war on what they call toxic masculinity?
Yeah, I think it's absolutely absurd.
And, you know, this Gillette ad that they came out.
I don't use Gillette products.
Well, I'll just get that out there.
But, you know, the left is defining everything.
They're defining now what masculinity is.
You know, masculinity is about a person that is a man that understands his responsibilities and is a protector.
But yet, all of a sudden, being a guy is associated with all things that are bad.
And I just hate this collective perspective and this groupthink perspective that lumps everybody in.
So I think it's very important that we redefine what the roles are for men in our society.
Look, I have two daughters.
And anyone that tries to, you know, harass, you know, my two daughters or whatever, they're going to have to, they'll find their way to me.
And that's an important thing about being a strong male role model and the father figure.
And the exact same thing with you and your kids.
But when we continue to have this chip, chip, chip away, when, when you have Colin Kaepernick in that Nike commercial, you know, believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
The perfect person that Nike should have used was Pat Tillman.
Here's a pro football player after 9-11 said, there's something better than this, and unfortunately lost his life, but enlisted into the army as an infantryman, as a ranger, and gets deployed to Afghanistan.
So I think that what we need to do is start to fight that culture war and stop allowing the left to define everything.
They define what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be black, what it means to be Hispanic, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man, masculinity and everything.
We've got to stop this.
So you sat in Congress for a couple of years.
You saw how unworkable it is.
Obviously, there are a lot of folks right now who are deeply disturbed by the unworkability of Congress and a lot of Republicans who are frustrated.
I'm one of them.
Sure, sure.
Republicans controlled the House of Representatives for years.
They controlled the Senate for years.
They finally get the presidency.
And for two years, they basically pass a tax cut.
They barely pass a repeal of the individual mandate and nothing else.
They don't defund Planned Parenthood.
They don't build the wall.
They do a little bit of regulatory rollback, but they don't restructure welfare in any significant way.
How can Congress operate better than this?
Should it be more partisan and more pedal to the metal?
Or should people be looking for some sort of compromise with Democrats?
I think it comes back to us as the American people and what we want in our elected officials and representatives.
Because we're the ones voting and putting them in those positions.
And again, I think the term limits is so important.
I think too often people get up there and they just get linked in to the D.C.
way of doing things, and they don't want to change.
They really believe that the center of power in the United States of America is in Washington, D.C., even more so on Capitol Hill.
They don't put the interests of the American people above special interests.
Or their own self-interest.
And that's a bipartisan thing, without a doubt.
So that you're right.
Here you have people that say, give us the House, and we'll do this.
Well, you get the House.
Well, you know, now we need the Senate.
Okay, here's the Senate.
Well, you know, if we could just have the White House.
And then they get all three, and then they fail.
One of the things that I admire about the left and the Democrat Party, they're tenacious.
Even in the minority, they're tenacious.
Because they're true believers in what they believe in, even if it's wrong.
But for us, we don't show that we're true believers.
And I think at some point in time, we have to have those elected representatives in the Republican Party that are true believers.
And I don't know if we're going to get there within the next, you know, four years, but this is my real vision that I think will happen.
There will be a third party.
That will rise in the United States of America that will say, you two-party guys, you failed us.
You're not getting anything done.
You hunker down in these respective holes, and you're not taking care of us.
And if someone can come along and show a principled vision for this country, you'll find a third party.
Do you think that that's more plausible, or the plausibility is that somebody's going to come up inside one of the parties?
So this has been the case made about President Trump, is that he tried in 2000 to run on a third-party ticket basically with the Reform Party, then decided not to.
We've seen third parties before try and fail in American life.
And then Trump launches this outsider campaign and basically takes over the party.
Bernie Sanders launched an outsider campaign inside the Democratic Party, basically took over that party.
Do you think it's more plausible that there will be a rising third party, or that there will be a force inside one of these parties that just Well, I think that there will be a movement amongst the people.
I really do.
And somehow the people will find someone to elevate.
I mean, you know, I often go back and I always talk about how, you know, the children of Israel said they want a king.
God said, okay, here you go.
Here's Saul.
And the next thing you know, it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
And even when, you know, Samuel went to the house of Jesse, and he saw all of those sons, and he thought it was this son, and he thought it was that son.
And God said, no, it's that kid there.
It's the little scrappy kid coming in from tending the sheep.
That's going to be the one.
So I think somewhere there's a David out there that's out there just tending the sheep, minding his own business, but he will be the one that will take this country to this next level and restore this country as a constitutional republic.
And then our education system has to educate people about what it means to be.
We're not teaching our Constitution.
We're not teaching our founding documents.
We're not teaching our history.
And so something has to happen.
That revolution has to happen because we have a system of indoctrination, not a system of education.
And I think when all those things align themselves, we have the right purpose.
So are you optimistic or pessimistic about the future?
I'm always optimistic, man, because if you're pessimistic, why wake up?
You know, it really is.
And I did not.
Four generations in my family, all combat veterans, we didn't fight for America to look like a Venezuela.
When I was a young lieutenant and I went through Checkpoint Charlie over to East Berlin, I knew exactly the reason why there was a United States of America.
Do you think that there should be some sort of national service component?
Because obviously being in the military changed you, obviously it had a long line in your family of changing people.
There's been a lot of talk about the idea that young people particularly don't feel any sense of solidarity with the ideals of the United States.
We feel increasingly disconnected because of social media and isolated.
Do you think that there should be consideration of a national service like they have in Israel, for example?
Some type of national service, not exactly bringing back a military draft.
Because as a former commander, I don't need to spend 95% of my time with, you know, 5% that don't want to be there.
It should be a privilege to wear the uniform of the United States of America and serve this country in uniform.
But there's so many other things.
The forestry service.
I mean, you know, just being in some of these local communities and around here going to some of the, you know, feed the homeless type of places.
That's the type of community service.
To let these kids know that life does not, you know, center around you taking a selfie and your iPad and your iPhone.
There's something greater.
Remember when we talked about what separates the military from the rest of the civilian society?
Service above self.
And we've got to restore that in these future generations.
So you've been going around a lot with the Young Americans Foundation, obviously they're a group that I work with as well, and you've been going to a lot of college campuses.
What's made you optimistic and what's made you pessimistic?
What was the worst question you got while you were on the road?
And you know, you've seen some protests as well.
What's that been like going to these Well, the worst question was when the young lady at Northwestern University asked me if I identified as black.
But that also gave me a window into understanding that level of indoctrination that's happening, that people are just believing that you have to—it's kind of like the Borg in the old Star Trek Next Generation that, you know, you will assimilate, resistance is futile, you don't have an identity, you're just six of seven or seven of nine or whatever.
And so that's very troubling for me because College is supposed to be a place where you develop critical thinking skills, and you're supposed to have that intellectual debate, and you're not having that.
And I've been to places where, you know, folks, you know, they hold up the signs trying to disrupt you or whatever, and you just plow right through it.
And what keeps me optimistic is that when you go on these campuses, Ben, and you see those young future conservatives, that are standing up in the most horrific of situations.
I mean, I don't know if I could have done that if I was a college student in these same areas where, you know, your professors are against you, the administration is against you, your peers are against you, and they continue to stand.
So the least I can do is to be optimistic and to fight for an America to give these young, deserving people.
How about the case that colleges are basically trashed?
I mean, this is a case that's been made by some conservatives, which is that the best move for conservatives would be to take their kids and either put them in places like Hillsdale College or to take their kids out of college completely and do the Peter Thiel thing.
If they've got money, give them their kids money, get them an apprenticeship, find a way for them to avoid college.
Do you think that college is actually a useful bargain for a lot No, I think college is still useful.
I think that, you know, to develop the mind is a very important thing.
But I think that we should have a Hillsdale College in every single state in the United States of America.
Northwood University is another school up in Michigan that's a free market for enterprise institution.
We should have one of those.
You know, I once went to some very wealthy white philanthropists, and I said, look at how historic black colleges and universities are struggling.
Wouldn't it be great if you went in and just bought a few of them and turned them into constitutional conservative black institutions?
You know, because when you read, you know, Booker T. Washington's, you know, autobiography, Up From Slavery, how did he establish Tuskegee Institute?
He established Tuskegee Institute based upon conservative principles, education, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance.
Now that's what we should be, you know, bringing forth in all of our schools, that you're there to get a relevant education, not just there to get some education in women's studies or underwater basket weaving, and then you've got to go out and be a barista at the Starbucks and you've got all kinds of massive debt.
What are we doing to develop the next generation of productive Americans to go out into our society?
And that's why, I mean, we've got to rethink how education is done.
Sure, not every kid needs to go to college.
But college needs to be there, needs to be available, but it needs to be relevant education.
Well, this does raise the question of conservative donors because it seems like conservative donors, very often, they only want to give to a couple of causes.
One, they want to give to their church.
Two, they want to give to a political candidate.
Or three, they want to give to somebody who they think is making a splash.
How do we change minds in the conservative giving community to say, look, you actually have to invest in local institutions that may not put your name on a building and that may not actually benefit you in the press?
Again, they got to stop thinking about themselves and stop, you know, creating these organizations that is reflective of them in their own little rice bowl or their own little silo.
I mean, when I look at, you know, the George Soros's and the Tom Steyer's and Michael Bloomberg, I mean, they find a cause.
And they fund that cause from the strategic level down to the tactical level.
And you can walk it back to all of these groups that are out there.
Moms Demand Action, the environmental groups, the Black Lives Matter, Antifa, whatever.
And you can trace it back to one of these top funders.
But we don't have that same type of fervor.
I mean, we've got the resources on our side to go out there and buy a newspaper.
And why aren't we doing that?
And then we sit back and we wring our hands and say, oh, you know, they control this and they control that.
They control it because we are ceding that territory over to them.
So I am looking, yeah, we do need people that think from at the strategic level and say, I'm going to, you know, develop my army that can get down here at the tactical level on the ground, that can get in this neighborhood in X city.
And I'm going to replicate that in other neighborhoods and cities all across.
You know, I'm going to, you know, take on this mantle of building constitutional conservative centers of higher education.
And that's going to be my cause.
But instead, we just got guys that, you know, throw a little bit here, throw a little bit there.
And they don't fight like the old Greeks.
Remember the old Greeks used to lock their shields and create the phalanx?
We don't fight like that on the constitutional conservative side.
And it's really easy for us to get picked off.
Well, Colonel West, I want to ask you about what drives you, because obviously you're driven by a sense of mission and purpose.
What instilled that in you when you were young, or what gets you up in the morning every day?
I mean, because are you a person of religious faith?
Where does that come from?
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, you know, every guy born down south got a little bit of, you know, pastor in him.
But my dad, And my mom was just incredible.
And, you know, my dad, when he told me that, you know, there's no greater honor than wearing a uniform in the United States of America.
And here was a man born in 1920.
And my mom was born in 1931, down south.
Those weren't exactly good times to be, you know, black in the United States of America.
But they never had a disparaging word about this country.
They always believed that the opportunities were there for me to go and excel and do whatever I wanted to do in this great nation.
And that's what I fight for.
I call it the difference between the equality of opportunity and the equality of outcomes.
My dad told me, you know, never see your skin color as a hindrance or an obstacle.
You know, you find out what the standard is, what it means to get the A, and then you get an A+.
And that's what I'm driven to do.
And the other thing is that you've got to be driven to make sure that the generations coming behind you have it better than what you had.
That's why I get up every day, and that's why the name-calling and all the other Mickey Mouse stuff doesn't mean anything to me.
If you're not willing to sit down and have that intellectual debate, then you're irrelevant.
I don't hear names.
I've been shot at.
Names don't bother me.
I think that's another thing that on our side we've got to realize.
Forget about the name-calling.
If you stay focused on that goal and objective, if you know what your end state is, then you're going to get there.
The noise is just background noise.
So, Colonel West, I have one final question for you.
I want to ask you what advice you would give to a 16-year-old kid in the United States right now who feels like opportunity is kind of slipping away, whatever community they're in.
What would you say to them to inspire them to greatness?
And I'm going to ask you that question in just one second.
But first, if you want to hear Colonel West's answer, you actually have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.
That's how we get you to pay.
To subscribe, go over to dailywire.com, click subscribe.
You can hear the end of our conversation there.
Lieutenant Colonel West, thank you so much for stopping by.
Everybody should go pick up a copy of Hold Texas, Hold the Nation.
Colonel West, it really is an honor and a pleasure to have you.
Pleasure, Ben.
Ben.
Thank you.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is produced by Jonathan Hay.
Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.
Associate producer, Mathis Glover.
Edited by Donovan Fowler.
Audio is mixed by Dylan Case.
Hair and makeup is by Jeswa Olvera.
Title graphics by Cynthia Angulo.
The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.
▲
Export Selection