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Sept. 3, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
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THEY KNEW ALL ALONG Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 168
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Some people minimize Biden's disasters by saying, in effect, he's senile, he doesn't know what's going on.
But is that really true?
Or does Biden intend the results that he produces?
My daughter, Danielle D'Souza Gill, will join me to talk about the two pathways, two separate pathways, to getting beyond Roe v.
Wade. I'm going to look at the strange behavior of Mitch McConnell and ask, is there a method to his madness?
And finally, I'm going to introduce the philosophy of one of the most colorful characters in Western philosophy, Peter Abelard.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
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.
Biden's poll numbers are in a bit of a nosedive over the sequence of disasters culminating in the disaster in Afghanistan.
According to the latest numbers, he's down, seems, about 10 points to about 43%.
But my point is, 43%, why is it that high?
Debbie says it should be zero.
Who are these 43% who think that Biden is doing a good job?
Are they even paying attention to Biden?
Or is it simply guys who are like, well, you know, I got my welfare check, so I think I'm okay with this guy.
As long as it keeps coming, I don't really care what happens in the world.
Is that what's going on?
Are people actually positive on what Biden is doing?
They like to see Americans and allies hanging out of planes.
They like to see people plummeting to the ground.
They like to see the Taliban going door to door.
With a list, with an America provided list.
Killing Americans, or targeting Americans, and killing Afghan allies, interpreters, translators, people who helped America in any way.
Here's a very interesting article by Bree Dale of the Epoch Times.
It's an exclusive based on actual audio recording.
The Taliban sent an audio to Afghan civilians, and here's what it says, very kind of chilling.
We received every single list of the Americans.
They're referring to what we, we meaning Biden, gave them.
And then they say, should we gather all of them and kill them?
Hang them? Or expose them to the public or stone them to death?
What should we do?
Now, this could just be a threat, but we know the Taliban is fully capable of carrying these threats out.
And as I look at the decision upon decision made by Biden and his team, I think to myself, there are some people, and it's me too, sometimes attribute Biden's behavior to his senility, doesn't know what's going on, Hey, what's happening over there?
Taliban! That stirs up a vague memory.
But the systematic disasters, one upon the other, don't suggest mere bungling.
I mean, let's take a look at them.
I mentioned the list that we provided.
Who in their right mind provides your enemy with the list of your people that they can immediately target?
What kind of sense does that make?
It almost appears so diabolical that someone in the Taliban would give us a list.
It's that kind of behavior.
Here's the Taliban, by the way, parading through Kabul showing the American-made weapons that we left behind for them.
Take a look and listen.
So here we see the Taliban in trucks and Humvees, all this weaponry that we could easily have taken with us, or let's say we didn't want to take it, let's say we couldn't take it, well destroy it.
It's common sense that you don't turn it over to your adversary.
The United States knew it was getting out, it could have gotten rid of all this weaponry.
We left Americans behind.
We could have gotten them all out.
We chose not to.
We here again meaning Biden.
Very interestingly, we could have controlled Kabul and completed the American airlift.
The Taliban met with...
The United States.
And said this. This is, by the way, according to McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command.
He spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar, the head of the Taliban.
And the Taliban said this.
We, the Taliban, can take Kabul by force.
Or we can let you, America, control Kabul while you get your people out.
And guess what? The Biden people chose option A. We're good to go.
The latest development, I see this from Politico, and Politico has been doing some pretty good reporting on this.
I've got to give them credit.
The Pentagon knew about the suicide attack before it occurred.
Think about that. This is an attack that killed now, I believe, close to 200 people, 13 American servicemen, and we had advanced knowledge of it because just 24 hours before the attack, there was a phone call.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was on it.
Mark Milley was on it.
They were discussing the imminent attack.
Wow! And they talked about the fact that this would be, quote, a mass casualty event.
So they knew it was going to be a very destructive attack.
They knew where it was going to occur, at the airport.
They even knew which gate it was going to occur at the Abbey Gate.
So they had very good intelligence, it seems.
And what did they do?
In a sense, nothing.
And what I mean by that is, they had decided, let's try to, quote, close the Abbey Gate.
But, they didn't do it.
Was this sheer incompetence?
You can't close a gate?
You actually know that there's going to be a disastrous attack?
You know in advance. And you don't take the reasonable steps.
I mean, this goes beyond negligence.
If I knew there's an attack coming on my home, my family's going to be in danger, family members are going to be killed, and I decide, well, you know, I think I better lock the door, set the alarm, have my cell phone on hand, and then I decide, well, you know, I don't think I will.
And I might have some reasons for not doing it, like I can't find my cell phone right now, or I've got to walk over to the door, or I've forgotten the code.
Whatever the reason may be, my actions would go beyond mere negligence.
They would almost appear calculated for me to invite the attack.
And that is what I'm getting at with Biden.
Is it possible that he is fulfilling Obama's idea Let's teach the United States a lesson.
We need to basically deliver a real blow.
Let the Taliban do it!
But we will actually help them do it.
Why? Because this will teach the United States, i.e.
my fellow citizens in America, a lesson.
Never intervene in a foreign country like this again, or this will be the predictable, by which I mean orchestrated, outcome.
If you can believe it, one of the January 6 defendants, a guy who's been locked up now for months, the judge refuses to release him.
You know why? Because apparently he's been watching Mike Lindell TV. He's been watching Frank's speech.
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I want to talk about what the United States left behind in Afghanistan.
We know the United States left behind all kinds of weaponry.
We know that the Biden administration left behind American citizens.
We know that we left with the Taliban, actually gave it to them, a list of Americans who were in Afghanistan, also of Afghan allies.
Supposedly the purpose of this was for the Taliban, think of this, the Taliban to help these people get out.
Although it is obviously quite possible, if not in the interest of the Taliban, for them not to get out so the Taliban can make them hostages, hold them up for ransom, or just simply kill them.
Now, the MIT Technology Review has an important article.
This is a somewhat obscure source, but a reliable one, one that monitors technology, that points out something I haven't seen elsewhere in the media.
And that is that the United States left behind, in Afghanistan, what the MIT Review calls biometric databases.
On the Afghan population.
But specifically focusing on all the people that the United States worked with.
And I'm not just talking about translators.
I'm talking about the little girls who came to schools that were set up by America.
The Afghans that did business with Americans.
So the wide network of Afghans who had anything to do with the United States.
Now... The people who ran this war in Afghanistan were really into, you know, data.
They were really into, they like to talk in the language of, we have a lot of data points.
And so they probably thought they were being extremely clever.
And there were some real problems they were dealing with.
I mentioned earlier on the podcast the problem of Afghans with fake identities.
Oh, I'm a soldier in the Afghan army.
Is my name not on the list?
Oh yeah, but I still need a paycheck.
Or these so-called ghost soldiers where an Afghan chieftain goes, I've got 800 people for me fighting against the Taliban.
In fact, he's got like 30.
But he's collecting paychecks for all the 800.
So the Americans were onto this and they thought, you know, some Ivy League grads probably figured, well, let's compile an electronic database of all the Afghans.
And so they came up with this very detailed database that apparently has 40 pieces of data per person.
Now, for the people that the US dealt with directly, it includes things like facial images, iris scans of your eyes, fingerprints, and all of this is then assembled on computers.
And the databases get very, very elaborate.
In fact, they talk about, they ask you your name, date and place of birth, if you have any kind of Afghan ID number.
But then it also asks you what's called relational data.
What's the name of your father?
What's the name of your grandfather?
Who are your relatives?
Can you name two tribal elders in your community who might be able to vouch for you?
So this is not just individual data.
It's almost a sort of genealogy.
It's a family tree.
It establishes what you can call a network of connections.
Now think about the value of this to the Taliban.
I mean, I understand the value of it to America, which is that you can now make sure that the guy is who he says he is.
You can try to make sure that you're paying a guy who actually exists to But if you're going to be careful to collect all this data, you cannot be irresponsible and leave it for the other side, and that appears to be exactly what we did.
The data is so detailed that we even ask people things like, what's your favorite fruit and vegetable?
So we're drilling down into who these people are.
And of course, all of this can be done in a country that has no data privacy laws.
Apparently, by the way, a little detail, the only missing item of data in this database is, what's your mother's name?
Because apparently in Afghanistan, people do not like to reveal their mother's name.
And so... This is the one item of data.
But think about it. If this falls into the hands of the Taliban, and it has, the Taliban can now use these databases because they essentially know who all their rivals are.
They know all the people who did business with them, with the Americans, in any way.
Amnesty International is talking about the Taliban going door-to-door to torment people.
There have been summary executions.
There's been what's called headhunting going on in Afghanistan.
So all of this shows, and here's a quotation from a guy named Abdul Habib.
He's a former soldier in the Afghan army.
And he says, you know, what's so obvious, he goes, if they are making such a system, they should also have thought of securing it.
Duh! Apparently, these geniuses, these sort of Ivy League types who were running this war, decided to use Google spreadsheets, very simple forms of assembling this data, and in the haste to get out, they just left it behind.
Again, this is bungling, but it's bungling on such a high order that you almost have to ask that when intelligent people, we're not talking here, Biden didn't make these decisions, they were made by people who are not senile, who have their heads on, who probably were well-educated.
When educated people make decisions that are this bad, that are this crazy, you almost have to ask if there is some kind of malign design behind it.
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When you do something terrible and the consequences of it are becoming increasingly apparent and known to the people that you're counting on to vote you back into office or to provide political support, what do you do?
You basically try to cover your tracks.
You try to erase the evidence.
And this is exactly what the Biden administration is doing.
It has instructed the different agencies of the federal government to remove from federal websites Inventories of all the weaponry that the Biden people decided to leave behind in Afghanistan.
Now, I've provided a partial list of that inventory.
It turns out that my list was incomplete.
There's actually more stuff that we left behind.
Here's the list that I mentioned.
I'm just going to highlight a couple of items.
22,000 Humvees.
22,000. The 155 mind-proof vehicles.
Think of this. Vehicles that can elude minds.
42,000 trucks.
64,000 machine guns.
16,000 night vision goggles.
8,000 trucks.
And then, 33 MI-17 helicopters, 33 Blackhawks, 43 MDS-30s, 4 C-130 transport planes, 23 Embraers, 29 Cessna.
This was the list that was available...
In the public domain, but it turns out that there were federal websites that listed more.
I'm now quoting from an article in Forbes that looked at those websites before the websites were taken down.
75,000 war vehicles.
50,000 tactical vehicles, 1,000 mine resistant vehicles, 600,000 weapons, including 25,000 grenade launchers.
Now you can see how bad this looks.
Essentially, the United States has, by design or by accident, become a state sponsor of terror.
When you give terrorist weapons like this, you are weaponizing them.
And that's what Biden did.
And so what's he doing? He's not trying.
Trump said he should try to get the weapons back.
Tell the Taliban, listen, you will have a bombing mission of the kind you've never seen before, and you've seen a few, if we don't get all those weapons back.
But that's not Biden's approach.
Here's Biden's approach. Let's scrub the federal website so Americans can't find out all the stuff we left behind.
This, by the way, has been confirmed by officials at the GO, GAO, and the State Department.
They say that they received instructions from the U.S. government to take the websites down.
Now, of course, the justification is preposterous.
Let me read. The State Department requested we temporarily remove and review reports on Afghanistan to protect recipients of U.S. assistance that may be identified through our reports and thus subject to retribution.
So, the pretense is we have to protect the names of Americans who are in Afghanistan or Afghan allies.
Wait a minute, you're protecting their names?
Didn't you give their names to the Afghans on a list?
Didn't you give them their residential details?
Didn't you give them their contact information and now you're pretending like you're trying to protect your sources?
The sheer shamelessness, I mean, the negligence, the behavior here is very difficult to account for on the part of competent people.
And you only have to think for a minute, what if Trump did this?
Imagine if Trump had this kind of disaster and then started scrubbing federal websites of these inventories and reports.
Think of the outrage.
And so what we have in America now is a kind of breakdown of political accountability.
The Biden people know about this.
They know they can do it.
They know that apart from Forbes and one or two media outlets, by and large, the New York Times will say nothing about it.
CNN will say nothing about it.
And so you've got almost a coordinated phalanx of media silence.
All aimed at protecting the tottering, doddering, malevolent fool that currently sits in the White House.
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It's always really fun to be joined by my daughter, Danielle DeSouza Gill.
She is the author of, well, I think the best book on abortion.
It's called The Choice, The Abortion Divide in America.
You should get it if you don't have it.
She's also the host of a weekly TV show.
This is on Epic TV, part of the Epic Times network.
And Danielle, thanks for joining me.
This is really cool. Big developments in abortion I want to talk to you about.
We know about the Mississippi case, which is kind of winding its way before the court.
It's going to be heard in October.
But let's start by talking about what's happening in Texas.
Here in Texas, incredibly, we are now living...
Outside of Roe v.
Wade. And the world hasn't ended.
I mean, life goes on as normal.
Politically, the left is freaking out.
Talk about, was this Texas development a surprise to you?
And what are your thoughts about it?
Yeah, well, Rachel Maddow talked about how Roe v.
Wade is over. If you ever wondered what that would feel like, you know, now is the time.
But of course, Roe v.
Wade is not over.
And in Texas, you still have six weeks to get an abortion.
So of course, this is the left acting as though this is so radical, when in fact, we know that the heartbeat signifies life.
And so I think that this shows that they really are just defenders of late-term abortion.
And they want it to be so that Even at the late term, you can get an abortion.
So they find any restriction on abortion radical.
Even the Mississippi law, which was about 15 weeks, they still find that radical.
So it doesn't really matter where you decide to limit it.
They will still freak out over this issue.
So I'm not surprised that they're freaking out over this.
But I am happy to see that the Supreme Court did not intervene on this issue.
So the law in Texas is still...
It's still going on.
It's almost like he felt surprised by the ingenuity of the Texas law, a law that doesn't enforce abortion regulation through the state, but kind of empowers the citizens of Texas directly to sue abortion providers and procurers of abortion.
And it's almost like Roberts didn't quite know what to make of it, but he goes, I would have put a halt on this until I kind of got my brain around it.
Kind of a strange position.
What do you make of Roberts and what do you think this portends for what he's going to do with the Mississippi case?
Well, I think that the Texas people who came up with this are genius and other states should really follow suit because now we've seen that other states can do the exact same thing and the Supreme Court is not going to intervene.
And I also think that we should really start to dehumanize.
These abortionists, because we oftentimes don't say abortionist enough.
We act as though healthcare providers and people who procure abortions are, you know, as if that's an okay thing to do.
And in fact, you're killing a human being directly, and they know exactly what's going on.
So I think that other citizens absolutely should be able to, you know, go after these people with legal action.
So we need to stop protecting these abortionists.
And as far as Roberts, I think this isn't that surprising because a lot of the time he does vote with the liberals on certain issues, particularly abortion.
But I think that the other newer people on the court, like Amy Coney Barrett and Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, I'm interested to see How they will respond when they take up the Mississippi case, because I'm confident that Clarence Thomas and Justice Alito will vote on our side, but the newer people, I'm not as sure.
I think that one of the important results of what's happening in Texas here is that there are about two months now, all of September, pretty much all of October, for the Supreme Court to survey what a post-roll America might look like.
Because the left has always been worried, oh, there's going to be convulsions, there's going to be civil war, there's going to be this, you know, this has been settled precedent, you cannot uproot it, root and branch.
But if the Supreme Court sees that life in Texas is pretty normal, you know, by the way, people can get abortions by leaving the state, then the Supreme Court may decide that it's not such a bad thing to have genuine self-government on this important moral issue and let states decide for themselves.
Do you think this may be a kind of a beautiful trial run to show the Supreme Court that the world will not end if Roe is set to decide?
Yes, even if Roe v.
Wade were overturned, that would just mean that the issue goes back to the states.
And so Texas, Mississippi, they can pass their own laws, their people can decide.
And in places like New York, I'm sure they will have radically pro-abortion laws since many people, you know, Governor Cuomo obviously celebrated abortion, people like that.
So yes, that would be the case.
Now, is that horrible? Of course, but I think overturning Roe v.
Wade is still a step in the right direction.
Let me ask you, there was a group of women, and it's kind of a comical sight.
They were doing almost calisthenic exercises in front of the Texas government building, and they were kind of doing a pun on hands off our bodies.
They were shouting bans off our bodies.
Let's examine the logic of this, which is, keep your ban off my body.
I guess they believe that that...
They own their bodies, and if there's another human being living inside their body, this is part of their private property.
Well, the baby would respond and say, I am not your body.
I'm a separate body.
I have a separate heartbeat.
I have my own blood that my own heart pumps.
It is not your blood. I have my own unique DNA. I'm a unique human being.
So that is not your body.
But if you want to do something to your own hand or your own foot, then that is up to you.
But this is someone else's body.
And of course, the irony is that the left is the one really pushing the vaccine on people.
They're trying to force other people to do things to their body that they don't want to do.
And so they don't really believe in my body, my choice.
Yeah, the sheer hypocrisy of it from people who are otherwise, as you say, quite willing to not only control your body, but control your movements, control whether you can go to church.
So you've got this kind of, the very same people who do not hesitate to involve the government to monitor your movements, to monitor your other basic rights, suddenly on this issue.
Now, one thing I found particularly amusing here was when Jen Psaki was confronted about this by a reporter.
She goes, You're a male.
You can't get pregnant.
You don't understand this issue.
And I think this is funny because these wokesters have been telling us now for I don't know how long that there are no biological differences between men and women.
Who's to say that only women can get pregnant?
So, having sort of created this idea that men can get pregnant too...
I think that's now coming back to haunt them when they say only women can get pregnant.
What do you make of the preposterousness of living in woke world and putting forward ideas that really don't gel with reality?
Well, in the woke world, as soon as you write women, you know, W-O-M-Y-N, they then want to change it to X-N. They want to change this and that.
They act like now they actually say that that's offensive to trans people, even though this is their own woke ideology, their own woke terms.
And even when this Texas law was passed, they claimed that this hurt queer people and trans people the most, as if This is somehow relevant to them particularly.
They, of course, try to make everything really about sexuality or about race or about gender.
And in reality, it's really not actually rooted in any kind of fact.
There's no actual logic to any of this.
Just as soon as the most woke of the woke pivot, then the other leftists have to sort of tiptoe around them, and they find themselves getting canceled by their own side because they're not woke enough.
Exactly. Well, Danielle, thanks for joining me.
I really appreciate it. I'll just close out by saying that if the Texas abortion law disproportionately harms women of color, it obviously also benefits children of color, doesn't it?
Thanks, Dee. Really enjoyed it.
I look forward to having you back on.
Thank you.
One of the most radical plans to reshape the future of America is happening right now.
And we need to stop it.
President Biden's plan to pack the US Supreme Court.
Back in April, the president launched a special judicial commission to what he calls reform the court.
The real plan is to install four more leftist justices to gain an automatic majority and ensure favorable rulings for his radical policies.
And once the court is packed, hey, that will end the rule of law as we know it, which is exactly what happened in Venezuela and Argentina.
So let's be clear.
America is not a banana republic.
And thankfully, First Liberty Institute is taking a stand.
They've issued a strong letter to the commission asking them to reject this radical court packing And they're not alone. Franklin Graham, Ed Meese, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Americans for Prosperity, and American Family Association, plus 60,000 others have joined this coalition.
But we need one million.
Debbie and I have signed, so add your name now.
Go to SupremeCoup.com.
That's Supreme, S-U-P-R-E-M-E-C-O-U-P.com to sign First Liberty's letter.
That's SupremeCoup.com.
And may God bless America.
Mitch McConnell is in trouble again with some of the MAGA people, the Make America Great Again activists, because Mitch stepped out at a time when a lot of Republicans were starting to talk about impeachment.
Senator Lindsey Graham We've got to impeach Biden over this.
Josh Hawley, Marsha Blackburn have also called for impeachment.
Rick Scott, in the wake of Afghanistan, says that it may be time to invoke the 25th Amendment.
Admittedly, the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has been cautious about impeachment talk.
He seems to be focusing on, let's just use the Afghan disaster to discredit Biden, to set up, if you will, for the midterms.
But I want to focus here on Mitch, because right on the face of it, Mitch's comments appear very demoralizing.
Why would the Senate minority leader, given a political window of opportunity, given a sort of easy chance to take a major hit on Biden, hold off from doing it?
Would Chuck Schumer do that? Imagine if their positions were shifted.
And Chuck Schumer were the minority leader.
Wouldn't he go all out as an attack dog, try to push that impeachment forward, even if in the minority, at least put the issue on the table, put it in the minds of Americans?
Isn't this what Democrats would do?
Isn't it the case that our guy doesn't seem to know how to fight?
I want to try to unravel the enigma, if you will, of Mitch.
And let's begin by talking about what Mitch McConnell actually said.
He didn't say that he doesn't support impeachment.
Here's what he said. There's a Democratic House, a narrowly Democratic Senate.
That's not going to happen.
So what Mitch appears to be saying here, making a distinction between what he might want to happen and what is going to happen or what will happen.
He's saying, in effect, we don't have the troops to be able to carry this out.
Now, why would Mitch say that?
Because it would seem that, in politics, even if you don't have the troops, why not nevertheless, as I say, push the issue forward, put it into the public mind?
Well, I think the answer to it is that Mitch is playing an outside game We're good to go.
Let's remember that Mitch McConnell is the reason that Merrick Garland, I mean this rogue attorney general, this is the guy going after the January 6th protesters and thoroughly bad guy.
My description of a thug with a badge applies completely to Merrick Garland.
Well, if it wasn't for Mitch McConnell, that man would be sitting right now in the Supreme Court.
That's worth remembering.
It's also worth remembering that in order to block Biden, at least now and through the midterms, Mitch needs all 50 votes.
He needs more than 50, to be honest.
He actually needs to have good diplomatic relations with Manchin and Sinema so that they stay with the Republicans on critical issues like packing the court or the filibuster.
And now perhaps Nancy Pelosi is promising, I'm going to have a federal law on abortion.
So on these issues, Mitch needs a united Republican Party because even though there's a narrow divide in the House, Nancy Pelosi is able to whip the House Democrats into shape.
And so even with a narrower majority, she can get things through.
The place where things have been blocked is in the Senate.
Now, Mitch McConnell knows that there is a group of six or so Republicans who are sort of never Trump or anti-Trump.
These are the people who voted for Trump's impeachment.
And guess what? Mitch McConnell needs every single one of them.
He needs Collins.
He needs Murkowski.
He needs Ben Sasse.
He needs Romney.
And so Mitch McConnell's behavior can be understood as somebody perhaps better in playing defense than playing offense.
Mitch is maybe more of, you call him a peacetime rather than a wartime consigliere, to use the language of the Godfather.
But nevertheless, Mitch McConnell has been doing so far.
Think of what Biden has gotten through, except for a couple of COVID relief and the small infrastructure package.
Mitch McConnell has by and large been able to block everything else.
And so, whenever I'm tempted to erupt with outrage at Mitch McConnell, I have to remember that at this point, the skills of Mitch McConnell are something we do need.
In their recent budget proposal, the White House Budget Office forecast inflation for 2021 at 2.1%.
In June, the actual inflation rate 5.4%.
So inflation's here.
It's coming faster than our government is ready for, and their solution is a non-solution.
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Yesterday I had Larry Elder on the podcast and Larry, this is such great news, has become a very viable, serious gubernatorial candidate in deep blue California.
Who would have believed it? Newsom is running scared.
He's calling all his friends to get money in at the last moment to save him in the recall.
Here's a very interesting article by Soledad Ursua, U-R-S-U-A. The article's called, Que Onda Gavin?
I love the playful title.
It's, What's Up, Gavin?
What's Up, Gavin? And it's written by a young Latina.
She's an investment professional, a board member of the Venice Neighborhood Council.
uh... and a mom in fact is a very prominent democrat uh... in california but a democrat who has endorsed larry elder because of the issue of school choice now solid odds article which is published in the american mind a publication the claremont institute talks about the latino vote and how the latino vote might be critical here and showing gavin newsom the door now the latino latino vote
as you know, has been something Democrats have counted upon.
Democrats have used all the levers of identity politics.
The Republicans hate you.
The Republicans want to send all of you back to where you came from.
The whole idea that you are a member of a separate race.
La Raza! And we, the Democrats, are the party that will help you to affirm your racial identity.
In fact, we've got special programs to benefit you on the basis of your race.
We'll make it easier for your kids to get into schools, and we'll give you government contracts based upon your minority status.
Based on all this, the Democrats have successfully harvested the Latino vote.
Says Soledad Ursu.
In this article, there's a whole other side to it.
And that is that Latinos in California, and there are a lot of them, have realized that Democrats have been shutting down their educational opportunity, shutting down their upward mobility, and shutting down their personal safety.
Now, you know, we all like to get freebies and benefits and handouts.
But I think Latinos understand, and this is the point of this article, that Latinos understand that education is the key to your kids having a better life than you do.
And job opportunities, the chance to go to work, Maintain your business.
The chance, for example.
And many Latinos have small businesses.
Small businesses that are very vulnerable in a time of economic upheaval.
So the Democrats are running almost a plantation system of horrible public schools.
By the way, the California schools have lavish funding.
They take up almost half the budget of the state, and yet they produce the worst outcomes year after year after year.
And of course, the teachers union doesn't care.
For them, it's all about getting more money.
It's essentially about pay us more and work less.
Who wants to open the schools?
I like sitting at home.
I like the lockdown.
And then the lockdowns have had a deleterious effect on businesses.
They have kept people out of work.
They have shut down Latino small businesses.
And these people are like, we need to get our lives back.
So even the Democrats' policy on energy.
Energy costs are really high in California.
And you know what? All the rich Californians live on the coast, and the middle-class Californians live in the interior, which, by the way, is desert.
They need energy.
And yet, energy costs have become prohibitive in California, but the progressives who live in San Francisco, live in LA, they could care less about it.
And then crime. Defund the police.
This is what the progressives have created.
And says Soledad Ursua, Latinos have begun to realize that this Newsome thing isn't working out that well.
They want to send a message.
They're actually extremely angry.
They're angry this time, not at Republicans, not at, you know, Republicans want to build a wall.
It's not what that's about.
This is about Democrats have made making life unlivable, making it harder for us to move up the ladder, are attacking our values, attacking our upward mobility, our prospects for success.
And it's time... Yeah, we might not normally be disposed to support a Republican, but we've got one who, by the way, is a person of color who seems to have grown up in the same kind of neighborhoods that we have, who seems to understand our problems, an undoubtedly really smart guy.
At the very least, what he can do is block a lot of the madness and nonsense that's being pushed in the schools, a lot of these crazy defund the police policies.
And so, maybe it's time to show Gavin Newsom the door, and maybe it's time to say to Larry Elder in Sacramento, Hola!
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The philosopher Aquinas believed that it was possible to prove that The existence of God.
Aquinas thought it was also possible to prove the immortality of the soul.
But what about more complex Christian doctrines?
Doctrines like the atonement, the substitutionary atonement of Christ for our sins.
Can that in fact be proof?
Can you say anything intelligent about it?
What about the Trinity? The Trinity is a very interesting and important Christian doctrine, but it's not a doctrine that appears directly in the Bible.
In fact, it's a doctrine that was solidified and articulated at the Council of Nicaea.
That's about 325 AD. And yet the Trinity and the Atonement are obviously bedrock pillars of Christianity accepted by Catholics and Protestants alike.
Now, There was one medieval thinker, a very important thinker, Peter Abelard, who thought that you could, in fact, provide a rationally coherent account, both of the Atonement and of the Trinity.
And I want... We're good to go.
But this is not the case with Abelard.
He kind of got into trouble wherever he was and his life helps us understand why his fate was so checkered, so up and down, if you will.
Now, Abelard was French. And his real name was Pierre, but in English, Peter.
Peter Abelard, he was born in Brittany.
To a wealthy family, his father was a knight.
But Abelard decided, I'm going to forego, even though I'm the oldest son, I'm going to forego the family inheritance.
I'm going to devote my life to scholarship.
and he began to study one after the other under some very prominent older scholars and theologians who had a large reputation in Europe at the time.
But Avalard soon came to the conclusion that these venerable older men were, in his own words, fools.
In other words, Avalard decided they don't really know what they're talking about, I do.
You've got this young, brash student who is unquestionably brilliant, able, it turns out, to almost humiliate his own teachers in these sessions of discussion and debate.
In Abelard's own account, they had to sort of run away with their tail between their legs, so to speak.
And so naturally, Abelard on the one hand develops a big reputation as sort of the genius in town, But at the same time, he earns the perhaps well-deserved envy and hatred of powerful older men who are well-established in European monasteries and centers of learning.
And he takes as a private, for private tutorship, a young woman named Heloise.
And guess what?
He begins a tempestuous affair with Heloise, an affair that actually becomes public.
And Abelard allows it to become public.
Abelard was apparently a composer of music.
He writes Heloise's name into his love songs and his students start singing them to the tune of musical instruments.
So this is a public scandal.
And remember, this is a woman who was sort of deputized to Abelard to educate her, and he decides to educate her in other ways.
Not long after, Heloise becomes pregnant.
And so what does Abelard do?
He goes to Heloise's influential uncle, a guy named Fulbert, who is a priest at the Cathedral of Paris.
And Abelard offers to marry Heloise secretly.
Now, obviously, the uncle is in no way satisfied with this.
First of all, he's not into this secret marriage idea.
Number two, he knows there's been a public scandal which is hardly vitiated or taken care of by a secret marriage.
But nevertheless, Abelard persists.
He convinces Heloise to do this secret marriage.
And then, in the end, very bizarrely, They have a child together that's basically taken care of by the family, the extended family, and then Abelard convinces Heloise that she needs to enter a convent as a nun.
Now Debbie asked me, she goes, how can you do that?
You just had a kid. I don't really know, to be honest.
But nevertheless, Heloise agrees to enter a nunnery and become a nun.
She does become a nun.
But Fulbert, her uncle, when he finds out about this, he thinks that Abelard is basically chucking Heloise aside.
He's decided to get rid of her, just sort of send her off to a nunnery.
So in rage, this priest brings together his servants, and he tells them to go to Abelard's house, and they do, and they capture Abelard and castrate him.
Wow! Now...
Now, this is the 11th century.
Abelard, by the way, was born in 1079, died around 1142.
And Abelard, I don't know, if it was today, I try to think of how it would be different.
You know, Abelard would say, Oh, you know, I'm going to come out as a woman.
Thank you, Fulbert, for paying my transition costs.
I don't know, but this was the 11th century.
So what does Abelard do?
He's castrated. Turns out, he kind of accepts it.
He accepts it as a punishment.
Later, he would say that he had two great vices, pride and lechery.
And he goes, God took care of both.
He goes, he took care of my lechery in a way I would not have selected myself.
By taking away the means to exercise it.
And then later, as we'll see, Abelard gets his books burned.
In fact, he is forced himself to take his own books, his treasured books, his favorite book, written by him, and put it in the fire.
And he goes, that was God's way of teaching me to control my pride.
Abelard himself becomes a monk.
He joins a monastery, and interestingly, unlike Heloise, who basically became a nun for Abelard's sake because he told her to, Abelard begins to like being a monk, and he uses his monkhood, if I can use that term, to become a scholar.
He writes important work on the resurrection, important works on the atonement.
But remarkably, these are the works that get him into major ecclesiastical trouble.
So you could almost say that what Avalar does is he takes his personal troubles.
It's kind of sexual scandals, and he transforms them into intellectual scandals, scandals that result in Abelard later in life being condemned by ecclesiastical councils.
He's denounced by the council of Soissons that forced him to burn one of his books.
He's later denounced by the Pope, this is Innocent II, who excommunicates Abelard.
Abelard would have been completely done for were it not for one of Abelard's influential friends, a guy named Peter the Venerable, who ran an influential monastery named Cluny.
And so Peter the Venerable intervenes on Abelard's behalf, says, listen, this guy, he may be brash, he may be proud, but he's a great scholar.
Ultimately, the excommunication is lifted after...
Abelard's sort of Christian status is restored, but Abelard's health begins to deteriorate.
He dies, I believe the year is 1142, if memory serves.
And that's the end of Peter Abelard.
But his writings endure, and we will see starting next time, starting Monday, Tuesday, sorry, we know podcast Monday holiday.
We'll see starting Tuesday the power of Abelard's thought and his ability to take complex doctrines, the resurrection.
Who can make sense of it?
God is one. God is three.
God is one and three at the same time.
It's one God, but he's in three distinct persons.
And here Abelard takes this seriously and decides, I'm going to account.
I'm going to make as much sense as reason can deliver about even so complex an idea as the resurrection.
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