Knowledge Fight Interactive Search Tool

All Episodes

Previous Next

Sept. 24, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza

56:47

THE TAXMAN COMETH Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep 182

Large

Audio Only |

Scroll

Time	Text
	The Biden administration has a plan to give the IRS access to every single bank account that has more than $600 in it.
	Yes, it's part of their strategy of tyranny and fear.
	Representative Maxine Waters says that the Haitian illegals are being treated worse than slavery.
	Kind of makes me wonder, was slavery all that bad after all?
	Podcaster and activist Christian Watson joins me.
	We're going to talk about, is the Salvation Army, yes, the Salvation Army going woke?
	And I wrap up my series today on the Reformation.
	I'm going to examine the clash between Luther and Erasmus on the issue of divine grace and human free will.
	This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
	The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
	We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
	This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
	The Biden administration has a proposal it's trying to push through Congress to give the IRS, the Internal Revenue Service, access to the transactions of every bank account, personal or business, yours and mine, that has over $600 in it.
	Now this is quite an escalation.
	It is true that banks now do provide certain types of information to the IRS. They report interest.
	They report dividends. They report investment income.
	They report wages to the Social Security Administration.
	So banks do cooperate with the government.
	But the idea of having the IRS have kind of uninhibited access to everybody's personal bank account Is quite an escalation.
	Now, why are they doing it?
	Partly because they want money.
	They're ravenous for money.
	They're planning to spend money up and down the pike.
	The latest infrastructure bill alone, $3.5 trillion.
	But Bernie Sanders goes, that's a compromise.
	We started out at $6 trillion.
	$6 trillion. So they have to raid every American.
	They have to extract money out of you.
	To do what they want to do.
	And what they want to do is the Green New Deal.
	What they want to do is all these ambitious programs.
	But they want to do it, of course, at your expense.
	I think it's very telling that Janet Yellen, the Treasury Secretary, in justifying this scheme, says basically that this is not actually about the IRS being able to go through every bank account.
	The IRS doesn't have the resources to do that.
	But what she says is, the very fact that we have that power...
	It's going to tell people, hey, you've got, in a sense, big brother looking over my shoulder.
	And so it's going to intimidate people into essentially a mode of submission.
	Now, on the surface, this is all about fighting tax avoidance.
	The Biden administration says people, particularly the rich, are not paying their fair share.
	They never say what the fair share is because rich people, by and large, when you combine state and local taxes with federal taxes, are paying about half their income in taxes.
	And a lot of people making under $50,000 are paying zero in federal income taxes.
	So, by what norm, by what standard do you determine who and who isn't paying their fair share?
	Give us the moral calculus by which you arrive at these decisions.
	They never do it. But...
	I think what's telling about this appeal to fear is they know that the ordinary citizens knows that he or she can't hire lawyers to fight the federal government.
	Even small businesses can't do that.
	And so they become, what starts out as we're merely taking a look at you, becomes a shakedown operation in which you ultimately are paying a kind of ransom just to get them off your back.
	And they love that. They love the idea that you wake up in the morning and you have a little...
	Your Adam's apple goes up and down your throat because you know that you are at their mercy.
	So it's the politics of fear.
	Now, there were some people when COVID started who said, well, you know, this is a very exceptional case.
	Yes, the government is using fear, but we should be afraid of the virus.
	But it's only about the virus.
	We're going to be able to get back to normal.
	But no, you begin to see how...
	Everything the left does is driven by intimidation and fear.
	What do you think their censorship policies are aimed at doing?
	They're aimed at making people like me think twice about what we say.
	And in fact, we do. Debbie's like, you sure you want to say that?
	You could get kicked off YouTube.
	So there's a self-censorship that the left seeks to enforce.
	What do you think Antifa's all about?
	The idea of showing up at your house or showing up at a restaurant and starting to intimidate people who are eating in an outdoor place, it's all about fear.
	You're, okay, sure, yeah, yeah, Black Lives Matter, oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
	They want you to submit like a worm.
	And this IRS proposal, which I hope is killed right away, is aimed at the same thing, giving the IRS, which is already the most powerful collection agency in America, if not in the world, giving them even more power over the ordinary citizen so that we tremble, we shudder, and whether or not we think we owe it, we pay.
	I sometimes joke with Debbie that I'll come to the podcast in my MyPillow slippers because, after all, I'm only being filmed from the chest up and so I can easily be in my pajamas and my slippers.
	Now, I don't actually do that, but I've been threatening to do it.
	Why? Because the MySlippers are so comfortable.
	Now, Mike Lindell has taken over two years to develop these amazing MySlippers.
	They're designed to wear indoor or outdoor all day long.
	They're made with MyPillow foam and impact gel to help prevent fatigue.
	They're made with quality leather suede.
	And for a limited time, the best part, Mike is offering 50% off his new MySlippers.
	The MySlippers are so comfortable.
	You're going to want to get some for the whole family.
	We actually did. Here's Danielle with her moccasins.
	And of course, Debbie and I love ours.
	I got the moccasins.
	Debbie got the slip-ons.
	Go to MyPillow.com and use promo code Dinesh.
	By the way, deep discounts there on all the MyPillow products, the Giza Dream bedsheets, the MyPillow robes, the MyPillow mattress topper, the MyPillow Call 800-8760-227.
	That number again, 800-8760-227.
	Or go to MyPillow.com.
	Make sure to use promo code D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
	Things are coming to a head on the Biden administration's infrastructure bill, or perhaps I should say infrastructure bills.
	You have, let's call it the small bill and the big bill.
	The small bill, roughly 1.5, 1.2 trillion dollars, seems to have enough bipartisan support that by itself it could get through.
	And of course, Biden would then sign it.
	But the small bill is tied in a strange way to the big bill.
	And the big bill is $3.5 trillion.
	Not as a substitute for the $1.2 trillion or the $1.5 trillion, but in addition.
	Now... The big bill is supported, of course, by the progressive left, and the progressives are threatening, listen, if you don't tie the two bills together, we're not signing off on the small bill.
	Now, this is actually really good news because it gives Republicans an opportunity to kill both bills.
	There actually is not 50 votes for the 3.5, for the big bill.
	And so it may be that in grasping for more, the left will get nothing at all.
	Now, I think they're going to make a supreme effort to try to save the big bill.
	Biden has basically said to Manchin and Sinema and some of the Republicans, well, give me a number that you can live.
	You can't live with 3.5.
	What can you live with? They're trying to push a second bill.
	And all of this, of course, in the name of infrastructure.
	Now, there has been some comment to the effect that some of what's in this bill, quite a bit of what's in the bill, particularly the big bill, is Green New Deal stuff.
	It's stuff that has nothing to do with infrastructure.
	So there's every reason to vote straight out against that bill.
	But what about even the smaller bill?
	I think even the smaller bill needs to go down.
	It'd be better if we got no bill at all.
	And it's not because there aren't improvements to be made.
	In our infrastructure, it is because our infrastructure itself has become a kind of a racket.
	And I want to explain why.
	There's an interesting article in the Wall Street Journal.
	Billions spent on road and transit projects are often based on optimistic forecasts.
	Now, this is a gross understatement.
	What they're talking about is this.
	You want to build, let's say, a high-speed rail in California or make changes to the subway in Washington, D.C., And you'll notice, by the way, although I like the subway, I use the subway all the time in Washington, D.C., I notice that for a very expensive subway system, there are not all that many people using it.
	Most people in Washington, D.C., despite all the traffic, still prefer to drive.
	Americans love to be in their cars.
	And so, in California, they want to build this.
	People shouldn't really drive.
	They need to take the train from San Diego to...
	Maybe they need to take the train, but they're not going to take the train.
	And so what happens is the way that they get funding for these projects is they make projections.
	They say things like, oh, the population density in San Diego and LA has really grown, and so we can anticipate that...
	84 million people are going to be using the high-speed rail.
	In fact, it ends up being not 84 million, but 84,000.
	Their estimates are ridiculously off.
	And this is what the journal article kind of puts chapter and verse on.
	They show, for example, that Federal Transit Administration surveys of 27 public transit projects find...
	There's constant overestimating.
	And by the way, never underestimating, because all of this is driven by dollars.
	They always overestimate how many people will use it.
	Projects that opened between 1990 and 2002 overestimated ridership by an average, average, 77%.
	They were almost 100% wrong, or they doubled, or close to doubled, the amount of people that they thought were going to use the infrastructure.
	In Ohio, for example, there's a battle right now going on to widen nine miles of I-77.
	This is near Akron.
	Once again, we have all these estimates.
	Right now, there are 52,000 people using this highway.
	We anticipate it's going to go up to 66,000 and then 71,000.
	Then the Wall Street Journal, Reilly, observes, wait a minute, is Akron gaining population?
	Are more people going to need?
	And the answer is no.
	Akron's losing population.
	People are actually leaving.
	So if anything, you think that this road is kind of like way too much for what is needed.
	And so the automatic assumption that we're going to need wider roads, more roads, this is driven more by budgets.
	This is driven more by aggressive agencies that want to expand their portfolio than it is by any genuine need of infrastructure.
	Ever wonder why just four companies control 80% of the U.S. meat industry?
	Well, because big food crushes the little guy.
	Now, you can help change that with moinkbox.com.
	Moink delivers grass-fed and grass-finished beef and lamb.
	Pastured pork and chicken and wild-caught Alaskan salmon direct to your door, helping family farms become financially independent outside of big agriculture.
	Sign up at moinkbox.com.
	You'll get a year of bacon for free, and then pick what meats you want delivered with your first box.
	Change what you get each month.
	Cancel any time. My stepson loves to cook for us.
	And he goes, well, we call it moink crazy with their famous steaks and salmon, which we, Debbie and I, love to eat.
	Moink meat is so delicious.
	I love it. And you will, too, get moink right now.
	Join the moink movement today.
	Go to moinkbox.com slash Dinesh right now and listeners to this show will get free bacon for a year.
	Yummy. That's one year of the best bacon you'll ever taste.
	But for a limited time.
	It's spelled M-O-I-N-K moinkbox.com slash Dinesh.
	That's moinkbox.com slash Dinesh.
	Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Christian Watson.
	Christian is the host of the podcast called Pensive Politics Podcast.
	He's also got the Christian Watson channel on YouTube.
	You've got to check it out. This is a guy who's been featured in USA Today, BBC Radio, The Washington Examiner.
	He's the spokesman for a group, and we're going to talk a little bit about this, called Color Us United.
	The website is colorusunited.org.
	Christian, I've been watching some of your videos.
	I gotta say, I'm engaged, I'm chuckling, I'm enjoying them.
	I want to start by getting people to know you better.
	So, tell a little bit about your story.
	What animated you?
	What drives you into politics?
	What made you want to be a kind of spokesman for these types of issues?
	Oh, Nash, first I must say that I'm very honored to be here.
	I have been watching you ever since you were involved in Christian apologetics, debating some of the leading voices of atheism, and so I really appreciate your presence in the political scene.
	I think what animated my desires for what I'm doing right now, and I call it a mix of political commentary and spokesmanship, hopping from place to place, but my channel is where everything is perfect.
	Basically, the main platform where everything is hosted.
	It's just the passion that I felt when I first learned the ideas I found in America.
	When I first learned about how the founders went through toil and turmoil, both mental and physical, and fought one of the greatest empires, one of the largest manned empires to ever live, and they did it on the basis of principles that are objectively true and can be proven through reason, because they believed in our nature that we are free and that human beings have not only the capacity but the moral obligation to make sure that we use our reason for moral purposes, all of that just got
	me wrapped up into wanting to be a voice for those similar kind of ideals, because I see those ideals disappearing very fastly in our country today.
	Now, Christian, we hear a lot about how the schools have become engines of bias and indoctrination.
	Was this an awareness that you got inside of the school curriculum, or did you sort of have to venture outside and discover these truths for yourself?
	Unfortunately, I think anyone, no matter what kind of educational curriculum they go to, will have an encounter with these principles, unfortunately.
	Now, of course, living in the South, living in sort of a rural area in the South during my adolescence, I didn't have a full brunt force impact of these principles until I went to university.
	When I went to university, oh my goodness, I could sit here for hours and tell you about the stories and trials I've encountered dealing with people who are possessed by the woke mindset and who are irreverent in their ability to understand and appreciate other opinions and other perspectives.
	And therefore, I'm epistemically dead.
	So yeah, I encountered it in university.
	Now, it takes a brave guy, and I know this to be true, that I mean, even for me as a sort of Asian Indian immigrant, it was a little controversial to speak up on behalf of these American ideals.
	I know that if you're a black guy, you get many times more abuse and heat because it's almost like you're betraying your community.
	It's got to be something about your temperament that said, hey, you know what?
	I believe in these things.
	I'm not going to back down.
	I'm going to fight them. Talk a little bit about that decision to be willing to weather the storm in speaking up, because I think people will find it inspiring.
	In Walden, I think in the first pages of Walden, Henry David Thoreau says that the tyranny of public opinion is no match for how you view yourself, private opinion.
	And I think that is the ground that we all have to stand on and remember.
	Because people can think whatever they want to think about you.
	But if you're convinced of their lies, you will fall.
	You will fall to whatever whim they want you to fall to.
	And I have made sure over the past few years that my constitution was strong enough not to cater to those kind of whims.
	But yes, I've gotten a lot of income.
	I was basically forced out of my collegiate debate team because I extolled libertarian conservative ideas.
	I went on the Young Turks Network not too long ago, and I had been called everything from an Oreo to an Uncle Tom to a sellout to wanting to be a white supremacist soldier.
	I mean, I've gotten some kind of the same attacks that Larry Elder has gotten, interestingly enough.
	But, you know, when you know yourself, when you understand what your moral foundation is, these attacks shouldn't really phase you.
	They can make you shake your head.
	They can make you think you have so much human potential.
	We have so much information on our fingertips, yet you decide to be willfully ignorant.
	But that's not your job.
	Your job is to make sure that your constitution is strong and that you're fighting for what is right, and I'm convinced that I am, and so I feel okay.
	Seems to me what's coming through as I listen to you is that you're really an individualist.
	You're someone who believes this is how I think and that's what matters to me.
	Now, the civil rights movement of the 1960s was based upon affirming this idea of individualism, right?
	Racism is a form of collectivism.
	It's imposing a category on you.
	We are all individuals.
	We're all in this country, you could say, a minority of one.
	What are your thoughts about how we suddenly, and in a relatively short time, in one generation, the left, you know, sort of kicked away this ideal of individualism, kicked away this idea of rights accruing to individuals, and embraced the woke ideology that we both find so oppressive?
	Isn't it so interesting?
	Back in the 60s, where Berkeley had Free Speech Week, affirming the right of the individual to express themselves, and there were protests against the Vietnam War drafts, affirming the right of the individual to keep themselves out of things they don't want to be in.
	Now, it's sort of, any time you go against the orthodoxy, you're considered to be a threat to the collective good of some quantity, whether it's Black folk, white folk, Asian folk, whatever political abstraction is used at the moment for the left wing intelligentsia to utilize against its opponents.
	I think that really left-wing ideology has always been about the collective.
	I think that left-wing ideology has hitched itself to movements that try to transcend the sort of temporal politics of the collective insofar as the civil rights movement affirms the sort of value, the universal value of the human being against racism, which is a sort of temporary aberration and thought about the human being that's wrong.
	But they've kind of taken these movements and they've switched them And taking them to different ends.
	Critical race theory is a critique of the civil rights movement.
	Derek Bell, one of the men who manufactured critical race theory, thought the civil rights movement didn't go far enough.
	He wanted segregation. He thought it would be ridiculous for black folks and white folks to live as equals.
	He didn't believe black folks and white folks were equals.
	He believed black folks deserved to be treated differently than white folks.
	He himself was black. There's this idea that still exists in the modern lexicon too.
	So I think it's always been collectivist.
	It just mutates and finds ways to worm itself into otherwise benevolent causes.
	When we come back, I want to talk to Christian Watson about a specific case of woke ideology, the wokeness of the Salvation Army.
	Time is running out on historically low mortgage rates.
	Don't miss out on your chance to save up to $1,000 a month.
	You just gotta call American Financing, America's home for home loans.
	Take advantage of a free loan review from a salary-based mortgage consultant.
	No pressure, no obligation, no upfront or hidden fees.
	Just a simple conversation around which loan program can fit your budget better.
	And rates are still near all-time lows.
	And there's a good chance you can benefit.
	Their custom loans really are saving people up to $1,000 a month.
	Why not see what they can do for you?
	So what are you waiting for?
	Call 888-528-1219.
	Again, that's 888-528-1219.
	or visit AmericanFinancing.net.
	American Financing, NMLS 182334, NMLSConsumerAccess.org.
	I'm back with podcaster and activist Christian Watson, host of the Pensive Politics Podcast, also the Christian Watson Channel on YouTube.
	Check it out. A spokesman for a group called Color Us United, colorusunited.org.
	Christian, you brought to my attention, to Debbie and my attention, the fact that the Salvation Army, now by the way, this is an organization I've got to say I admire very much.
	It's an organization that was founded by a Methodist minister, William Booth.
	It's been around for a long time.
	It does a lot of the hard work of helping with drug addicts and feeding the hungry and So, this is a frontline troops organization animated by a kind of benevolent Christian mission.
	They treat everybody equally.
	It's all comers get service.
	So, there's a lot to love and to admire about the Salvation Army.
	But you've noticed, and some others have, that there's a little bit of a woke strain that is creeping into the Salvation Army.
	Talk about what they're doing.
	Have they, in fact, gone woke or partially woke?
	And what concerns you about the direction that they're moving in?
	So the Salvation Army itself is consisted of many, many thousands of Salvationists, people who are members of the Salvation Army.
	But the top-down leadership, which is the subject of Colorist United's critique, has been trying to push a sort of woke curriculum onto people.
	They have posed a curriculum called Let's Talk About Racism, in which they exhort everyone in the Salvation Army to To repent on behalf of the sins of the church regarding its racism.
	So regardless if they have done anything wrong themselves, and it says it explicitly, they want everyone else to repent on behalf of the church for its racism.
	They have modules that are addressed specifically towards white folks.
	They have modules which utilize even Mexican how to be an anti-racist.
	And really, this just goes against the very ethos of what the Salvation Army is.
	In 1898, the Salvation Army was one of the first organizations in America to not withhold benefits from anyone due to race, gender, or any other arbitrary characteristic.
	And in the 1960s, it reaffirmed this right in the middle of the civil rights movement.
	So the Salvation Army has actually been way ahead of the curve on a lot of these issues.
	It's been pretty racially progressive.
	And yet the leadership of the Salvation Army is trying to turn it towards a woke path.
	And now Color Us United has teamed together with several Salvation Army members to write a petition to get the leadership to recant their curriculum.
	So our goal is not to bash Salvation Army, it's to get the leadership to recant their insidious curriculum about racism.
	Let's talk a little bit about how you, why you think an organization would do this.
	It's one thing if you have an organization like, say, the Democratic Party that was complicit in slavery, was complicit in segregation, admitting and apologizing.
	I think the Democrats do need to do that.
	But when you say that the Salvation Army has this history of being animated by a Christian spirit of equality, why would an organization that's relatively innocent of these crimes...
	Plead guilty to them.
	It seems to me almost like an innocent guy goes, yeah, you know, I didn't really do it, but I'm going to say I did.
	Why would you do that?
	Well, again, I think that it's mostly just the leadership.
	A lot of people who are salvationists are sort of the earth people who are not really into the politics of everything.
	They simply want to do good in the name of Christ.
	But the leadership has been convinced of the benevolence of these principles.
	And I think they want to be ahead of the curve on a lot of sort of social issues that are happening.
	The sort of George Floyd thing, this sort of conversation on racial equality, and they believe that the best way to do that is by affirming principles which actually go against what they actually believe in essence.
	So I think that it's just conformity, unfortunately, which is why we have to make sure the Salvation Army maintains its constitution, its ideological constitution.
	I mean, part of it, I wonder, Christian, is if they have been a little intimidated.
	It's funny how these organizations get so easily intimidated when the left attacks them.
	And, you know, think of the outrageousness of this.
	You've got these white wokesters, right, who basically would never dream of standing in front of a grocery store with a bell for eight hours.
	These are not people on the front line.
	they themselves do nothing to help other people, but they go up to some Salvation Army guy and go, you're a racist, this is a racist organization.
	So the Salvation Army, of desperate to avoid these kinds of labels, then kowtows to these people and ends up, as you say, putting out this poison, which they mistake to be a form of, you know, Christian repentance and redemption, when you're not repenting for anything that you even did.
	Exactly, exactly.
	And when it comes from the top down, even more pernicious.
	Because again, there are thousands of salvationists in America, even more around the world, and many of them are not concerned about politics or social justice or whatever.
	They're simply concerned about being good people, being a man, as my Jewish brothers and sisters would say.
	And so this is what Colorist United is really trying to bring out.
	We're trying to say, no, look, it's ridiculous and unbiblical to say for someone to repent on behalf of something they never did.
	It's ridiculous or unbiblical to view racism as power dynamics, you know, power and privilege, which is the old critical race they're understanding of racism.
	Because Christ went to the woman at the well, and she rejected her categorization of him, excuse me, and then said, if I give you water, you'll have water to have forever.
	I mean, there are just so many things in the Bible that go against the kind of phrasing the Salvation Army is using.
	And we want to just... So Christian, what you're asking people to do is you'd like them to go to colorusunited.org, right? And you've got a petition that people can sign.
	So you want to be able to show the Salvation Army that there's a strong body of opinion that is telling them, hey, there's some warning signs here.
	Don't submit to woke ideology.
	It's antithetical to everything that you guys actually stand for.
	Absolutely. So if you are a Salvationist or you are affiliated with the Salvation Army in any way, shape, or form, we're asking you to go to colorwestunited.org, and there is a petition tab on the top of our website, top right-hand side.
	Click on that. It'll have all the information there, and we would really appreciate sign-ups there.
	If you have any questions, you can email me at cwas.colorwestunited.org, or you can email the info box at info.colorwestunited.org.
	Good stuff, Krishan. You're doing good work.
	I want you to keep it up.
	Thanks for coming on the podcast.
	I really appreciate it.
	Thank you for having me We're good to go.
	Text Dinesh to 484848 to claim your free information kit and to speak with a precious metals expert in holding gold and silver in a tax-sheltered account.
	Again, text Dinesh to 484848 and protect your savings today.
	Representative Maxine Waters, crazy Maxine Waters, is at it again.
	She now says that the illegals, largely Haitian, who are being rounded up by Border Patrol, are being treated, quote, worse than slavery.
	Yes. Let me quote her so you know I'm not giving it out of context.
	What the heck are we doing here?
	What we witnessed takes us back hundreds of years.
	What we witnessed was worse than what we witnessed in slavery.
	What we witnessed in slavery.
	Yeah, she was right there, witnessing slavery.
	No, in fact, when I listen to this, the nonsense of it, it makes me laugh because it makes me think, wait a minute, are we...
	Was slavery all that bad after all?
	If this is all it is, basically you've got people, first of all...
	Remember, the actual slaves came involuntarily to this country in chains.
	The Haitians are coming voluntarily.
	Second of all, they're being rounded up for what purpose?
	To be processed. Some of them, the single males sent home.
	The others dispersed in America.
	Welcome to America! This is treating them worse than slavery?
	Now... Jen Psaki, the press secretary, first of all, they created a completely bogus controversy over, let's call it, the racist horses.
	The horses that are used to catch these guys, and by the way, those weren't whips, those were reins.
	Reins used to kind of maneuver the horse, not whip the illegal.
	But nevertheless, even though they knew that, They pretended like, these are very disturbing images.
	I can't even stand to look at it.
	And now their solution, outlaw horses.
	Wow. I mean, I'm just thinking here of, you know, woke analysis.
	Can horses really be tools of white supremacy?
	Or is this true only of the white horses?
	And the brown and black horses are okay.
	Are horses of color ridden by border agents part of the coalition of what the left calls multiracial whiteness?
	Or is this whole line of woke analysis simply a kind of horse manure?
	Now, the simple truth of it is, listening to Maxine Waters, it's really clear she has no feel for what slavery was like.
	Now, many of us assume, oh, you know, somewhere like Maxine Waters, part of her craziness is because she has the kind of scarred memory of slavery.
	It somehow still lives on, even today, through a kind of ancestral transmission.
	But when you hear someone say that the illegals are being treated worse than slaves, you realize she has no feel for it.
	For her, it's basically a race hustle.
	It is that slavery is a convenient pretext to extract resources for herself to build her own status and power.
	Simple truth that's worth remembering whenever we hear all this is that the slave owners were Democrats.
	And yes, slavery in reality was terrible, and it was terrible because of what the Democrats did to their slaves.
	Case in point, the founder of the Democratic Party, Andrew Jackson, who owned some 300 slaves, he was one of the largest slave owners in America.
	He was also a slave trader, a despised practice at the time.
	And I now want to quote very briefly from an ad that Jackson purchased in a local newspaper offering a bounty for one of his runaway slaves.
	He offers a $50 reward for the return of the slave, and this is the part I want to highlight, quote, and $10 extra for every 300 lashes any person will give him to the amount of...
	I'm sorry, $10 extra for every 100 lashes any person will give him to the amount of 300.
	Jackson is quite okay with giving the guy up to 300 lashes.
	That is the muck and mire of slavery.
	That's what the Democrats did to the slaves.
	It has nothing to do with the way that illegals are being treated.
	They are being treated humanely, and one would almost say benignly, by comparison.
	Debbie and I just had a phone call with Dr.
	Douglas Howard and his son, Lex.
	What a great guy.
	He's the founder of Balance of Nature.
	He told Debbie and me, hey guys, you know, you got to eat enough fruits and veggies in your diet.
	He said, try Balance of Nature.
	Just tell me how it's going to make you feel.
	And wow, we feel great.
	We feel like we're in our 20s and we have kids in their 20s.
	We know we're getting what we need.
	Now, we take 10 daily servings of fruits and veggies, and they're all in six small capsules.
	They're absolutely no trouble swallowing, always fresh, nothing artificial.
	They smell great. And Debbie swears by this, the fiber and spice.
	She says she's never been more regular.
	Invest in your health. Invest in your life.
	Join me and experience the balance of nature difference for yourself for years to come.
	For a limited time, All new preferred customers get an additional 35% discount and free shipping on your first Balance of Nature order.
	Use discount code AMERICA. Call 800-246-8751.
	That number again, 800-246-8751.
	Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code AMERICA. To get an idea of how pernicious and extreme woke ideology is, I want to turn to a recent document That came to my attention from a once respected organization called the Urban Institute.
	The Urban Institute is one of these sort of civil rights research organizations that would do studies of, for example, the Great Society of Poverty.
	And these studies were the subject in the past of intelligent commentary on both sides.
	The Urban Institute leans left, but has never been seen as a radical or kooky organization.
	But, wow, look at them now.
	Here's the Urban Institute, and this is from its so-called Urban Wire, which is the stuff they put out online.
	It's talking about the theme of, quote, equitable research.
	Equitable research. Now, at first glance, it seems like, yeah.
	Are they talking about research that's aimed at being fair in its techniques?
	Research that's aimed at promoting social justice?
	No, it's actually far more than that.
	It says,"...longstanding values and practices rooted in racism, ableism, and classicism are ingrained in the fabric of research, leaving researchers unaware of the harm they're causing." What harm are they causing?
	Then there's a category called harmful research practices, and I just want to focus on two.
	The first one, objectivity.
	What? The principle of objectivity, in other words, of the researcher detaching himself or herself from the subject and trying ultimately to look at it in a scientific way.
	This is the first, quote, harmful practice.
	Objectivity is defined, the Urban Institute says, as the distance between the researcher and the research.
	It's based on the belief that neutrality on a subject is the best way to determine the facts.
	Yes, actually it is.
	Objectivity also gives researchers grounds to claim they have no motives or biases in their work.
	Well, in reality, we all have biases, but objectivity, understood as an aspiration, is the desire to be aware of the biases and aspire to move toward a kind of ideal of not having that kind of bias.
	But nevertheless, very quickly, Urban Institute concludes, objectivity, quote, irrevocably harms the community.
	And the second, harmful practice, rigor.
	Rigor. And by rigor, they mean here nothing more than conscientious discipline.
	Let me read, quote, Rigor measures whether research is reliable, accurate, and trustworthy.
	Yeah, you wouldn't want that?
	No, they don't want it.
	They go... Researchers often define rigor as following an established research protocol meticulously instead of ensuring data are contextualized and grounded in community experience.
	Now, this has to be translated a little bit.
	What the Urban Institute is saying is that if you talk about rigorous data, let's say, for example, the vastly higher rate of crime committed by young black males, you can't just publish that data because it is, quote, decontextualized.
	It doesn't sort of harmonize with the experience of the young black males who are holding up grocery stores, beating people up, doing all kinds of antisocial things.
	I mean, there are good reasons why they're doing this.
	Maybe they're driven to do them.
	Maybe there's all kinds of family dysfunction.
	Yes, maybe. But there's nothing wrong with rigorously laying out the facts and then, and this is part of research, seeking to understand and explain them.
	And Urban Institute concludes that researchers can rectify harmful research practices, such as objectivity and rigor, how?
	By, quote, sharing power with the people and communities they study.
	And this is, in the end, what always comes down to, give us the money.
	At the bottom line, it's all about, hey, listen, you know what?
	What we need is a massive transfer of resources from you...
	To us. Even if you can't show that you've been victimized by any kind of racism, just assume it.
	Even though you can't show that this objectivity is in any way distorting facts, just assume it.
	Even if you can't show that rigor is a problem, just assume it.
	Reach for your wallet, and that's one way to make sure that we're going to be satisfied.
	Just a few weeks ago, one of America's leading nonprofit law firms, First Liberty Institute, asked patriots like you to sign their letter to help stop President Biden's radical scheme to pack the U.S. Supreme Court.
	Since then, a quarter of a million people have signed, with tens of thousands joining their coalition every day.
	Franklin Graham, former U.S. Attorney General Ed Meese, Dr.
	James Dobson, the Family Policy Alliance, the Heritage Foundation, they're all on board.
	But we only have until September 29th, which is coming up, to include your name before this goes to the Biden Commission.
	Look, if we don't stop the radical left from installing four more justices so they can rig the system in their favor...
	It will end the rule of law as we know it in America.
	Please sign your name now.
	Debbie and I both have. Go to SupremeCoup.
	That's C-O-U-P. Go to SupremeCoup.com to sign First Liberty's letter.
	Once again, that's SupremeCoup.com.
	And may God bless America.
	Debbie and I wanted to do a segment together on the politics of Christianity.
	Well, does Christianity have a politics?
	This is the question.
	Debbie has a good friend who is now the pastor of a megachurch in Texas.
	And he recently gave a sermon talking about why he believes it is his duty to sort of stay out of or above politics or not bring politics into the church.
	Say a little bit about your friend, because he's a conservative.
	Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, he's had that church a long time, I believe 20 plus years, 21 years maybe.
	And he did mention, we've been watching his sermons the last few weeks, and he did mention us, by the way, in this last one.
	He alluded to us. He alluded to us.
	And he said, you know, it's okay, I have a friend from high school that is very political, she and her husband are very political, and that's fine for them.
	But... You know, meaning he will not be political.
	Well, interestingly, he does a sort of weird separation of church and state in his own life.
	So he says, it's not that I don't have political opinions.
	If you want to hear my opinions, come have lunch with me.
	I'll tell you what they are.
	But he seems to imply that when it comes to the pulpit, He's going to somehow abstain from translating his personal convictions into the church.
	Now, you were listening to this, and obviously we both disagree strongly with this approach.
	But say why you think that approach is flawed, because his argument is Christianity is not about saving America.
	It's not about saving the Republican Party.
	It's about saving souls.
	And if you introduce other elements, I guess he thinks you're now creating unnecessary division.
	Right. And I say to that, why don't you go back and look at how this country was founded and the fact that they very meticulously made it Christian, a Judeo-Christian country, because they understand that really those lines...
	They really do.
	In order for us in this society to espouse Christian values and have religious freedom, we have to have the right people in place.
	And I very much disagree with the comparison of the presidents, because every president that we've had has been vastly different, you know, as far as this is concerned.
	And yes, they may all say they're Christians.
	But we see their fruits and sort of how they interact in political life.
	Now, historically, you can even go back before the founding to the pilgrims and look at what was their primary motivation of coming to America.
	Now, some people say, well, they're fleeing religious persecution.
	They're coming here for religious liberty.
	But it's more than that.
	They were coming here to found A city on a hill.
	You may say a republic that was maybe not limited to Christians, but nevertheless would be informed by a kind of Christian spirit, and certainly by Judeo-Christian morality.
	Now, let's talk about the church today.
	I mean, isn't it tragic that we have this great, you know, megaphone, as I call it?
	Talk about that. Yeah, so I believe the reason that it's super important To put politics in your sermons is because you have the biggest megaphone in culture and you are way more Influential than even us making movies about politics and about the parties and all of that.
	You are super influential with your congregation because then they have family members that they influence and so on and so on.
	And there are so many mega churches in this country.
	I don't understand how California could have fallen the way it did with all of the mega churches in California.
	Why weren't the pastors preaching this?
	Well, now let's talk about what we mean when we say that we want the pastors to be political.
	We're not saying that we want them to argue about the infrastructure bill.
	What we're saying is that there are certain moral precepts that are critical to Christianity.
	And it's not just pro-life, right?
	It's also the infrastructure of the traditional family.
	It is the idea of local communities.
	It is the idea of having a reverence for things higher than yourself, of not creating false idols.
	So you're saying what?
	That pastors need to...
	You don't want pastors to tell people how to vote, do you?
	No, but I want pastors to tell people which political party espouses the principles of the biblical truth, right?
	And so it's important for them to say, listen, if you vote for a candidate or a political party that has on its platform that it's okay to kill the unborn, Then, my goodness, what kind of a message are you sending?
	Right. And let's note that the left-wing churches, by the way, do not hesitate to be overtly political.
	They're using their megaphone.
	They're using their pulpit. I mean, they have buses taking people to the polls.
	Meanwhile, so it's, again, you have this discrepancy between the two sides.
	Their side is fully in the fray, and our side is creating this almost unnecessary...
	Kind of abstinence in which the pastor goes, well, you know.
	Now, do you think part of this is because they're just afraid that their church contributions might go down because there might be some people who walk out?
	Is it monetarily driven in part?
	Well, maybe.
	I also do think that some of these pastors truly, truly love their congregation and they don't want to maybe give off the vibe that they only like these people because they vote this way and not these people because they vote that way.
	So certainly that has a lot to do with it.
	And I don't really think that you should You should say which party you should vote for, but the principles are there.
	All you have to do is look at the party platforms to know which ones they are.
	Now, is there a distinction? We talked about this a little bit, I think, last night.
	We're talking about There are some churches which have a sort of solid body of believers.
	Think of Pastor Jeffress who came on the podcast.
	This guy's got a hardcore church, 14,000 people.
	It's perfectly fine to get these people all revved up and mobilized.
	Now, your friend, however, has a little bit of a seeker church.
	He's trying to bring people into Christianity, former drug addicts.
	I mean, you've got people who are struggling with homosexuality and other types of issues.
	Is there an argument for him to say, well, listen, I want to draw these people into the fold?
	But, I mean, I think our disagreement is, he wasn't saying, I want to draw them in first, and then I will give them the full message.
	He was saying, never. I never will.
	Right, right. And, listen, I love you.
	I mean, you know who I'm talking about.
	Pastor John.
	And I do love listening to your theological...
	He's a very insightful preacher.
	He's a very insightful preacher and all of that.
	But that is the one area that I just don't agree with because I know that there are too many pastors that agree with this type of preaching.
	And I think this is the reason why we are where we are in this country.
	So what you're saying is the pastors are in perhaps a unique position where collectively they could actually tip the balance.
	They absolutely could. They could restore the culture.
	And so it is their unwillingness.
	It's their one hand behind their back that is partly responsible for the mess we're in.
	That's right. And, you know, for some of them that believe that the IRS is going to come after the church, that is not true.
	They have every right to speak up.
	They have every right to speak up.
	And so, certainly don't be driven by fear.
	Now, I think in your friend's case, it is a principled position, but we're asking you, pal, to reconsider your principle.
	I'm going to complete today my series on the Reformation by focusing on the great debate between Luther and Erasmus on the issue of free will.
	Now, next week, I'm going to pivot to a series on the American founders.
	In fact, Prager University is going to release on Monday five interconnected videos.
	They're going to release all five on the same day.
	This is kind of unprecedented for them.
	They asked me to do a series called The Making of America.
	I did a video on Jefferson, on Madison, on Hamilton, on Adams and Franklin.
	issue that is most importantly associated with that particular founder.
	And so together these videos provide a kind of intellectual architecture of the founding, something we could sorely use today.
	So here we go.
	I'm very excited about it.
	And so I'm going to do a little bit of an in-depth on each of these founders, taking one day to focus on each next week.
	But let's turn now to Luther and Erasmus.
	Erasmus was sort of dragged in a little bit of the debate with Luther.
	He didn't really want to debate Luther, and Luther of course was a kind of rash and passionate and intemperate and a little bit of an insulting type of guy, as we saw yesterday from his debate with Zwingli.
	And Erasmus didn't really want to cross swords with Luther.
	So Erasmus, in writing about free will, kind of begins by saying something like, you know, my friends sort of forced me into this.
	And you get here the sense of Erasmus' sort of gentle, avuncular, almost ironic temperament.
	And so his work, Erasmus' work on the freedom...
	Of the will, which I'm going to contrast against Luther's work called On the Bondage of the Will.
	Luther then rebuts Erasmus with a very characteristically Lutheran sort of fulmination against Erasmus.
	I can't do full justice to this debate.
	I'm just going to sort of touch upon it, and I want to do it by giving a little bit of the backdrop of this debate because Erasmus brings to his critique of Luther a set of assumptions that he doesn't make explicit, but I want to make explicit because we need to understand them.
	In the Middle Ages and in medieval Christianity, faith was understood a little differently than it is today.
	So let's recover some of that understanding of faith.
	First, the medievals made a distinction between what they called fides qua, And fides qua?
	Well, fides qua is the act of faith, the idea of trusting God.
	Having faith in the first place is fides qua.
	But fides qua is the content of faith.
	What is it that you have faith about?
	What are the things that you affirm and believe?
	So that's a distinction to keep in mind.
	A second distinction, equally important, and the medievals were, like, really good at making distinctions, the distinction between explicit and implicit faith.
	So, explicit faith is being able to affirm a set of precise doctrines, such as the kind of doctrines you find in the Nicene Creed.
	I believe this, and I believe that.
	And I believe this about God the Father, and this about God the Son, and this about the Spirit.
	And this is about the church. Now, in the medieval era, when most people were illiterate, they certainly were uneducated, most of them farm laborers, or they worked in the crafts, they were not able to articulate.
	If you ask them, what is it exactly that you believe?
	They had very little, you may say, explicit faith.
	They had implicit faith. And implicit faith was something like this.
	Well, I don't know, but I do what the church tells me.
	I do what the priest tells me.
	And this implicit faith was nevertheless seen as adequate for salvation.
	Adequate for salvation, why?
	Because if you say no, then you're limiting salvation to sort of scholars and theologians and people who have basically completed formal education.
	So the idea was that if you had implicit faith that you exercise within the life of the church, that was sufficient.
	But now we come to something very important.
	For the medievals, there was also a critically important distinction between Dead faith and what was then called faith in action.
	So what is dead faith? Dead faith is you give assent to a set of propositions, but you don't internalize them.
	You don't do anything about them.
	You merely recite them.
	Yeah, I believe this.
	I believe that. I believe this.
	I believe that. Now, the medievals would say, wait a minute.
	Even Satan can give assent to those doctrines.
	Yeah, God exists. Yeah, God is in heaven.
	Yeah, God sent his son. Yeah, his son died.
	So, simply believing in something, giving a kind of formal yes to it, hardly makes you a Christian.
	What is needed, the medievals thought, was something called faith in action.
	In other words, faith that sort of becomes a part of you and that is inevitably, inexorably expressed in how you live, how you love, and what you do.
	Now, the medievals, and Erasmus does some of this in his article, is he quotes scripture to this effect.
	When Jesus says, for example, love one another as I have loved you, Jesus isn't saying, well, just believe, that's quite enough.
	You don't have to really do anything.
	No, Jesus is saying you have to do something.
	What? Love one another.
	Jesus says to the disciples, when you call me Lord, Lord, why do you just call me Lord, Lord?
	Why don't you do what I say?
	So again, you have this idea that yes, you should affirm Christ as the Messiah, but you also have to follow His instructions, follow His will, follow His commandments.
	And then, of course, from the book of James, faith without works is dead.
	So right there, you have what the medievals called dead faith.
	Dead faith is a faith that is somehow deracinated, removed from works, and so forth.
	The medievals, faith and works are both essential.
	Not one is enough, not the other is enough, and in fact, even together both are not enough.
	Why? Because you also need God's saving grace.
	So it's not as if humans, through A, faith, and B, good works, are able to reach salvation.
	No, they need those two things, yes, but you need a third thing, and the third thing comes free, and it comes from God, but it is offered to everybody, namely God's free gift of salvation that is given as a gift of grace.
	But you need faith to receive it and you need good works to express it.
	And this was really the medieval view.
	Now Luther's view...
	And he presents it almost angrily in response to Erasmus, is he says, you can't talk about the freedom of the will because the human will is deformed by sin.
	So for Luther, human beings are these kinds of, you may say, deformed, miserable creatures that have nothing to offer to their own salvation.
	Their faith by itself...
	But it is God that does all the work.
	So, in other words, any effort to give any credit to human action, good works, but also the human role.
	Because think about it, if God offers salvation in the manner, let's just say, of a rich man going into the marketplace and offering, let's say, gifts, The gifts still have to be received.
	Someone has to take it.
	Someone has to go, yeah, thank you very much.
	Or, yeah, I'm going to actually stretch out my hands and receive the gift.
	For Luther, even that, Luther was reluctant to admit that human beings play any role, any contribution, whatever, to their own salvation.
	Luther's phrase, which I think I've used earlier, we are like beggars with empty hands into which God deposits, you may say, the gift of salvation. And Luther was kind of blunt in saying that this gift of salvation, in the end, the grace to receive it is given not to everybody. It's given to the elect, is given to those who end up in heaven. God chose them in advance, and Luther says that if
	God had the foreknowledge of who was going to be saved, why are we even talking about human free will if God knew beforehand where you're gonna end up? What kind of real choice did you have in making a decision about your own salvation?
	So this is Luther giving you a kind of preview and to me a little bit of a chilling preview of the doctrine of predestination that would come into its full flowering with Calvin because Calvin not only emphasizes the elect, We're good to go.

▲