All Episodes
Previous Next
Feb. 16, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
54:07
DIVIDED WE FALL Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep27
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Can the breach between Mitch McConnell and the Trump supporters be healed?
Bill Gates' climate catastrophism?
And why Abraham Lincoln was a conservative?
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Hey, listen, you'll probably notice that I'm not in my usual location.
I'm actually in my study at home.
And you know why? Because we've gotten the major snows in Texas.
This is unprecedented and we're immobilized.
Texans, of course, don't know what to do with this kind of snow.
We can't drive in it.
We shiver even though for the rest of the country this is all ho-hum and pretty normal.
Hey listen, I hope you're enjoying the podcast.
I hope you'll subscribe.
Whether you're listening on Apple or watching on YouTube or Rumble, please subscribe.
And also share the podcast with other people so they can find out all the stuff, all the fun stuff that we talk about.
You know, for most of my life, I thought a pillow is a pillow is a pillow.
There's nothing special about a pillow.
That is until I discovered Mike Lindell's MyPillow.
What Mike Lindell taught me is that a pillow, like a watch or a phone or a car, can be a work of art.
For a limited time, Mike Lindell is offering his premium MyPillows for his lowest price ever.
You can get a queen-sized premium MyPillow for $29.98.
It's normally $69.98.
So that's $40 off and the King Pillows are only $5 more.
Not only are you getting the lowest price ever, $29.98 for the premium MyPillow, but Mike is extending his 60-day money-back guarantee.
So go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Dinesh.
You'll get deep discounts on all the MyPillow products, the Geezer Dream bed sheets, the MyPillow mattress topper, MyPillow towel sets.
Call 800-876-0227.
And use promo code Dinesh or just go to MyPillow.com.
don't forget to use promo code Dinesh.
America needs this voice.
The times are crazy. In a time of confusion, division, and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
What is Mitch McConnell thinking?
The impeachment circus came to a very satisfactory conclusion.
Trump was acquitted, actually acquitted for the second time.
He's now 2-0 with these characters.
Yeah, seven Republicans defected.
I think two of them were a bit of a surprise.
Richard Burr.
In North Carolina and also Cassidy from Louisiana.
Now, the funny thing is that almost immediately upon these Republican senators voting for impeachment, there are these movements to censure them by the GOP in their own states.
And this is happening not just with Burr, not just with Cassidy, but there's a petition to censure Romney.
Toomey's been censured, I believe, in Pennsylvania.
So all these guys are facing, I think, deserved backlash.
Ben Sasse in Nebraska and so on.
So you would think that Mitch McConnell at this point would be worrying about, you know what?
This is bad for the GOP. There's a rift that is clearly opening up between this Republican establishment, symbolized by these seven senators, and the rest of the party.
Certainly the Republican base is overwhelmingly behind Trump.
But, somewhat mysteriously, Mitch McConnell jumps in and bashes Trump.
He bashes Trump after voting to acquit.
Now, he does this on the basis of a sort of Jesuitical...
By the way, I like that word, Jesuitical.
It's a product of the Reformation.
Reformation propaganda.
The Jesuits would make all these distinctions, and the Reformation theologians, who couldn't quite handle them, went, These are Jesuitical!
As if to say they're unimportant, they're technical, they're foolish.
In any event, McConnell basically says, Look, I think that this was unconstitutional, so I'm voting to acquit.
But, interestingly, McConnell thinks that Trump is, on the merits, guilty.
In McConnell's own words, he is practically and morally responsible.
Listen. Former President Trump's actions preceded the riot for a disgraceful, disgraceful dereliction of duty.
The House accused the former president of, quote, incitement.
That is a specific term from the criminal law.
Let me just put that aside for a moment and reiterate something I said weeks ago.
There's no question, none, that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.
No question about it.
The people who stormed this building believed they were acting on the wishes and instructions of their president.
And having that belief was a foreseeable consequence of the growing crescendo of false statements, conspiracy theories, and reckless hyperbole Which the defeated president kept shouting into the largest megaphone on planet Earth.
So what McConnell is getting at here is that Trump did it.
Trump incited the insurrection and moreover that Trump is responsible for what McConnell calls dereliction of duty after it occurred.
And McConnell, this is for McConnell, very colorful language.
These criminals were carrying his banners, hanging his flags and screaming their loyalty to him.
But even this kind of decorative language, if you think about it, shows no insurrection.
They were carrying his banners.
Does that sound like an insurrection?
They were hanging his flags.
They were screaming their loyalty.
That's it? You know, McConnell probably lives in a somewhat rarefied world, but for those of us who go to college campuses, for example, have you ever seen an occupation of a dean's office?
You have these students.
They're screaming.
They're hanging all kinds of posters all over the place.
They're submitting their non-negotiable demands.
They're kicking over the waste paper basket.
They're pushing and shoving.
And there's the typical non-resistance from, you know, you have to admit, campus policemen.
You've got these rotund campus policemen grinning all over the place, doing nothing to stop the students.
We've seen this picture over and over again.
This is not called insurrection.
This is called essentially a sophomoric tantrum.
And that's what happened in Washington.
This was a crowd that was rowdy, got a little bit out of hand.
But it didn't do what Antifa has been doing or Black Lives Matter has been doing for months.
And remember, this is really the scandal. Antifa has been knocking over statues.
These guys pulled down all the statues in the Capitol? No.
Antifa has been burning churches. Did these guys set the Capitol on fire? No.
Antifa has been burning other buildings, attacking cops, shooting people, killing them, murders, gunfire.
Antifa's been establishing occupied zones which have existed for weeks if not months.
Did these guys occupy the capital and basically stage a coup and take over the place for weeks or months?
No. They were there for minutes.
So, there is a kind of a surrealism to McConnell's complaint.
It actually makes no sense.
So, what really is going on here?
What is McConnell actually trying to accomplish?
Now, McConnell, I recognize, is a creature of habit.
He says things like, well, I've been around here for 38 years.
We've seen things come and go.
We've seen the peaceful transition of power.
But if McConnell should know anything, he should know that this is actually not a normal time.
This has not been a normal year.
This was not a normal election.
The Democrats have been condoning a bending of the rules, a changing of the system, a sanction of violence on the streets that's never happened before.
So when nothing is normal about a situation, to demand normalcy reveals a certain kind of blindness, a kind of foolishness, if you will.
I think what really is getting McConnell is that he's blaming Trump for the Georgia election.
And we have to admit that the Georgia election was a bitter disappointment.
Georgia is not a purple state, it's a red state.
So how did we lose Georgia?
Well, I think the answer to that is not that difficult to figure out.
We lost Georgia for the simple reason that a lot of the Trumpsters stayed home.
And they stayed home not because Trump told them to stay home.
In fact, Trump told them, get out and vote.
So they didn't stay home because they listened to Trump.
They stayed home because they didn't listen to Trump.
They believed On their own, with their own eyes, that something was very wrong, not only with Georgia, but wrong with the Republican Party that raised a whole bunch of money to fight election fraud and did absolutely nothing to do that.
So the Georgia Republicans decided, we're going to teach these Republicans a lesson.
This is a fight not between the traditional establishment and Trump.
It's a fight between the traditional GOP establishment and its own voters who feel that the GOP establishment has betrayed them.
That's the problem you need to fix, Mitch McConnell.
If you know the D'Souzas, you know we're very selective about our partnerships, and Eggert watches as a company we're excited about.
The CEO, Ilan, is an immigrant, entrepreneur, American success story.
His company creates exceptional products, but Ilan also cares about American values and he has his own voice.
Debbie and I watched some of his videos on the Eggert website recently.
You need to see them for yourself.
What is Freedom? is the first short film you'll see posted.
Elon put his company on the line to take a stand on current issues facing America, like censorship.
Especially today, it's refreshing to see a company take a stand on principle.
But it's not the first time. Elon was awarded the Fox Patriot Award after he stood up for the police, releasing a film during the defund the police movement called Speak Truth.
Finally, he's made a video celebrating men called What Is A Man in response to Gillette Corporation painting this picture of toxic masculinity in American culture with a recent ad campaign.
All these videos can be accessed on the Eggert website on the front page.
Most important, Eggert makes incredible watches.
Debbie and I are both wearing one right now.
And the craftsmanship and uniqueness is something to really marvel at.
They feel a lot more expensive than they are.
Elon gave us a discount, which we can extend to you.
15% off using the promo code Dinesh at checkout.
So now you have two reasons to go to the website.
E-G-A-R-D, egardwatches.com.
Come for the watches. Stay for the conservative films.
Welcome to my show!
I think that actually attributes too much Machiavellianism and perhaps too much irony to Mitch McConnell.
I don't think he's brimming with a sense of humor.
I think McConnell's point is that he thinks Trump is toxic for the Republican Party going forward.
And he wants to get rid, not of a Trump voter, but of Trump and Trump's influence on the party.
Now, this I think requires us to look carefully at whether Mitch has a point.
To look at Trump's weaknesses and at Trump's strengths.
To let Mitch, you may almost say, have his say.
And I think that Trump does have notable weaknesses.
We really can't deny that.
To me, the real Trump weakness of the rally on January 6th wasn't that Trump was a dictator or a usurper or a coup plotter.
None of that. It's the opposite.
It's that Trump invited all these people to Washington, D.C. with no clear purpose.
He wasn't quite sure what he was trying to accomplish or what he was asking them to do.
I don't even think he was quite clear what he wanted to do.
So the problem wasn't the specificity of direction, but indirection, a kind of lack of real purpose.
I think the deeper problem is that Trump was just outmaneuvered on all this election finagling by the Democrats and by the left.
Now Trump knew about it.
He warned of election fraud.
He warned of all the dangers of mail-in ballots and all kinds of other stuff.
He knew about it. And yet evidently he didn't direct the RNC or the RNC on its own initiative was unwilling to take the steps To necessary to challenge these things, to make sure that there was proper observation, to supervise the process, and to have election lawsuits ready if the process was perverted or miscarried.
That didn't happen. More broadly, I get the feeling that Trump has just been a terrible judge of character in so many of his appointments.
And this is ironic for somebody who comes out of a business background.
You wouldn't expect it.
But when we just go down the list, I mean, Trump appoints guy after guy who then turns on him.
Scaramucci, Michael Cohen, Bolton, John Kelly, Mattis.
Not to mention in the DOJ, where it hurt Trump terribly, you had the appointment of Jeff Sessions, good God, and then even Bill Barr.
None of these people, it seems, genuinely carry out the program.
And so Trump, in a sense, had no real control of his own DOJ in the way that, say, Obama did over Eric Holder, who saw himself as Obama's wingman.
And finally, I think, and this perhaps is the most relevant to the McConnell purpose, I think Trump has been reckless in strafing other members of the GOP, people like Rubio, even Cruz in the campaign.
So it's one thing to attack the other side.
It's another thing to attack I think it was Reagan who said that the 11th commandment, do not attack your fellow Republicans.
You can disagree, you can criticize them, but to denounce them, to dethame them, to humiliate them, that's going to bring some backlash.
So I think these are genuine weaknesses, but they've got to be set against Trump's enormous strengths.
The bringing of working class voters into the party, the outreach to minorities.
I mean, think about it. In the face of attacks, you're racist, you hate Mexicans, you hate immigrants.
Trump increases the minority vote that he got in 2016.
Trump's ability not only to survive scandal that would bring down any other Republican, but his ability to sort of go toe-to-toe with the media.
Every other Republican would run for cover in a similar situation.
So the bottom line of it is Trump brought in new voters because Trump represented a new spirit, a recognition that the Republican Party and the country are in a new situation, which requires a new type of leader.
You can pine all you want for the old Republican Party, but that is not to recognize the situation we're in.
Trump was a kind of a wartime leader.
And when we are in a cold civil war, in a domestic cold war, if you will, we need that kind of a leader.
So what is Trump's future going forward?
I'm not entirely sure.
I'm not sure if we can do without Trump.
But one thing I am sure is we can't do, the GOP can't do, without the Trumpian spirit.
Do you think there's a coincidence between Biden signing over 40 executive orders in a couple of weeks and the price of silver skyrocketing?
Hey, it's no coincidence.
Savvy investors know precious metals are a hedge against inflation and government stupidity.
And Birch Gold Group is not only your headquarters for gold, but silver too.
If you want to purchase physical gold or silver drop shipped straight to your door, or help converting an IRA or eligible 401k into an IRA backed by gold and silver, Birch Gold Group is your solution.
They are the premier precious metals IRA company in America with an A-plus Better Business Bureau rating, countless five-star reviews, and thousands of satisfied customers.
And guess what? I'm one of them.
There's a tidal wave of inflation coming and Birch Gold Group is your solution.
Gold and silver are your hedge.
Text Dinesh to 484848 for a free information kit on a precious metals IRA or to speak with a Birch Gold representative today.
Time is running out, but you can protect your savings.
Text Dinesh to 484848.
America, I'm sorry to say, is actually becoming kind of a horrible place to live.
It may seem really shocking to see an immigrant like me saying that, but this is not the America I came to a generation ago.
Ultimately what's happening is that politics is encroaching upon our lives in such a way that our basic liberties are now in the balance.
We can't take them for granted.
Now some people think that the reason we're in this situation, this kind of miserable situation, is because America is divided.
But by itself, that is not so.
America could be divided.
Let's just say, for example, that one half of people wanted to live like this, and the other half of people wanted to live like that.
So what? Both groups of people could inhabit their own moral communities.
I think it was the philosopher Hayek.
Many years ago, we talked about a framework of competing utopias.
You want to live in a red state?
Do that. A blue state?
Do that. Live and let live.
But that's not what we have.
What we have is one group of people in the name of democracy, in fact, in the name of majority rule, essentially trying to dictate the lives of people.
The rest of us.
Let's just say the 51% wants to rule with an iron rod, the other 49%.
And by rule, I mean not only confiscate our money, but take away our basic freedoms.
Tell us how we should live, where we should go, indoctrinate our children, pollute our values, suppress our free speech, throw us off platforms so we can't speak.
Now, this is actually not what America was set up to be.
And I think a lot of the reason we're at this point We're good to go.
Proclamations of this or that, but another way to look at the American founding is not as articles of faith, but as articles of peace.
Articles that enable people who do differ to get along, to coexist.
Let's think, for example, about the very core principle of democracy, of majority rule.
Here's the question I have.
Why should the majority rule?
Why is it the case, if I'm in a group, and let's say it's a group of eleven, why should six rule over the other five?
Where does that authority come from?
Well, according to the American founding, it comes from the other five themselves.
In other words, we would like to have a world in which we have rule by consensus, in which everybody agrees, but since that's impractical, everybody's not going to actually agree.
The American system is, okay, we're going to have majority rule because it's a better alternative than minority rule.
So the majority needs to rule, but, and here is the key point, the majority has to respect and violate the equal rights of the minority.
This is why the American founders were so big in protecting against tyranny of the majority, because they recognized that tyranny doesn't just come from a king.
It doesn't just come from the one.
It can actually come from the many.
It can come from the people themselves.
And so, Madison talked about ways of blocking, if you will, the will of the people, the will of the majority, from running roughshod over the equal rights of minority.
That's why we have a Bill of Rights.
Now, the reason our Bill of Rights has proven to be kind of a fragile instrument, you've got mayors and governors just running roughshod over the Bill of Rights.
And they're doing it, I think, ultimately because they don't care about the Constitution.
There was an interview, I believe, with the governor of New Jersey some months ago, and when he was asked about the Constitution, he looked like, what?
The Constitution? What? I'm supposed to read that?
What does that have to do with any of this?
The idea here was that under COVID restrictions, he was free to dictate whatever infringements of liberties he deemed prudent.
Even though the Constitution makes no allowance for, in the case of an epidemic, it doesn't say Congress shall make no law restricting freedom of speech unless there's an epidemic.
Now, the philosopher Nietzsche, this is Friedrich Nietzsche, the German philosopher, more than a century ago, spoke about the death of God.
But I think even more interesting, he spoke about shadows of God.
And what Nietzsche meant is that once you stop believing in God, You stop believing in morality, too.
He called morality the shadows of God, and he predicted that as belief in God declines in the West, you would begin to see terrible murders, violent wars, great upheavals and revolutions.
Why? Because Christian morality would subside along with belief in the Christian God.
Now, the reason I mention all this, because it seems to me something very similar is happening with the Constitution.
Stop believing in the founders.
Stop believing in the founding.
And the principles of the founding.
The shadows, if you will, of the founders.
And that is to say the respect for free speech.
The respect for civility.
The idea of tolerance.
The right to disagree.
The idea that we can say what we want in America.
The freedom to assemble.
The freedom to protect yourself if the police can't protect you.
All of these freedoms begin to erode quickly.
Because when the document itself begins to lose its moral and constitutional authority, then we begin to see that the cherished freedoms that it protects also begin to subside, as they are regrettably subsiding now in our America.
If you're thinking of replacing your carpets due to pet stains and odors, you must try Genesis 950.
The reviews are amazing.
This is one product that actually works with water.
It breaks down the bonds of stains and odors so they are gone for good.
Its antibacterial component It's time to buy Genesis 950.
One gallon of industrial strength Genesis 950 makes up to seven gallons of cleaner.
Genesis 950 is also great for bathrooms, floors, upholstery, and grease stains.
Debbie uses it to clean the entire kitchen.
Consider Genesis 950 before purchasing new carpets.
Genesis 950 has great customer service.
Order one gallon direct at Genesis950.com to receive a free spray bottle, free shipping, and a $10 coupon code using the code Dinesh.
That's Genesis950.com.
The coupon is only available for a one-gallon purchase.
Genesis 950, it's much cheaper than replacing your carpets.
Bill Gates is at it again, this time not with vaccines or any of that, but rather he is in his full catastrophist mode, warning that we have to make radical changes to our lifestyle, stop eating beef, all kinds of stuff.
This is part of Gates's new book.
In order to cope with the imminent threats posed by, you guessed it, climate change.
Listen. It just seems overwhelming if every aspect of our daily life has to change.
It can seem overwhelming.
But you are optimistic.
Yeah. There are days when it looks very hard.
If people think it's easy, they're wrong.
If people think it's impossible, they're wrong.
It's possible. It's possible, but it'll be the most amazing thing mankind has ever done.
That's what it has to be.
Yeah, it's an all-out effort, you know, like a world war, but it's us against greenhouse gases.
Now, my first thought upon hearing this stuff is, why are we listening to Bill Gates on climate change?
What does he actually know about climate change?
Well, Dinesh, Phil Gates is a really smart guy and he's extremely rich.
Well, this is the problem right there.
We tend to think that if somebody is extremely rich, this makes them extremely smart.
And we also think that if someone is an expert on one thing, let's say, knowing how to code or how to program a computer or to build computer-related products, Therefore, they must be experts on geology, on the movements of the Earth's rotation, on greenhouse gases, and all kinds of other subjects that there's no reason to believe Bill Gates knows the first thing about.
Many years ago, this was actually in the late 80s, I believe.
I was at a conference, a Forbes magazine conference, at dinner sitting right next to Michael Dell.
The computer whiz, Dell Computer, enormously successful entrepreneur, very rich, just like Bill Gates.
And I was then writing a book about Reagan, posed to Dell a very simple question.
I said, hey, you started your company in the early 80s out of your dorm room in college.
I said, what do you think Reagan's policies of tax cuts, privatization, deregulation, the celebration of the entrepreneur, that ensemble of policies, What effect did that have on the tech revolution, which, by the way, didn't get started in the 70s or the 60s, but got started right in the Reagan era?
In what way might these two things be related?
And he gave me this completely blank look, you know, the kind of look that you get from someone when you realize that not only do they not know the answer, they don't even grasp the question.
And again, it kind of forced me to think about it.
Wow, here's a guy who's obviously clever, obviously good at what he does, but it was a great mistake to assume that because he knew one thing, he knows about other things.
And the same is true here with Gates.
You have in Gates' book and in his interviews all the familiar clichés that all beg the question.
Things like, well, Dinesh, let's remember the debt that we owe to future generations.
Now... What debt do we owe to future generations?
Let's think about it. What have future generations done to us?
For us? I might owe a debt to my neighbor because he lent me some coffee when I ran out or he helped to mow my driveway when I didn't have the means to do it.
But we would seem no more to owe future generations.
By the way, generations not even born.
Why do we owe a bigger debt to future generations than we owe to the past?
Well, Dinesh, we can't owe a debt to the past.
Those people are already dead.
Yes, but future generations don't exist either.
They're hypothetical beings that will come into existence at some future time.
If we follow the trajectory of human history, they will be vastly better off than we are, in the same way that today, an ordinary guy lives much better than somebody an aristocrat did 100 years ago.
An aristocrat, if they wanted to go to Europe 150 years ago, would have to take a boat that would take three months.
Now we can get there in a few hours.
So the bottom line I'm trying to say is that we have all this arrogance of thinking, oh man, the destiny of the planet rides with us.
And this is the kind of thing that people like Gates love.
It puts them in the driver's seat, not just of humanity, but even of history, even of what is to come for the planet.
The bottom line of it is, I think that, look, Greenhouse gases are obviously real.
There's probably a mild warming effect that is caused one degree per century by human action on climate.
But there are so many other factors at play that swing the temperature many, many degrees in both directions.
It gets hotter, it gets colder, it stays hotter, it stays colder.
This is kind of why they use the rhetoric of climate change, because they really don't know.
If they knew what was really happening, they would be able to make accurate predictions, which they obviously can't.
I noticed that Bill and Melinda Gates have a $45 million San Diego home that sits right on a private beach.
And so what that tells me, the fact that the Gates just put this money into this huge property, they kind of know that the oceans aren't rising.
They kind of know that the coasts aren't going to be swamped.
They kind of know that San Diego is still going to be here.
They kind of know that their real estate values are going to hold.
And the bottom line of it is they can write all the books they want, bloviate all they want, put out all the propagandistic nonsense that they want, but their actions actually tell you what they really think.
Mike Lindell is the most targeted CEO in America, and he's targeted solely because of his patriotic and Christian beliefs.
They don't like what he says and thinks, so they're trying to destroy him.
Hey, here's a partial list of stores that have dropped MyPillow.
Dollar General, Mattress Firm, Kohl's, Kroger, BJ's, Wayfair, Bed Bath& Beyond.
Affirm, Fingerhut, Colony Brands, JCP, Coborns, the list goes on.
This is crazy stuff going on.
Now the good news is Mike makes fantastic products.
Hey, we've been having some unbelievable cold temperatures in Texas and my wife Debbie, who was raised in the tropics, my nickname for her is Island Girl, is going berserk.
Fortunately, we've got an amazing arsenal of MyPillow products to the rescue.
And boy, do we need them. And I mean all of them.
We need the sheets, the blankets, and the pillows.
But we also need the robes and the throws.
And hey, you know what? If I were a dog, I would totally go for one of those cozy dog beds.
Now, Mike is offering deep discounts on all his products, up to 60% off on more than 100 products.
So let's get right on it.
Go to MyPillow.com.
Let's support Mike.
Use promo code Dinesh.
For a limited time, call 1-800-876-0227.
Use promo code Dinesh.
With President's Day just behind us, I've been reading the usual tripe on social media to the effect that Abraham Lincoln was a progressive.
He wasn't a conservative.
The conservatives were actually the Southern Democrats.
Lincoln was, in fact, a progressive.
First of all, the idea of being a progressive, which came into popularity after Lincoln's time.
There was no self-designated progressive movement in Lincoln's day.
But later, it came to be understood very clearly that progressivism is based on a doctrine of the future.
If you look at the American founding as the starting point of the country, progressivism is moving away from that.
It's moving toward a glorious future, you may say, emancipated from the reactionary principles of the founding.
So the question then becomes, did Lincoln align himself with the future or with the past?
And I want to resolve that question by turning to the words of Abraham Lincoln himself, specifically his so-called Cooper Union speech.
Lincoln was invited to Cooper Union.
This is when he was a candidate, to sort of test him out, to see if he had the mettle to be able to lead the Republican Party in the 1860 election.
And in this very important speech, Lincoln talked about the American founding.
And he said this...
He goes, the real purpose, the chief and real purpose of the Republican Party is eminently conservative.
It proposes nothing save and except to restore this government to its original tone in regard to this element of slavery and there to maintain it, looking for no further change than that which the original framers of the government themselves expected and look forward to.
This is Lincoln saying that the Republican Party in 1860 has exactly the same goal and principles as the founders themselves.
Lincoln wants not to move away from the founding, but to move back toward the founding against the pro-slavery sentiments of the Democratic Party.
A little earlier in the 1854 speech on the Kansas-Nebraska Act, here's Lincoln on slavery.
Let us return it to the position our fathers gave it, and there let it rest in peace.
And once again, back to Cooper Union's speech, Lincoln again.
This is all Republicans ask, all Republicans desire in relation to slavery, for this Republicans contend, and with this, so far as I know or believe, they will be content.
So what Lincoln is basically saying is he is embracing the founding foursquare.
Lincoln again. He says, what is conservatism?
Is it not adherence to the old and tried against the new and untried?
And then he says, we, meaning the Republicans, we stick to and contend for the identical old policy on the point in controversy which was adopted by our fathers who framed the government.
And then he talks to the Democrats, he goes, but you are unanimous in rejecting and denouncing the policy of the founders, of the fathers, I'm sorry.
So here's Lincoln embracing the idea that he is a conservative, not a progressive, but a conservative.
Here's a short clip from one of my movies in which Lincoln speaks eloquently.
Listen. They define with tolerable distinctness In what respect they did consider all men created equal.
Equal in certain inalienable rights, among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
They did not mean to assert the obvious untruth that all were then actually enjoying this equality, nor yet that they were about to confer them immediately upon them.
They simply meant to declare the right so that the enforcement of it might follow as fast as circumstances should permit.
So what Lincoln is doing in this clip is embracing the principle of the founders and saying in effect, look, yes, the founders allowed slavery for a time, but they declared the right of equality so that the enforcement of it,
so that the implementation of it, the realization of it, When we come back, we're going to explore in more depth what were the circumstances that caused the founders to permit slavery at all?
Why didn't they abolish it at the outset?
Lincoln knew the reason, and we should too.
Want to belong to a senior organization you can trust?
That's AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens.
AMAC is the fastest growing conservative 50 plus organization in America.
Over 2 million people have joined and now carry the AMAC membership cards.
AMAC was built by folks who feel the same way we do.
AMAC stands up for the values that have made America great, faith, family, and freedom.
They believe in the sanctity of the Constitution, including the First and Second Amendment.
They're fighting against the ever-expanding scope of the federal government.
They are pro-small business, secure borders, support our military, and respect our veterans.
AMAC works hard to deliver real value to their customers, providing the best benefits, discounts, and services you can find in one place.
Join AMAC today. Debbie and I are lifetime members.
Go to amac.us and join now.
Join AMAC today.
That website again, amac.us.
This is the day after President's Day.
And we're also in Black History Month, so it seems to me very appropriate to ask the question, if the American founders were anti-slavery, as Lincoln contended, why didn't they just set about abolishing it?
Why didn't they get rid of it in the original Constitution of 1770?
Why did they allow it to continue?
Now, Lincoln himself explores this question by looking at what would seem to be a hard case, a hard case example, because he picks, in a way, one of the biggest slave owners among all the founders, Thomas Jefferson.
And Lincoln holds that Jefferson...
Not Washington, not Madison, not Franklin, but Jefferson is the true voice of the American Revolution.
Lincoln calls him the most distinguished politician of our history.
A remarkable statement.
Now, the Jefferson case is hard because while Washington freed his slaves upon his death, Jefferson had 200 of them, at least at one time, and he didn't free them.
So Jefferson would appear to be the classic example of the hypocrisy among the founders to which the left likes to point.
Now, the great paradox is here's Jefferson.
He's a southern planter with 200 slaves at Monticello.
And yet he rails against slavery with almost, you may say, with the cadence of a biblical prophet.
First of all, in the summary view of the rights of British America, which Jefferson wrote before the Declaration, he makes this remarkable statement, The abolition.
He uses the word abolition.
Think of it. That's the prelude of the word abolitionist.
The abolition of domestic slavery is the great object of desire in those colonies where it was unhappily introduced in their infant state.
So Jefferson is saying that we got slavery not because we wanted it, not because the colonies wanted it.
They actually want to abolish it.
Amazing. But Jefferson says the British crown forced it upon us 150 years ago, and it's embedded itself in American life.
And then here's Jefferson continuing, denouncing slavery.
And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are the gift of God, that they are not to be violated but with His wrath indeed?
I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that His justice cannot sleep forever.
And then talking about slavery...
The Almighty has no attribute which can take side with us in such a contest.
In other words, slavery is unequivocally wrong, says Jefferson.
And so, I come back to my question, why didn't the founders who knew that and said that, even the southerners among them, even Madison, even Jefferson, even Washington, why didn't they simply chuck it?
No slavery. Now, the conventional answer to this is that they knew that if they abolished slavery, they would not have a union.
This is, I think, as a practical matter, true for the simple reason that slavery was legal in every state.
And remember that the representatives who came to Philadelphia represented those states, represented the people of those states.
And with slavery legal in every state, what are the chances that you can get a union that at the outset goes no slavery?
The practical chance of that would seem to be zero.
But I think that this answer, which is the normal answer in these situations, is inadequate.
There is, in fact, a deeper answer.
For the founders, this was not a clash between the noble principle of anti-slavery, you may say, and the practical necessity of getting a union.
Rather, it was a clash between two principles that are both present in the Declaration itself.
It's not the clash between principle and practice.
But the clash between rival principles, both of which have a legitimate claim and which, upon examination, turn out to be the same principle.
This is why the founders did what we did.
I'll explain when we come right back.
Today we're in a battle for truth and I'd like to recommend an insightful book to you called Reflections on the Existence of God by best-selling author Richard Simmons III. He writes on a whole bunch of topics like life, death, sex and truth.
Reflections on the Existence of God is a collection of short essays that tackles the biggest question of all.
Does God exist?
The book is well researched, easy to read, and now a bestseller on Amazon.
Former White House aide Wallace Henley says, I've taught apologetics for many years.
Of all the books on apologetics, Simmons is the best I've ever read.
If you want to challenge yourself, I encourage you right now to get your copy of Reflections on the Existence of God by Richard Simmons III. Visit reflectionsdinesh.com to learn more about the book and get exclusive access to the first chapter for free.
Go to reflectionsdinesh.com now.
That's reflectionsdinesh.com.
I'm continuing my exploration of why the American founders allowed slavery and didn't outlaw it in the original Constitution.
Well, I think Jefferson's phrase about slavery, a very kind of arresting phrase, he goes, we have a wolf by the tail.
We can neither hold him nor safely let him go.
I think this represented, for Jefferson, a fear, which is that slavery has become embedded in America and it's not easy to think about how this can be unraveled.
I mentioned that the Conundrum of the Founders wasn't merely a conundrum between anti-slavery principle and practice, meaning the practical necessity of getting a union, but it was a deeper clash of principles embedded in the Declaration of Independence itself.
So let's look at the Declaration to find out what these two principles are.
The first principle we know Created equal.
All men are created equal.
Let's call that the anti-slavery principle.
Let's call that the freedom principle.
And that appears on first glance to be the only principle in the Declaration until you read to the end of the same sentence when you come across this phrase.
Consent of the governed.
Governments derive their legitimacy by the consent of the governed.
Now this I would call the democracy principle, which is the simple idea that governments need popular consent to be able to function.
And if you think about these two principles, created equal and consent of the governed, in a sense they're the same principle.
Because if it is wrong to govern a man without his consent, in other words, if it's wrong to enslave a man, it is equally wrong to govern a people without their consent.
So here you've got these two principles, both valid, and both, you may say, two sides of the same coin.
And now we have, I would say, the problem.
And the problem is, what happens if the people do not give consent to the idea that all men are created equal?
In other words, what if the people affirm A right to slavery or a practice of slavery that contradicts the idea that all men are created equal.
Then for the founders, it's not a simple matter.
You might say, well, the founders should just do the right thing, Dinesh.
They should simply do what is necessary.
Outlaw slavery and let the chips fall where they may.
Well, what you're really saying is that the founders should overrun democracy.
They should govern the American people without their consent.
They should establish a form of tyranny in the name of all men are created equal, so that all men are created equal is now established by dictatorial principle.
No, the American founders were not willing to do that.
They recognized that if we're going to abolish slavery, if we're going to see a realization of the all men are created equal principle, we have to do it with the consent of the governed.
And that consent is unavailable now, but we're going to try to create the grounds for it to be available later.
This was the basis for the American founders allowing slavery in practice while outlawing it in principle, while establishing a union on anti-slavery principles.
Now, you may say that this debate seems kind of theoretical.
The American founders made a wrong decision.
But did they? A very good way of finding out if they made a wrong decision is simply to look at the effects of their actual decision.
Was the effect of the American founding to strengthen or weaken slavery?
Well, the answer is obvious.
Prior to the American founding, slavery was legal in every state.
It was clearly a national institution.
And after the American founding, almost immediately, slavery became, well, a regional institution.
It became outlawed mostly in the north and allowed mostly in the south.
So, as a result of the American founding itself, by 1804, just a few years after the founding, every state north of Maryland had either abolished slavery outright or they had a system, a schedule of abolition that was underway.
By the end of the founding, more than 100,000 slaves had been freed, about one-sixth of the total number in the country, and slavery was gone or on its way out in seven of the original 13 states.
Congress was committed to outlawing the slave trade in 1808, which it did.
So here's the bottom line.
Slavery was dealt a mortal blow by the American founding, not just later, not just through the Civil War, not just in 1860, but in the immediate aftermath of the American founding.
So the American founding lessened the influence of slavery in America, and ultimately at the end, Once popular consent had mobilized around this new Republican Party that represented the spirit and a commitment to stopping the extension of slavery, the forces were now in place for making slavery go away altogether.
Cybercrime is up 75% and by far the most serious cybercrime to worry about is home title theft.
The job of the criminals is easier than you think.
The title documents to our homes are now online.
The thief finds your home's title and forges your signature on a quitclaim deed stating you sold your home to him.
Then he takes out loans on your home and leaves you in debt.
You won't know until late payment or eviction notices arrive.
Insurance doesn't cover you.
And neither do most common identity theft programs.
And that's why I protect my home with Home Title Lock.
The instant Home Title Lock detects someone tampering with my home's title.
They help shut it down. Go to HomeTitleLock.com and register your address to see if you're already a victim.
Then use code RADIO to receive 30 free days of protection.
That's code radio at HomeTitleLock.com.
HomeTitleLock.com.
Hey, I hope you're enjoying the podcast.
We're not in our normal studio because of weather in Texas.
But if you like what you see and hear, make sure you subscribe and make sure that you also share the podcast with others.
It's now time for Mailbox and we go to a question about higher education.
Hey, Dinesh. My name's Damian, and I'm an aspiring conservative scholar, but I'm currently a student at the University of Texas at Austin.
I know educational institutions have often maintained a left-wing bias historically, but this bias seems exceptionally egregious today.
I wanted to know if you think conservatives can rein in the left-wing bias present in America's educational institutions, and if so, how we can do so successfully?
Well, you're quite right that the bias is much worse.
It was there a generation ago when I was a student, but there were conservative professors.
There was debate.
You didn't have this atmosphere of intolerance, of shutting people down, of shutting down debate, of just sheer avalanches of ideological propaganda.
Just a suppression of facts on the other side and all of this being done by the professors themselves.
It's downright horrible.
And so I feel bad for students because you're in a vulnerable position.
Who makes the rules on the campus?
The administration does, the deans do, the professors do.
Sometimes you have to worry if you say the wrong thing, what about your grade?
So my thought is to, if you are in the wrong course with the wrong professor, you might have to play along.
You might have to say, you know, nonsense, the opposite of what you believe, the opposite of the truth.
It's terrible we're in this situation, but we are.
Now, whatever you can do to organize with other students and import conservative views to campus, bring in The philosophy, if you will, that's being excluded on the campus, that is a noble service that you can do.
The most important thing is to liberate your own mind, the opening of your own mind, and that requires that you do, you may almost call it dissident reading, samizdat reading, the reading of works that counters the propaganda that you're subjected to.
And I've tried in my own work not only to provide this perspective, but to offer voluminous references.
So each fact is supported and supported by reliable scholarly sources.
And so I would suggest starting with my books and then jumping to the sources themselves.
Start with America, Imagine a World Without Her, but then also my work on the history of the Democratic Party, the latest book, of course, United States of Socialism.
I think The Big Lie, one of my most...
In-depth looks at fascism and the roots of fascism, all coming from the left.
Bottom line, the knowledge exists out there.
It's just now your obligation, your duty to go out and find it.
And that's how you become, in the end, an educated person.
Not because of what your university is doing, but you may almost say despite it.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
▲
Export Selection