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June 14, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza

01:11:39

FRANKLY SPEAKING Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 110

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	Quite frankly, you shouldn't believe the media, even when what they say is true.
	I'll tell you why. And how free speech is not limited to the First Amendment.
	This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
	America needs this voice.
	The times are crazy, and a time of confusion, division, and lies.
	We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
	This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
	I just got back from the weekend rally in Wisconsin organized by Mike Lindell.
	This was the rally for free speech, and it was fantastic.
	It was huge. Mike actually sent his plane to get Danielle and me and picked us up in Texas along with some of the other speakers.
	Now, the mood there, I don't know, six, seven thousand people.
	Welcome to my show!
	But I introduced also another theme which I think is just as important and ties in with the issue of free speech, which is that our media have become organs of propaganda.
	It's a very scary notion that you don't have a real media in a country because the media is an essential check.
	The media are the people who are supposed to ask the questions.
	But do you see them asking the questions?
	Look at the media at one of these Biden press conferences.
	They're like a cheerleading section.
	They might as well be paid by the DNC, even if they aren't.
	So you don't have that kind of scrutiny that is an essential part of democracy.
	This is not just a matter that the media is biased or that they don't understand.
	They do understand.
	And if you give them facts that are damaging to their ideological side, they won't report them.
	And if you tell them lies, things that they know are lies, that promote their ideological side, they will print them.
	They will feature them. Now I want to begin by doing and actually my work is somewhat done for me by an article by Michael Goodwin in the New York Post.
	He's talking about some of the top lies that we've heard over the past four years and it's kind of helpful to do a little summary of those so we're reminded of what big lies these are and how widely they were repeated and how to this date many of them have not been corrected.
	No apology, no correction, no scrutiny, no self-examination, none of it.
	Here's lie number one.
	Well, the most recent one.
	No, Trump did not order the clearing of Lafayette Park so he could go around to the church and brandish his Bible.
	That was refuted by the inspector general himself, a guy, by the way, who served under Obama.
	Number two. The lie about the lab leak hypothesis.
	That was dismissed as disinformation, dismissed as a debunked conspiracy theory.
	It never was a conspiracy theory.
	And more importantly, the rival theory, the idea that it came from a wet market, COVID-19 did, in Wuhan, never had an iota of evidence going for it.
	No one tested people in the wet market and said, look, these were some of the earliest guys to get COVID. None of that.
	There was no evidence going for it.
	So think about it. Without a shred of evidence, the media put out the idea that this theory had been proven.
	And Facebook and other digital platforms took down millions of posts that...
	What in retrospect is a legitimate theory.
	Here we go. Trump colluded with Russia to win in 2016 and might even himself be a Russian agent.
	The whole Mueller investigation lasting two years, and yet it came up with the And then the opposite conclusion was muted or buried in the media coverage.
	Remember the lie about Trump's Muslim ban?
	He's banning Muslims from coming into America.
	Another flat-out lie.
	Muslims were coming into America the whole time, and the restriction applied to certain countries that were known perpetrators of terrorism.
	What about the lie that AOC promulgated going to the border with adoring photographers all around her?
	This was the lie that the Trump administration were putting kids in cages.
	Remember that phrase, kids in cages?
	And then it came out, rather inconveniently, that those cages were built by Obama.
	They dated back to the Obama years.
	Even the photos that were used were photos from the Obama era.
	And so the best that the media does in these situations is that they go dead silent.
	When they go dead silent on an issue, it means that they were lying.
	They were flat out wrong. They don't want to admit it.
	The best they will do is move on to the next lie.
	Here's the next lie.
	Ukraine impeachment.
	The impeachment that Trump was somehow calling upon the Ukraine to kind of go after his political opponents.
	In fact, in the most muted terms, Trump was calling for something that turns out to be completely legitimate, which is to say, what the heck...
	Was Ukraine doing and funneling huge amounts of money to the Biden family through Hunter Biden?
	This is the key point. It's not the Hunter Biden scandal.
	Hunter Biden is merely the conduit to the big guy, Joe Biden.
	Joe Biden's the guy who was directing the operation, and we know that because he's directing other family members to other countries.
	It isn't just about Hunter Biden.
	Here's James Biden getting deals in China.
	Here's Frank Biden cutting deals in Costa Rica and all over South America.
	The whole Biden family is in on it.
	And the press covers for him and blocks information about this and advocates for censorship on digital platforms to prevent other press, in this case the New York Post, from talking about it.
	So... Then we go to Hunter Biden's laptop, another massive scandal, again protected by the media, unreported by the media, and to this day the media shows very little interest in looking to see what's on that laptop.
	On we go with Tony Bobulinski.
	And then the lies about voter ID laws.
	They're the new Jim Crow.
	No, they're not the new Jim Crow.
	Jim Crow was basically a form of using laws to have racial intimidation of blacks and other minorities.
	These are voter ID laws.
	These are laws that basically say things like all voter mailboxes have to be supervised and have to have someone there at all times so they can't be tampered with.
	The lesson I draw from all this, and I said this to the crowd at the Frank speech rally, was I said, don't believe the media even when what they say is true.
	And this may seem like a little extreme statement.
	People may go, what do you mean, Dinesh?
	Don't believe the media even?
	Even when what they say is true, that seems like a little bit of an overstatement, but it's not.
	Because think about it this way. Think of a guy who is a habitual liar, a chronic liar.
	Now, this is not a person who lies all the time, but this is a guy who lies a lot.
	Let's say he lies 60% of the time or 75% of the time.
	Now, yeah, admittedly, in the other 25% or the other 40%, he is telling the truth.
	But who has the time to be able to tease out one from the other?
	Who has the time to be able to say, in this particular case, did he happen to tell the truth?
	No, it's too much trouble.
	The guy is a known liar, don't believe a word that he says at all, even if it's true.
	And I think this is the posture we're driven to with the media.
	When the media gets troubled, something very worrisome is going on, you should think something very good is going on.
	The reason they're upset is because their ideology is being undermined.
	When the media conversely gets excited, they go, oh, we're really happy with Liz Cheney.
	We're really happy with Mitt Romney.
	Beware of Liz Cheney.
	Beware of Mitt Romney.
	Why? Because the reason the left is cheering those people is that they are doing the left's bidding.
	By the way, the moment they stop doing the left's bidding, they will cease to be the left's favorite Republican or the left's favorite conservative.
	Okay. We need to develop a new media in this country and a new media that not only provides a different point of view, but that is able to reach the vast majority of the American people.
	I've publicly and actually directly to Trump urged him to be a part of doing that.
	I think that that is a permanent service that he can do for the country, help us to build media channels that reach not hundreds, not thousands, not even tens of thousands, not even millions.
	But tens of millions of Americans so we can help undo the constant, chronic, lying damage that is done to this country and to public information, the very lifeblood of a democracy by our dishonest mainstream media.
	I want to talk about how we fight back against the digital censors, fight back to protect free speech.
	But I also want to emphasize that free speech is not limited to the First Amendment.
	Now, I was thinking about this issue as I was on the plane making my way to the Frank speech rally in Wisconsin.
	And I came across Trump's statement that sort of made me laugh out loud but also made me think.
	I want to read the statement and go into it a little bit.
	He starts off very Trumpian.
	Congratulations to the country of Nigeria who just banned Twitter!
	Because they banned their president.
	More countries should ban Twitter and Facebook for not allowing free and open speech.
	Now, at the first glance, it seems like an irony.
	Trump is calling for censorship.
	He's calling for banning Facebook and Twitter.
	but his reason is to...
	he says it himself, quote, all voices should be heard.
	He wants to ban these outlets because they are banning people in the country.
	So he wants to fight back against censorship by in a sense censoring the censors.
	He goes on, in the meantime, competitors will emerge and take hold.
	Now, this is an important idea, that while you're fighting against censorship, you want to create platforms that enable free speech.
	That's happening in America, happening maybe a little more slowly than we would like, but it is happening nevertheless.
	And then, says Trump, who are they to dictate good and evil if they themselves are evil?
	Now, this is, I think, a quite profound statement.
	And Trump is saying, you, these guys set themselves up as the arbiters of what's right and what's true.
	And Trump is saying, but are they?
	First of all, they don't know what's true.
	They're, they're not sure where COVID came from.
	They have absolutely no idea.
	They're simply choosing their authorities and pretending that because they choose to believe A, B, and C, that then what D, E, and F are saying is false.
	Um, but they're trying to camouflage the fact that they are making ideological They're choosing whom to believe in a debate that they are unable to penetrate the truth for themselves.
	And then Trump says very tantalizingly, perhaps I should have done it while I was president.
	And I think this is, here Trump is realizing that he did have a window in which he could have done something about digital censorship.
	By the way, so could the entire Republican Party.
	The Republicans have the House, they have the Senate, albeit narrowly.
	And they had the presidency.
	They could have repealed the Section 230 protection had they made it a priority.
	Guys like Lindsey Graham now are like, I'm on it!
	I'm on it! No, he's not on it.
	Now's the time when he can't do anything about it.
	And then Trump says, interestingly, but Zuckerberg kept calling me and coming to the White House for dinner, telling me how great I was.
	I don't know if Trump is implying that Zuckerberg, in a sense, misled Trump or he was able to dissuade Trump from taking the kind of action he should have done.
	Let's turn to what Trump is referring to with Nigeria.
	The Nigerian president, Mohamed Buhari, put out a tweet.
	He was basically talking about a secession movement in Nigeria.
	And the secession movement, I'm sorry, in Nigeria, these are countries that have had terrible tribal conflicts.
	Buhari himself is an elected leader, and he was warning the secessionists, kind of in the manner that Lincoln might have warned the Confederates, hey, listen, You know, if you take this to the next level and you get violent, you're going to have to pay a heavy price.
	Twitter decides, he's violated our policies.
	We're going to give him a temporary ban.
	And Nigeria decided, hey, listen, this is going to be a little too much.
	You're banning the elected president, and yet you want the right to function in our country.
	Interestingly, the information minister, in announcing that they were shutting Twitter down in Nigeria, the information minister compared Twitter's actions in Nigeria...
	To those that Twitter took after the ride at the U.S. Capitol in January 6th, including the banning of the account of Trump.
	So Nigeria sees, in a sense, that this free speech threat is not just in Nigeria.
	It's actually occurring all over the world.
	And by the way, other countries are seeing it too.
	Here's India, by the way, warning Twitter that if Twitter doesn't comply with Indian laws...
	Then Twitter is going to face some serious consequences in India.
	I'm now quoting the India information minister.
	He says, as a gesture of goodwill, Twitter is given one last notice to immediately comply with the rules.
	Now, the funny thing about Twitter is that whenever they get this kind of stuff, these kinds of restrictions in other countries, they start screaming, free speech!
	Here's Twitter! Right?
	We are deeply concerned by the blocking of Twitter in Nigeria.
	And here's the killer line. I mean, reeking with hypocrisy.
	Access to the free and open internet is an essential human right in modern society.
	Really? Are we getting this from you, Jack Dorsey?
	You fraud! You don't believe that it is a human right.
	If it's a human right, you would be recognizing that right in the United States.
	You wouldn't be banning people left and right who don't agree with your views.
	You wouldn't be posting notices and corrections and intervening in other people's arguments to say we see it differently.
	All of this nonsense that you and the other digital moguls are doing, all of this is inconsistent with this claim that the free and open internet is an essential human right.
	I confess that when I see people going against Twitter, including banning them, shutting them down, I feel a surge of delight.
	I start laughing.
	A smile comes to my face.
	I get the same smile that I would get when, let's say, David makes a nice rounded stone and uses the slingshot to bring down Goliath.
	Why?
	Because these digital behemoths are Goliath.
	They're functioning like Goliath as a tyrannical force in a free society.
	So anything that tames them, anything that brings them down, anything that puts pressure on them to open up and have the internet that they promised us, that is going to be good.
	Now...
	Bye.
	Let's talk about free speech at the most fundamental level, because very often when we think about free speech, we only think about the First Amendment as if to say that free speech is only protected against government regulation.
	Now, in the case of the digital moguls, you have government figures, elected figures, Democrats, Nancy Pelosi, Senator Chris Coons, you know, talking about, he says, yeah, the Internet, he's telling these digital moguls, you've got to silence the climate deniers.
	So, government figures far from pressing for free speech are pressing for more censorship.
	Now, our public sphere isn't limited to the government.
	Our public sphere is the whole space in which people have conversations and arguments that are critical to a democratic society.
	When Lincoln used the term public opinion, he wasn't just talking about like the opinions of the public, the kind that you'd measure in a poll.
	He was talking about people who participate in the arguments of democracy, who are, in a sense, hands-on in trying to figure out what's going on, what makes sense, what is true, what is the right way to think, what's good, what's evil.
	This is an argument that is going on inside of democracy, and it's occurring not in the government.
	It's occurring outside the government, but in the public square, and it's about public policy, so it has a direct bearing on the government.
	The point is that while Twitter and Facebook say, well, we're private companies, you know, we have the right to free speech.
	Well, if that's the case, then why do other private actors in our society not have that right?
	Think about the guy, for example, who had the masterpiece cake shop in Colorado.
	He has the right to speak. And by the way, the right to speak, the right to free speech, includes the right not to say something or not to be forced to say something.
	But in the case of the Masterpiece Cake Shop guy, they were trying to force him to bake a cake, a wedding cake, for a gay marriage or to make a cake that promoted transgender rights.
	These are not things he believes in.
	And yet, in this case, the local authorities were trying to compel him to speak in a manner that he didn't want to speak.
	So, free speech here, as I say, can be threatened in the private sphere.
	It can be threatened in all kinds of ways by private actors, but it's threatened most of all by these digital platforms.
	Why? We're good to go.
	The information that passes into the public sphere.
	So they are a much greater threat than the government.
	They're a greater threat than the government because they are strategically positioned to be able to control speech where it matters.
	It's not just that they are assaulting democracy by doing this.
	They're also assaulting our basic humanity.
	Why? Because the ability to speak is the essence of what it means to be human.
	We're a particular type of animal that communicates.
	And not only do we need to communicate with each other, we're social animals, as Aristotle says, but our speech is also part of the way in which we define ourselves.
	It's critical to our identity.
	So we hear all the time about identity and identity politics.
	How about the fundamental value of speaking to be able to define how you think, what you believe, and how you feel?
	And so in this sense, the attack on free speech by the digital moguls isn't just an attack on democracy.
	It's an attack on our very humanity.
	It is the new form of barbarism for our time.
	So guys, the Dinesh-Mike Lindell book and movie giveaway is now in full swing.
	In fact, Danielle, my daughter, is visiting, so in our dining room we have set up the book mailing operation.
	Debbie's like, what's going on here?
	Well, we've got the books lined up.
	We're getting them signed. We're getting them packed.
	We're doing it ourselves, and it's actually kind of fun.
	So I want you to be a part of this.
	It's something that I, you know, I saw Mike at the rally, but I haven't even told him about this.
	I'm just working kind of behind the scenes with the guys at MyPillow to get this done.
	Here's the deal.
	If you spend $250, I'll send you a copy of one of my recent books, one of my favorites, The Big Lie or United States of Socialism, personally autographed to you.
	You spend $500, two signed books plus two of my movies.
	And if you go the full way, $1,000 or more, you get four signed books and four movies, a kind of mini Dinesh collection.
	So let's show Mike what we can do to support him in his ideas and for standing up for his beliefs.
	And get some great products and great books and movies.
	Call 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Dinesh.
	Now, what else do you have to do to get these books and movies?
	Well, nothing. I'll get the info from the MyPillow guys.
	I'll send the books to the same address that you use for your merchandise.
	Offer ends July 4th, so act now.
	Again, that number is 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com.
	But to get the discounts, to get the books...
	You gotta use promo code D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
	I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Dr.
	John Lott. I actually became familiar with John Lott's work when he was at the University of Chicago.
	I think I was at the time at the American Enterprise Institute.
	His book, More Guns, Less Crime, kind of took America by storm because it argued what would seem to be a counterintuitive premise but did so incredibly well.
	John Lott has also worked as a senior advisor for research and statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice.
	His new book is called Gun Control Myths.
	So I want to talk in the first segment about gun issues and gun control, more guns, less crime.
	And then a little bit later, I'll talk to John about voter integrity laws in other countries and how they compare with those here in the United States.
	John, thanks for coming on the podcast.
	Great to see you again. Let me start by asking you about your work on guns and gun control.
	Now, of course, it's been a kind of This article of faith, and article of faith is probably the right term here on the left, that we need fewer guns so we can have less shootings, less deaths, and less crime.
	Your work has shown the exact opposite.
	Talk a little bit about why it is the case that more guns produces less crime.
	Sure. Well, just as you can deter criminals with higher arrest rates or higher conviction rates or longer prison sentences, things that make it riskier for criminals to go and commit crime, the fact that victims might be able to go and defend themselves can also make it riskier for criminals to commit crime.
	The big problem that we have is most people get their impressions about things from the media, and when you watch the news media, you constantly hear about bad things that happen.
	Rarely, if ever, hear about defensive gun use is on national media.
	You know, even dramatic cases where what would have been mass public shootings that were stopped by citizens with permanent concealed handguns very rarely get anything other than some local news coverage that's there.
	It has a big impact on people's impressions about the costs and benefits of guns that are there.
	It's not surprising then that people think, well, if I only get rid of the guns, Those bad things won't happen.
	What they miss, however, is the fact that when you do things like ban guns, it's the most law-abiding good citizens who will turn in their guns, not the criminals.
	I mean, it's just as difficult, if you look at other countries around the world, to stop criminals from getting guns as it is to stop them from buying things like illegal drugs.
	What you end up having is every single place in the world, for example, that's banned either all guns or all handguns has seen an increase in murder rates.
	You think out of randomness once or twice, if you ban guns, you'd see it go down.
	But in fact, every single time it goes up.
	And I think that's pretty powerful evidence with regard to the claim that guns on net are bad.
	Let's look at some empirical evidence.
	You've looked at it in the United States.
	We have all these major cities.
	I believe it is St.
	Louis that's the most dangerous city in America on a per capita basis.
	Chicago, we keep hearing week after week about this notorious kind of explosion of murders.
	But the same could be said of Baltimore, of Oakland.
	Now, these are cities, as I understand it, that have pretty restrictive gun laws, but the gun laws appear to be completely powerless in preventing actual shootings, which continue virtually unabated.
	And it seems like the political authorities, all Democrats, by the way, have accommodated themselves to it.
	They don't seem to be even energized by these grim facts.
	I mean, surely places like Baltimore and Chicago are places that have very strict gun control laws.
	And in particular, they make it impossible for relatively poor people to be able to go and get guns to go and protect themselves.
	But, you know, the big factor in a lot of these cities is just law enforcement.
	In Chicago, in recent years, you'll find anything from like 13% to 20% of murders get solved through arrest.
	An even smaller percentage results in conviction.
	Nationwide, you're talking about, let's say, 64%.
	A murder result in arrest.
	And so when you're talking about such a small percentage of murderers, and that's on average, people involved in gang crimes have an even lower probability of being arrested and convicted.
	It's not particularly surprising that you see high rates of crime.
	And you look at Chicago.
	When Mayor Daley, the son, took over, the arrest rate was about 67%.
	By the time he left office, it was down to 30%.
	When Rahm Emanuel left office, it was down to 20%.
	You know, so, and there are lots of things that they've done.
	So, for example, in Chicago, whenever a police officer talks to anybody, he has to fill out essentially two pages, long pages, legal-sized pages of forms talking about why you talk to the person, how long you talk to them.
	You know, excruciating detail, and it takes anything from 45 minutes to an hour and 15 minutes to go and fill out the form for each person.
	So a police officer, if he goes and talks to, let's say, four people in the morning, his entire afternoon is filled up just taking care of paperwork.
	You know, there are lots of things like that that they do that may be politically correct in some sense, but it's made it very difficult for police to go and do their jobs.
	There are lots of other factors that they've done in those different cities, but, you know, it's been a political choice on their part.
	I mean, it's just not this last year.
	I mean, this last year, I mean, we have Biden in the White House going and talking about the huge spike in homicides that we've had in major urban areas this last year.
	You know, he thinks somehow it's related to gun control, as if I wish some reporter would go and ask him, could you tell us which gun control laws became more liberal last year, changed last year, that resulted in this huge spike last year?
	But nobody will ask him that.
	You know, to me, it's very simple what happened.
	You had police being ordered to stand down, budgets cut.
	You had, you know, in many urban areas, half of the inmates in jails being released or more.
	You had prosecutors in the major area cities you just mentioned, refusing to go and prosecute criminals, even for those that were arrested.
	It's not rocket science.
	If you go and you make it so that criminals don't have to worry about being caught, and even when they are caught, they're not worried about being convicted, it's less risky for them to commit crime, and they'll commit more crime.
	When we come back, I want to talk to John Laud about another subject that he's been looking at recently in depth, which is the way in which you have a lot of voter ID laws in Europe.
	We'll be right back.
	I want to talk to you about what you can do to help stop court packing.
	Now, court packing is the tool of left-wing authoritarians.
	Hugo Chavez packed Venezuela's Supreme Court with his socialist cronies and paved the way for his tyrannical regime.
	Now Joe Biden and America's socialist radicals want to pack our Supreme Court with four new liberal justices.
	Now, court backing isn't some policy idea to improve our courts.
	It's basically a coup.
	A coup to take away your constitutional freedoms and to turn America into a socialist country.
	Now, this is why the First Liberty Institute, the largest legal organization in the nation dedicated to defending religious liberty in America, is doing something about it.
	First Liberty recently launched SupremeCoup.com SupremeCoup.com to serve as a one-stop shop in the fight against court packing and help patriots like you learn the truth about what's happening in our courts.
	More importantly, there's a big Take Action button that you can click to do your part to stop the Supreme Court coup.
	If you want to defend our God-given freedoms and stop the left's court packing scheme, here's what you do.
	Head over to SupremeCoup.com.
	That's Again, that's SupremeCoup.com slash Dinesh.
	I'm back with scholar and author John Lott.
	We're now going to talk about the issues of voter integrity.
	John, when you were in the U.S. government of the Department of Justice, you looked at some voter fraud and voter integrity issues.
	I want to talk about some of your findings as you surveyed voter laws, not just in Europe, but also in other developed economies.
	We've been having this now critique from the left here in America that these voter integrity laws, and specifically voter ID laws, are racist.
	They're discriminatory.
	They're, as some people say, voter suppression laws.
	They make it harder to vote.
	They discourage minorities and people of color from voting.
	Talk about what you found as you've taken a look at this issue broadly and what's happening in other countries.
	Are they familiar with similar issues and what conclusions have they come to?
	Sure, exactly. What you find is that other countries have had the same type of debate that we've had in the United States.
	People realize that there's a trade-off between making it easier for people to vote and concerns about vote fraud.
	The amazing thing to me, though, in looking at other countries is how universally they've decided that it's important to have certain basic safeguards to try to prevent fraud in other countries.
	And it's been something that socialists and non-socialist governments have adopted.
	You've seen agreements between conservative parties and labor parties that are there on what to do.
	You look at Europe, for example.
	There are 47 countries in Europe.
	46 of them require photo IDs, government-issued photo IDs, for people to go and vote.
	The 47th country, the UK, has required it for Northern Ireland and parts of England in local elections, but even they are changing.
	They've just introduced legislation a month ago, and probably within the next couple months, All 47 countries will have the same rule.
	And you look across developed countries around the world, it's very similar.
	You look at something like absentee ballot rules.
	75% of Europe bans absentee ballots for people living in their country.
	Another 20% Either limited to people who are in the military or the hospital, but all of them require that you have to have photo voter IDs to physically go and pick up the absentee ballot.
	They don't send it to you in the mail.
	So 95% of Europe has stricter rules for absentee ballots, either banning it or in terms of obtaining one, than any of the states have in the United States.
	Let me read from your article Now, how is it the case that in those countries they don't consider these sorts of restrictions as a form of voter suppression?
	How is it that they were able to convince the left in those countries, hey, listen, it's more important to authenticate the vote than it is to say, oh, it's making it more difficult because someone's got to kind of take the trouble to go get an ID. How is the debate stacked one way in those countries and it appears to be stacking another way, at least with the left in this country?
	Right. I mean, you look at Mexico, all the political parties support voter IDs.
	I mean, and in Mexico, they check not only your photo, but they check your thumbprint to make sure that you are who you claim to be.
	And Mexico also, if you look at the claim about voter suppression, their rules went into effect in 1991.
	They completely banned absentee ballots for even people living outside the country.
	They required biometric photo IDs, as I mentioned.
	And you had to go in person twice.
	You had to go once to apply for it, and then again to go and pick it up.
	You would think with these rules, given the claims about suppression, you should have seen a big drop in voter turnout in Mexico.
	In fact, if you compare the turnout in the three presidential elections after the vote rule changes with the three beforehand, there was a nine percentage point increase in the rate that people voted.
	And there's a simple reason for that.
	People have been concerned about fraud and that their votes didn't matter.
	And when those safeguards went into effect, people realized that it was much more likely that their votes would matter, so they turned out and voted.
	You know, you have seen that in other countries.
	European countries, despite all these additional restrictions, have had a much higher voter turnout rate than the United States has had.
	You mentioned a little detail, which I think to me may be the heart of the matter.
	You talk about the fact that in 1988, you had a leftist presidential candidate, Cardenas, who lost to Carlos Salinas de Gortari, and the left began to suspect that Gortari had had voter fraud benefit him and put him over the top.
	So it seems to me when both sides are worried that the other side might do it to you, then they go, hey, listen, it's really important to have voter integrity.
	I think one of the reasons maybe it's more difficult in America is the left believes that easing these voter rules, mailing out these ballots en masse, benefits them every single time.
	And so since they view the process as beneficial to them, and they don't have to worry about Republicans cheating en masse in the election, therefore they go, hey, this is why we want the more liberalized laws, because...
	They seem to guarantee better outcomes for our side.
	I think that's right.
	And the striking thing is just how alone the United States is in not having these types of rules to prevent fraud.
	You look at the debate with regard to Texas or Georgia that's been occurring recently.
	The big thing that Democrats have been upset about in Texas has been that The new bill that they have would require that somebody has to be present with the voter box at all times.
	They'll limit the time between 6 a.m.
	and 10 p.m. But they say you can't leave ballot boxes unattended.
	There's no country in the world that I can find that leaves ballot boxes unattended.
	They're very concerned about chain of custody type issues that are there.
	And yet, Biden and many other Democrats claim that the Republicans are racist because they don't want to leave a ballot box unattended at 3 a.m.
	in the morning out there.
	You know, the voter ID rules in Texas are less stringent than what will be true for all the countries in Europe.
	You know, and so it's just...
	Anyway, go ahead.
	Well, I was saying the right The rhetoric just continues.
	Here's E.J. Dionne in the Washington Post.
	He's talking about, I'm quoting him now, Republican politicians have passed voter suppression measures, some of which read as if they were translated directly from the Russian or the Hungarian.
	So here's E.J. Dionne indulging himself as though America is moving in a totalitarian direction or authoritarian direction simply by imposing the minimal requirements that you describe.
	So what do you make of the temperature of this rhetoric and the sheer distortions that have now become a kind of commonplace feature of our media?
	I mean, you pick up the New York Times.
	They're constantly referring to the Republicans as anti-democratic or authoritarian because of these rules.
	The same with the Washington Post.
	I tried writing letters to them, just pointing out letters to the editors saying, look, if you think that the Republicans are authoritarian because they support these types of rules, then all of Europe, Sweden, France, must be authoritarian countries because they have much stricter rules than anybody in the Republican Party is proposing here.
	I think that's the heart of the matter.
	Thank you, John Lott. Really appreciate your coming on to talk about these issues.
	Thank you very much. People can find more at our website at crimeresearch.org.
	Thank you very much, Dinesh.
	Awesome. Please check it out, guys.
	We'll be right back.
	Did you ever read the fine print that appears when you start browsing in incognito or privacy mode?
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	I'm really very sorry to see Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been for 12 years the Prime Minister of Israel.
	Lose his position and step down, become now the leader of the opposition Likud party.
	And this was not as a result of an election which some other party won or some other coalition was elected, but rather it was the result of a kind of behind the scenes backroom politicking in which one of Netanyahu's own former allies, someone who's in a sense to the right of Netanyahu, this guy Naftali Bennett, What Bennett did was he broke with Netanyahu and he struck a deal with Yer Lapid, who is the head of the centrist party.
	And also with some left-wing parties, including some Israeli Arabs, four, I believe.
	And these guys have come together in a very bizarre, let's call it right-left-center coalition.
	Bennett, who is now the new prime minister, his party, Yamina, has only seven seats in the parliament.
	Just think about it. This is a guy with seven seats.
	And Netanyahu's party won 30 seats in the March election.
	But what Bennett was able to do is by teaming up with Lapid, he has 17 seats.
	So they were able to put together some seats over here, some seats over there, and then go to the far left.
	It's almost as if Never Trumpers made a deal with Joe Manchin, who made a deal with AOC and Bernie Sanders.
	And so you've got this bizarre, I think, alliance that is not really able to govern in Israel.
	And certainly not going to be able to respond to any kind of escalation by Hamas.
	Because if there's a Hamas attack, don't think that the Israeli Arabs, who are now part of this governing coalition, and in fact the coalition is dependent on their votes.
	Why? Because let's think about it.
	The vote in the Israeli Knesset that gave Naftali Bennett the prime ministership was 60 to 59.
	This is a guy who's hanging by a thread.
	Now, you might think Netanyahu might throw in the towel, but Netanyahu, like Trump, is not going to do that.
	He goes, quote, we'll be back soon.
	And this reminds me of Trump in one of his recent statements, when I'm back in the White House.
	So these are guys who do not intend to go quietly into the sunset.
	Pressure brought to bear on the new gang that is now in power.
	Now, how did Netanyahu lose ground to his own right wing?
	I want to explore that for a moment.
	I had on this podcast a woman who was hiding in a bomb shelter in Israel with her family and was talking to her about the experience of being shot at with these Hamas rockets.
	And she said something to me on this podcast that was very striking that I remember saying, She said, basically, how have we in Israel allowed this to happen inside our own country?
	In other words, how did we let Hamas in the West Bank or in Gaza, how did we allow them to build this elaborate structure of tunnels?
	How did they accumulate this massive arsenal of rockets that they're able to fire?
	It's almost as if someone created an outpost in Salt Lake City or somewhere in America and are firing rockets at Washington DC and everywhere else in the country.
	We'd be like, how on earth did this happen here in America?
	And that's what they're asking in Israel.
	So I think one of the factors that seems to have hurt Netanyahu is the fact that inside of Israel, the radical Muslims were able to develop a kind of military base or bases and use that to strike at other Israelis.
	It shows that in the end, Neraniyahu may have lost it not by being too strong or too tough, but alas by not being, when the occasion demanded, tough enough.
	I want to talk to you about a movie that you simply have to see.
	It's inspiring. It's moving.
	Now, for many Americans, Father's Day is a day to celebrate.
	But for many others, it's a day to get through.
	Why? Because Father's Day hurts if you don't have a father.
	Now, the facts are clear. Fatherlessness drives many horrible outcomes in America, from teen pregnancy to incarceration.
	An astounding 85% of youths in prison come from fatherless homes.
	That's 20 times the national average.
	There's a path forward from the grim statistics, and this is why I urge you to order a powerful new film.
	It's called The Streets Were My Father.
	What a title, The Streets Were My Father.
	Now, it features the journey of three inner-city Chicago men from fatherlessness to gangs and from life in prison to prison, ministry programs that set them on the road to redemption and lives as productive members of society.
	Here's a short clip from the film.
	Listen.
	I wanted, I desired to have a father who would tell me that what I did was wrong.
	Debbie and I saw it. At one point, I had to wipe a tear from my eye.
	It's important. It's inspirational.
	If you want to get the streaming version or DVDs, it's really simple.
	Go to SalemNow.com.
	Make sure you get a copy or copies.
	It's particularly good for someone who doesn't have a father or doesn't believe in the power of God to change lives.
	Go to SalemNow.com.
	That's S-A-L-E-M-N-O-W.com and order the movie The Streets From My Father.
	I talked last week about how to write a sentence and about Stanley Fish's book right here, How to Write a Sentence and How to Read One.
	I think one of the cool things about, one of the compliments that we can pay a writer is we look at the sentences that Stanley Fish talks about.
	Well, we go beyond his work to talk about Our favorite sentences and to perform ourselves the work of sort of appreciation or analysis that he does in his book.
	So here I have Danielle D'Souza Gill and we're going to talk about sentences.
	I'll begin with the very basic.
	How do you learn to put sentences together?
	Because a lot of times when you're starting out, you have sentences But they seem to be these sort of stand-alone things, and when you start putting them together, you realize that they create a kind of a jumble.
	Now, Danielle, when you were in San Diego, younger, actually in high school, you were doing some tutoring for inner-city kids, mostly Hispanic kids for whom English was a second language.
	Kind of, what was your strategy for talking to them about how you make sentences Form together into some sort of a coherent whole.
	How do you teach people to do that?
	I found that a lot of the students had really great ideas, but sometimes would struggle with how to express their ideas on paper or in an essay.
	We used to do this exercise where with every sentence, whatever word was the last word of that sentence, you would start the next word.
	The next sentence.
	The next sentence. For example, if your sentence ended with school, Your next sentence would start with the word school.
	So if the sentence said, I really like my school, the next sentence would begin, my school is dot dot dot, just to keep the line of thought throughout the entire paragraph.
	And then if you said, my school is in San Diego, the next sentence would be that San Diego is, there are a lot of schools in San Diego.
	So, in other words, there's a thread is what you're getting at that helps things to hold together.
	It's obviously a very simple device, but useful to people to learn how to make thoughts flow one out of the other, each one coming, in a sense, out of the previous thread.
	Out of the previous thought.
	I want to now go into some actual sentences.
	Obviously, let's start with the Bible, because the Bible has one great line after another.
	And I actually, Dee, I want you to read a line from Revelation, which we can talk about for a moment, which I think is one of the great lines from at least the latter part of the Bible.
	This is Revelation 21, 4.
	And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.
	So look at the crescendo of that sentence.
	It's talking about, first of all, it's talking about Christian hope, about the fact that even though we have sufferings, life is, and some people say, a veil of tears, things will at some point get better.
	These pains will be relieved.
	And it talks about there won't be this, there won't be that, there won't be this, there won't be that.
	Why? Because the former things are passed away.
	In other words, the sources of pain and suffering are themselves removed by God.
	Let's talk about Yeats's poem, The Second Coming.
	Great poem, which I think is appropriate to our own somewhat apocalyptic moment.
	Do you want to read? Just read the first paragraph of The Second Coming and let's talk about what makes this so great.
	This is a poem, not a normal prose sentence, but nevertheless it is composed of a really good couple of sentences.
	Turning and turning in the widening gyre, the falcon cannot hear the falconer.
	Things fall apart.
	The center cannot hold.
	Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.
	The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned.
	The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.
	Surely some revelation is at hand.
	So if you look at this passage just from the very beginning, it doesn't even begin with a subject.
	It begins with turning.
	It begins with action.
	And it begins with things falling apart.
	We kind of have the feeling now in our society that our institutions are fracturing.
	They are collapsing.
	There's a breakdown, a fundamental breakdown of trust.
	The center cannot hold.
	Where's the center in American politics that kept the balance?
	Who's going to hold up the guardrails of our society?
	And then, very poignantly, the best lack all conviction.
	So there are people who know something's wrong, but it seems difficult to energize those people.
	The good people are a little passive.
	While the worst are full of passionate intensity.
	I mean, look at all the screamers in our society now from AOC, Cori Bush, Barack Obama, all these people standing and shrieking.
	They're full of energy. It's almost as if their vice, their evil, their schemes are a motivating force for them.
	I want to talk about a few great lines, good sentences that I've picked out, and they're all about time.
	It's kind of interesting, they all, and I'll say them and say a word about them.
	Here's Cicero in his great, they're called the Catalinarian Orations.
	There is his fulminations against this corrupt figure, Cataline.
	And simply from Cicero, how long, O Cataline?
	Meaning, how long is this going to go on?
	Kind of how we feel today about the left.
	How long can we take these abuses?
	Here's Rudyard Kipling, a poem that you studied in school.
	Can you read the key line?
	Because I think I once gave you a gift that was based on this line.
	If you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run.
	Now, that's not a sentence, right?
	That's just a clause. In fact, the whole poem is one sentence.
	But what does it mean, if you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run?
	I think I gave you a clock, which was, right?
	Yes, with this time quote on it.
	Okay. But I think it's a reminder of how are we going to use our time, how are we going to spend every moment when time is always passing.
	And so if you can fill that unforgiving minute and make it worthwhile, then you will have accomplished that.
	I mean, what a great is the unforgiving minute.
	Unforgiving because you don't get it back.
	And this is, by the way, also the theme in the Persian writer, the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, the moving finger writes and having writ moves on.
	Notice the repetition of the writing.
	The moving finger writes and having writ, or written, Time moves forward and it never moves backward.
	That's why people speak about the arrow of time.
	And then finally, a very melancholy, this is a poem from Robert Burns.
	It's actually singled out as one of the great lines by Ezra Pound.
	The white moon is setting beyond the white wave, and time is setting with me, oh.
	Think of that O and what that represents.
	It's like you cannot get this time back.
	And then you have the white moon, you have the white wave.
	What is the relationship of this white moon and white wave to time?
	It's almost so beautiful and so complex that it's difficult to tease it out.
	It's difficult to put into words.
	I think what's interesting about language is that language itself has limits.
	And what I mean by that is that you describe things, but in some ways you can't describe them.
	I mean, think about something like, can you describe the taste of cheese to someone who has never eaten cheese?
	Or can you describe the taste of roast beef to someone or someone who has seen, you know, that feeling of the sublime that you get when you see, for example, the ocean roar?
	If you can describe it, if someone's already felt it.
	But if someone has never felt it, you could never describe it in a way where they go, aha, I know what you're talking about.
	So language is very dependent upon experience.
	And in some ways, there's only so much you can do, even at its most beautiful to describe that experience.
	Let's close by asking you, Daniel, what do you think is, when you think of writing sentences, What is a lesson that you can draw that helps people to write a better sentence?
	I think just focusing on what it is that you're trying to say first, maybe thinking it through ahead of time.
	Sometimes people, when they're writing things down, just kind of rush through it.
	And that's a good starting place, but just really honing it into just those few lines sometimes from a certain poem or a certain paragraph can be really good.
	And so it's not going to come on immediately when you first just try to write it.
	It won't be amazing as soon as you start.
	And build your vocabulary, because it's really important to have the precise word.
	It's the word where when you use it, you immediately know that that is the word that describes what you're trying to say.
	A lot of times people fumble around trying to say what they mean or what they feel, but if you have a sufficiently broad vocabulary, you'll have a kind of nice menu of words to choose from, and you can find the one that really says what you're trying to say.
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	I'm back with Daniel D'Souza Gil.
	By the way, I should mention not only that Daniel has written a book about abortion, it's called The Choice, The Abortion Divide in America, but you are also about to embark on a television show.
	So tell us, say a little bit about that.
	Yes, the paper, Epic Times, if you haven't heard of it, they do a lot of investigative reporting.
	They do a lot of work, especially against the anti-communist, their anti-communist China.
	And so they have a platform called Epic TV. And it's a streaming platform, so you can see a lot of different shows.
	But my show on there will be every week, and it will be called Counterculture with Danielle D'Souza Gill, where we really go through a lot of the cultural issues going on today.
	And how we can fight back against the left.
	And it starts July 4th, so stay tuned for that.
	Awesome. Look for that. I want to talk to you about this big fight in the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the leading denominations and a conservative denomination.
	And apparently there have been a couple of prominent leaders at the Southern Baptist Convention that have been moving the organization away from conservative politics.
	Now, one of them, the SBC president, J.D. Greer, is apparently on his way out.
	And so is another guy named Russell Moore, another guy.
	He was the Southern Baptist Convention's top lobbyist in Washington.
	By the way, a guy who was frequently very critical of Donald Trump.
	Now, I want to focus on something that J.D. Greer recently said in a speech to the executive committee of the Southern Baptist He goes, quote, God did not call Southern Baptists to save America.
	What do you make of this statement?
	It seems like it's kind of his excuse for saying that Southern Baptists don't really need to be involved in politics, they don't really need to be Republican, because that seems kind of like a conservative goal, which is to save America, to keep it from going down the drain, that sort of thing. So it seems like that's what he's responding to.
	And I think it's really troubling because a lot of those people really do care about America, not just because they're political, but because they want to do God's will in the country.
	They want to work at home where they are.
	Presumably, this advice would apply to people anywhere in the world, right?
	I mean, if you're an Indian Christian, you would want to do your work in India.
	Where else would you do it, right?
	Or if you're an Australian Christian, you would want to do your work to be salt and light in Australia.
	So, it seems to me really odd.
	I think what he's trying to say, and maybe I'll play devil's advocate here, he might say, well, listen, there's been too much of a reduction of Christianity to politics.
	We should be in the business of saving souls and not in the business of supporting this party or this candidate.
	How would you answer that?
	I would say that, of course, the goal is evangelism and to save souls, but America is such a big influence on the entire world.
	And so if we can make America a better country, that will help everyone in America, but also people around the world because we have so much influence over the entire world.
	I'm thinking here, for example, of the way in which when Dante wrote, he thought of Rome as being not just Rome.
	He thought of Rome as the capital of the world.
	Why? Because the influence of Rome was transmitted widely through Asia, through North Africa, all the way up to Northern Europe.
	And so I think Dante understood in a way that in the end, even Christianity would be carried on the back of the Roman legion.
	So what you're saying, I think, is something similar, which is that, hey, here's America, but it's not just America.
	We're living at a time where, even if Americans don't want to, their culture, their values, their movies, their jokes are promulgated throughout the world.
	So if you're not salt and light here, thinking, oh, I'll be salt and light someplace else, this is the way to influence the world, right?
	Right, and of course someone could be a missionary in another country, but the goal is for the people who aren't doing that.
	We need to make here better, because we are living here, and if we don't act as the ones who are influencing America, who are changing the country...
	Thank you.
	Thank you.
	It seems part of this was that some of the anxiety of the Southern Baptist seems to have been focused on Trump himself.
	But I think more broadly, they're raising the question of, can you support a flawed man who is nevertheless doing things that are supportive of your positions?
	So the argument is, look at Trump, you know, here's a guy, look at the situation, look at his marriage, and look at Trump as a flawed man, therefore we can't support that guy, but it seems to me, so then what?
	You're waiting for a perfect man to be the embodiment of your principles?
	You might have someone who actually is more with you on some of those issues, and yet...
	They're pursuing policies antithetical to what you believe.
	So how does a Christian think through this business about the fact that there are flawed people, but nevertheless they might stand for the right principles, even if they fall short of them?
	Right. I mean, no matter what, everyone is flawed.
	Everyone is a person who is fallen.
	And so that's going to be the case with either side's candidate.
	But the point is, one side wants to further principles that are antithetical to the Bible and antithetical to God.
	They want to make abortion just rapid on demand at nine months, things like that.
	And the other side is trying to stop that.
	So we have to focus on how does our country really influence what's happening in many lives in America, and then also influencing the culture around the world.
	Talk about the influence of the left and the fact that we're not dealing now with the left.
	We're dealing now with the left that is really promoting things through education and through culture that just seem downright evil.
	It's not just a matter of choice.
	It's the actual choices that they make that they choose to promulgate.
	You showed me just yesterday, I think, an article from BuzzFeed where they talked about wholesome things that leftists find toxic.
	Say a word about the sheer depravity that we're seeing in America today that is done, you may say, actively working against the influence of Christianity.
	Yeah, I mean, there are so many examples.
	I think it starts with young kids.
	You know, if a young kid says, you know, yes ma'am, no ma'am, yes or no sir, obviously the left is against that because they're against gender.
	They don't want anyone to use a pronoun of that kind.
	They're against, you know, making your kids do something they don't want to do.
	They say, well, what if the kid doesn't want to talk to this person or that person?
	Well, the example you gave me was they said something like, you cannot ask your child to hug one of their older aunts.
	Because if they hug a relative, the left thinks that that's sort of violating their freedom of conscience as a kid.
	Right. The left writes about the child.
	Like, it's their body or something like that.
	And so they're completely taking this stuff so far.
	And other examples just had to do with...
	Really things that are normal, you know?
	I think they use the example of like a protective dad not liking a girl's boyfriend or something.
	They're against all of that. They just wanted to be so that everything that is basically a conservative or a Christian culture is overturned.
	So if the Christians allow this to happen and don't resist and sort of act like this is not, you know, like Pilate, they wash their hands off it, isn't it the case that we just get the complete triumph of depravity and not only are we not resistors of it, we become enablers of it?
	Right, and I think sometimes our side doesn't wake up until it's gotten so bad and it's gotten to the point where it's almost too late and then we try to kind of jump in at the last minute to turn these things around.
	But I think just knowing that this is the left's goal, this is what they want, they want to normalize their culture, their secular culture.
	And make it so that a Christian culture is weird and crazy and even evil, they would say.
	It's bigoted and all those things.
	Even making things that are right, wrong.
	Making something respectful into an insult.
	The Southern Baptist Convention has been a powerful force for decency and morality in the country and in the world.
	And I hope that they are able to push back against this leftist trend and keep doing the good work that they have long done in the past.
	We'll be right back. It might be time for you to think about introducing gold and other precious metals into your portfolio.
	Why? Common sense, prudence, caution.
	In May, the U.S. inflation rate hit 5%.
	Now, that's the highest in 13 years.
	We're seeing higher fuel prices, higher food prices, higher new and used car prices, construction costs, housing prices, the list goes on.
	So inflation isn't just kind of on its way.
	It's here. Have you protected your savings, your investments?
	Now, if you haven't, Diversified a portion into precious metal?
	The answer, unfortunately, is no.
	For decades, I never wanted to invest in gold, just the stock market.
	But now, I'm seriously worried, as many economists are, about the regime we have in Washington.
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	It's time for our mailbox, and let's go to today's question.
	Listen. Hey, Dinesh.
	I've been wondering, do you think leftist politicians actually believe that the radical legislation that they're trying to pass will work?
	For example, do they actually believe that gun control will help prevent crimes, that a $15 minimum wage would help lift people out of poverty, and the Green New Deal would help the environmental economy?
	Because to me, I think that these are just measures that obviously won't work and that could help them overhaul the economy and institute tyranny.
	I think really dumb newbie politicians like AOC might actually believe that these things would help people but do the more cunning politicians like Pelosi and Biden actually believe this would help people or is it just some kind of power grab or virtue signaling to get votes?
	Thanks for all you do.
	You know, I think that for the rank-and-file Democrat, or even for the ordinary student, they are often sort of fed this propaganda.
	And they hear it from so many different places that they begin to think it must be true.
	They doubt their own ability to figure out any different.
	And so they sort of take it on authority that, yes, you know, the minimum wage So what if you're raising the minimum wage to $15?
	Now, all they have to do is go to the next step and say, well, wait a minute.
	If that has no effect on unemployment, what is the minimum wage for $20?
	$30? $50?
	$100? $50? And obviously you begin to see that at some point there's going to be a crippling effect on business.
	No normal business, certainly no small business, can survive with that kind of a mandate.
	So then the obvious question becomes, what is the point at which you're putting undue pressure on businesses?
	Remember, when government imposes these mandates, they take on no inconvenience themselves.
	The mandate simply says, you must do this whether you can afford to or not, and if you can't, go ahead and shut down.
	So I think for the Democrats at the top, It's not that they don't believe it.
	They don't care.
	It was the philosopher Hume who said that reason is a slave of the passions.
	And what he meant by this is we often would like to think we live in a society where people ask questions, investigate hypotheses, come up with empirical propositions and then formulate their values to be in line with that.
	But in reality, it's the opposite.
	Very often people say, I want this to be the case so I can stay in power.
	I want this to be the case because this gives me more control in the age of COVID. And then you look for reasons that support the thing you already want to do.
	So this, in a sense, is almost disabling reason at the outset.
	Why? Because reason is actually not an adjudicator.
	Reason is a tool.
	Reason isn't a referee.
	Reason is actually the servant, and this is Hume's point, of the result you want to achieve from the beginning.
	You're looking for rationalizations to do the things that benefit you, either financially or politically.
	I think that's sadly true.
	Now, that can be true on our side, and we've always got to be careful to make sure that our beliefs are always tested against the data.
	It's the mark of maturity and honesty on a political side to be able to test your ideas against what's happening in the world, and when necessary, to modify your conclusions to bring them in line with facts.

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