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Nov. 30, 2021 - Dinesh D'Souza
56:55
WHAT IS CRITICAL RACE THEORY? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep227
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Critical race theory is the intellectual foundation of much of what the left does these days, and I'm going to answer some basic questions about it.
What is it? Is it in fact taught in schools?
And what fundamentally is wrong with it?
I'm also going to talk about the megalomaniacal pretensions of Dr.
Fauci, a man with claims about science that would make Einstein blush.
Debbie's going to join me. We're going to talk about Beto O'Rourke.
Debbie calls him a fake Mexican.
And we're going to talk about his entry into the Texas gubernatorial race.
And also former Texas GOP head Alan West will join me.
We're going to talk about abortion at the southern border.
And finally, I'll conclude my discussion of Macbeth.
I'm going to talk about the tyrannical temptation that bedeviled him.
It also bedevils today's Democrats.
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.
Critical race theory has become foundational to the left's worldview.
And it is a term surrounded by a lot of buzzwords, buzzwords like systemic racism, buzzwords like white privilege, white fragility.
And so you have here a kind of vocabulary of its own.
That requires a little bit of probing and a little bit of close examination because we should ask what is critical race theory?
What at the core does it mean?
Not what is it like, but what is it?
We also hear from the left And this has come in response to parents shrieking about critical race theory.
Why are you subjecting my seven-year-old to this kind of indoctrination?
That, oh no, critical race theory, it's a very obscure legal argument.
It's only taught in some law schools.
It's kind of a subject of arcane, abstruse debate.
No, no, this is not something that we're teaching in schools.
So, question number two is, is critical race theory a legal theory that is arcane, or is it actually being taught?
And finally, what is really wrong with the approach?
Because sometimes when you're confronted, in fact, the people who initially deny that critical race theory is being taught sometimes break down and go, well, it is being taught, but hey, what's wrong with teaching about slavery?
What's wrong with teaching about the Civil War?
What's wrong about teaching about Rosa Parks and anti-discrimination?
You got a problem with that?
So... The fallback is, yes, we're teaching it, and it's a good thing.
So it's worth asking, what is wrong?
Why is it indoctrination to be teaching critical race theory?
So I want to briefly take a stab at answering these questions.
Now, first of all, critical race theory is the simple notion that all groups—and we're talking here about racial groups, ethnic groups— Are expected on all measures of academic achievement and economic performance to fare equally.
That is the underlying, you could call it, presumption.
I say presumption because it is kind of assumed that in a non-discriminatory world, this would in fact be the result.
And obviously, groups don't differ in natural or genetic capacity.
It would be racist to assume that some groups are superior to others or inferior to others.
And therefore, since groups are equal, one would anticipate that under fair rules, under neutral principles, they would succeed equally.
But, when you look at the finish line, both in the measures of academic achievement, standardized tests are a perfect example of this, or any measure of economic performance, you notice that groups don't, in fact, hit the finishing tape at the same time, and therefore reasoning backward.
Critical race theory holds that these groups don't have—well, they don't like to use the term equality anymore, because equality could mean either equality of opportunity or rights, or it could mean equality of results.
And the left is always inclined toward equality of results, and so in order to sort of bake that term into their ideology, they now use the term equity.
Equity means equality of result.
And so the left is basically saying that if groups don't succeed equally, it must be because there is baked-in racism.
Racism that is somehow, if not visible and apparent, it's in the system.
That's where we get the idea of systemic racism.
And since racism is now somehow institutionalized, it's kind of part of the rules, it's part of the culture, then it follows that whites benefit from it even without being consciously aware of it.
This is where white privilege comes from.
You're privileged because you're part of a privileged system.
It's kind of like your canoe is on a river that's going in this direction, And the other guy happens to be on a canoe in which he's going in the opposite direction.
Well, the current is pulling you and moving your canoe faster than his canoe because that's the culture that's been created over many centuries.
That's the river, if you will.
And so this is what critical race theory means.
Is it being taught?
Is it a legal theory?
Or is it in fact being taught in schools?
And the simple answer to that, and it's kind of silly that this is even being debated, is it's obviously both.
Something can be a legal theory and taught in a sophisticated way in a law school or, let's just say, in a senior seminar in college.
And the same theory can be taught in a more elementary way in high school and then in the most elementary way of all in middle schools and elementary schools.
I mean, if you take the stories of Shakespeare, let's take, for example, Romeo and Juliet, you could have a graduate-level seminar on Romeo and Juliet.
You could also discuss the play as a freshman in college.
It's often assigned in high school.
And if you take the story at its bare bones, you could tell a 10-year-old about Romeo and Juliet.
You can tell the story in a sort of Disney-ish way, and you would pretty much be able to find an audience at whatever level you do it.
And the same is true with critical race theory.
No one is claiming that Kimberly Crenshaw's legal law review article that first talked about intersectionality and had this kind of arsenal of terms is assigned to 12-year-olds in school.
No one's saying that. But what we are saying is that those doctrines are then, you could almost call it crayonized, so that they can be taught, really, even to seven-year-olds or six-year-olds in a kind of diluted but no less...
Doctrinaire way. Now, I think what's wrong with this whole approach is this.
It's kind of like blaming the thermometer for the fact that the patient has a fever.
Imagine you take a thermometer and you have groups, let's just say group A, group B, group C, and you have them all kind of use the thermometer and then you take the temperature.
You realize that by and large there are some guys in group A who have a fever.
Now, they can say, wait a minute!
We expected the thermometer would produce equal results among all the groups, and therefore the thermometer's bias.
Let's throw the thermometer down.
Let's stomp on it. This is critical race theory.
You're blaming, if you will, the mechanism, the mechanism often of measuring achievement.
And it's a false diagnosis because it's turning you away from the real problem.
Now, when I pointed this out on social media, someone goes, what's the real problem, Dinesh?
Almost implying like I was concealing a racist presupposition.
Are you really saying that groups differ in inherent ability?
And look, I mean, I've written a 600-page book on this.
It's called The End of Racism.
It's my most scholarly work, 2,000 footnotes.
So it's not like I'm trying to hide from this subject.
I offer a detailed explanation of why groups differ.
And it's not because of inherent differences or biological differences.
No. It's ultimately because of a whole set of factors.
Which go back to terrible schools, dangerous neighborhoods, gangs, and a kind of dysfunctional culture that sometimes develops not in the black community, but it does develop in the inner city where you have terrible homework habits, poor study habits. People have aspirations.
I want to be an astronaut. I want to be a doctor.
But no idea of what it takes to become an astronaut or become a doctor.
And so what you have is you find that poor Asian Americans are often more successful even than middle-class whites.
Why? It's because middle-class whites or blacks. And part of the reason for that is because they have intact families, they have homework habits, and so it is these cultural attributes of success that are the reason why some groups are doing better, even when you correct for socioeconomic differences.
Some people think that this is all a matter of rich and poor and that if you somehow level for socioeconomic differences, all these racial differences will go away.
No, they don't. They don't because you have socioeconomic factors, but you also have cultural factors.
And I think if we pay attention to this, we can get to the bottom of these problems and we can solve them.
Now, the Democrats on the left don't want to solve them.
They like the fact that there are terrible schools.
They like the fact that you have dependency.
They like the fact that you have broken families and terrible neighborhoods because that is a political harvest for them.
So critical race theory is something that the Democrats have latched onto, not because it's a way of helping blacks, but because it's a way of keeping blacks wedded.
Desperately to the Democratic Party.
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I want to talk about the ridiculous megalomania of Dr.
Fauci. Dr. Fauci was recently on Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan and he sort of got into an argument about Ted Cruz.
Listen. Senator Cruz told the Attorney General you should be prosecuted.
Yeah. I'd have to laugh at that.
I should be prosecuted.
What happened on January 6th, Senator?
What happened on January 6th?
I mean, first of all, this should dispel by itself any doubt that Dr.
Fauci is thoroughly political.
I mean, Debbie was actually one time kind of a fan of Fauci.
I used to at home call her Fauci because she'd be a Dr.
Fauci says. But I think she's realized that this guy is, you know, he's not consistent.
He's not really, he says he's standing up for the science, but somehow the science disappears when it comes to people coming across the border, being let in without a COVID test, without a vaccine.
When it comes to BLM rights, when it comes to Obama's birthday bash, somehow Dr.
Fauci goes into dead silence.
So the kind of inconsistency of it is kind of a tip-off, because obviously science doesn't play politics, and presumably neither does the virus.
Now, turning to Ted Cruz, I mean, this insinuation about January 6th is amazing.
I mean, is Fauci implying that no one's being prosecuted for January 6th?
On the contrary, as we know, there's vicious and vehement and unceasing efforts to prosecute people.
Now, Ted Cruz is not somebody who was involved.
He was giving a speech on the Senate floor.
So what is Fauci implying that Ted Cruz needs to be?
I mean, Ted Cruz hasn't even been subpoenaed by the January 6th commission.
And by the way, if you look at January 6th and compare it to COVID, just look at it just in terms of the sheer carnage.
Well, in January 6th, you have what?
One, maybe two casualties, depending on whether you count Roseanne Boylan.
But look at the carnage that COVID has created worldwide.
What, 5 million deaths?
800,000 in the United States alone?
So when Ted Cruz raises the question about Fauci, what did he have to do with this?
It's a question, and it does deserve an answer.
Now, at one point in the same interview, Fauci says, I'm not quoting him here, if you're attacking me, you're attacking science.
And this I find to be a statement of extreme megalomania.
Because science is a process of sort of trying to figure out the truth.
Science arrives at provisional judgments, and particularly when you're dealing with a new phenomenon, the idea that the science is somehow automatically settled and that it's all embodied in one man.
I mean, even Einstein wouldn't presume to this kind of megalomania.
Einstein, in fact, was wrong on many things, and in some cases forced to admit he was wrong.
Einstein didn't even realize that his own equations predicted the idea that the universe had a beginning.
It took a Russian scientist, Friedman, to point it out to Einstein.
Einstein was initially very dismissive, but eventually, yep, you're right.
Einstein was also very much against the idea of quantum physics.
You had Niels Bohr.
And Werner Heisenberg and the other quantum guys on the one side, you had Einstein on the other, and guess who turned out to be right?
The quantum guys, not Einstein.
So what this shows you is that science is in flux, and debates about the meaning of science and what science really points to are debates about sorting out evidence.
Forming provisional judgments always open to revision.
So it's very hard for me to see someone who claims to represent science.
I am science. Any criticism of me is criticism of science.
That itself seems to me to reflect a spirit very alien to the scientific spirit itself.
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Beto O'Rourke, who came really close to beating Ted Cruz for the Senate race in Texas, is now running for Texas governor.
And I think this is important for a number of reasons.
It's a test for the left of identity politics, which of course Beto purports to represent.
We'll talk about that.
But the other thing is that he's running as a progressive in a red state.
And if Beto can win, it I think portends perhaps a progressive future for America.
Not good news for us, I don't think.
And so Debbie and I thought we would, you know, discuss this phenomenon of Beto O'Rourke.
Now, he was a phenomenon the first time.
He attracted all this out-of-state money.
You know, he was a charismatic character.
He'd come skateboarding in to give a speech.
I think at one point I saw an article on Mashable.
Beto O'Rourke live-streamed his haircut.
Now, I guess that's a sign of his megalomania.
But apparently, if anybody was watching, they wanted to see a guy get a haircut.
Yeah. This was apparently a 19-minute live stream.
Well, yeah, this guy.
So what really bothers me more than anything about this guy is that he is extremely dishonest about who he is.
You know, to this day, I think people still think he's Hispanic.
Because he goes by Beto.
And he is not Hispanic, I want to say.
Well, let's point this out.
It's not that he's not half Hispanic.
He doesn't have a Hispanic mom.
He doesn't have a Hispanic bone in his body.
So he grew up in El Paso.
Apparently, Beto is like a Hispanic nickname for Roberto.
But his real name is Robert O'Rourke.
His father is of Irish descent.
His mother's maiden name is William.
So she's probably Anglo-Irish.
Right, right. So this guy has less Hispanic or less Mexican in him than Elizabeth Warren has, right?
Cherokee. But, you know, he goes down to the Rio Grande Valley, which, as you know, my mother is Mexican.
My mom is actually Mexican.
And you actually are Mexican.
And I actually have Mexican, have Venezuelan.
So I'm actually full Latina, okay?
This guy, not an inch, not anything, okay?
But what really bothers me is that he panders to Hispanics.
He goes down to the Rio Grande Valley and makes people feel like he's one of them.
And, you know, this is a very common tactic of the left and of socialists to do this.
And he does it well.
He does it very well because he's a very likable guy.
And so I thought we were done with electing likable guys who were on the left, guys.
Come on, you know? I mean, here, this is a guy who was kind of, in a way, in the Obama mold.
Right! In fact, he strategically, this is an article you're looking at, and declines to invite Biden to campaign, which is kind of an Obama-ite decision, right?
It's a shrewd decision.
I mean, Biden is not only a...
Well, you made the point that Biden isn't just a loser.
He's not just plummeting in the polls, but the Biden deception has been busted.
Right. Right. And so that is what I think he wants to distance himself from.
Because when Biden ran for president, he lied about who he was.
Oh, I'm not a socialist.
Well, even his running mate, Kamala Harris.
Oh, I'm not a socialist.
I don't laugh like you do. I think you make fun of her a lot better than I do.
But anyway, she lied.
You know, she said she was not a socialist.
And as you know, I've been following socialists for a very long time.
I know their scheme.
They lie to get elected.
And then once elected, boom, you know, your gas prices start going up.
Inflation starts going up.
They start talking gun confiscation.
They love criminals.
This is all the same playbook.
All of it. So this guy is...
Well, your point is not that he is an honest guy who wants to distance himself from Biden's dishonest scheme.
No. Your point is that Beto is running his own dishonest racket, and if he associates himself with Biden, it becomes easier to expose both of them as, in a sense, working off of the same playbook.
Exactly right. And again, you know, this whole gun confiscation.
So he was on CNN and he was asked, you know, that his number one campaign was, are you going to take away people's AR-15s and AK-47s?
And he said, blank, yeah, I don't like to curse.
So hell yes, I'm going to take away your AR-15s and your AK-47s.
Now, interestingly, and I mentioned this to you this morning, when a Democrat wants to take away your guns, he wants to take away law-abiding citizens' guns, not the criminals.
The criminals run amok.
And in fact, he's pro-criminal.
So the very thing he's saying, it's the exact opposite.
Because the criminals get the guns, whether they're legal or not.
But the law-abiding citizen who needs to defend himself against these criminals that these guys are letting loose can't get their weapons.
And so I think that is important.
There was a Texas rancher who came up to Beto and basically said, you know, you're not welcome down here because these are guys on the border.
And let's think about the dangers that they face, not only of theft, of drugs, of criminal cartels.
So these are guys who feel like we need to defend ourselves.
Right. And what Beto is saying is that, I'm not going to take the guns from the cartels.
He has no idea of how to do that.
I'll take away the guns from the ranchers, many of them Hispanic ranchers and farmers, so that they can defend themselves against illegals, against criminals, against MS-13, against all the threats that they are routinely subject to.
But see, that's the playbook of the Democrat.
They don't go after the criminal.
Because, you know, as we know, criminals can use...
Cars as weapons.
They can use knives as weapons.
They use guns as weapons.
So it's not about the item.
It's not about the gun.
It's not about the car.
It's about the criminal behind it.
And they don't address that.
Now, this is a progressive formula that even if in an attractive package, and I think Beto's lost some of the luster he had before.
When he ran against Cruz, he had a hidden advantage.
And the advantage, I believe, was that the Cruz faction, the Of the Republican Party had been at war with the Trump faction.
There was a lot of division.
That was the secret weapon that brought Beto really close to the finish line.
Now, he won't have that in the governor's race.
Well, not only will he not have that, but people are starting to wake up.
People are starting to realize that when they vote for these Democrats, bad things start happening.
And I cannot imagine, unless you are living in a basement somewhere that you don't have access to news...
Or in a bubble, in a gated community where you're not affected by it.
Exactly. Then you don't know what they do.
But if you...
Today, like, you know, when people were voting for all of these policies and didn't actually know they were voting for these policies, anyone that drives a car, I mean, just, we were, you know, we drove to the Rio Grande Valley this weekend and coming back and I said, oh my goodness, gasoline in Texas is over $4 a gallon.
That's crazy. That is not something that I've ever experienced in Texas, ever.
And so anyone that Drives a car, eats food, who doesn't, right?
Would know that their policies are toxic.
And so anyone that would vote for Beto needs to get their head examined.
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Feel the difference. Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter, is leaving Twitter.
Well, he's stepping down now as the CEO. He's replaced by this Asian Indian guy named Parag Agrawal.
And he's going to serve. Jack Dorsey is on the board of Twitter for some months, I believe, through next May.
And then he's going to essentially go away, take off, do something else.
Now, Twitter is a very influential platform.
I would argue the most influential.
It is not the platform with the most members.
Twitter has about 300 million worldwide.
Facebook has over 2 billion.
But if you want to look at where the media, the politicians, where do people take their cues, at least in the American political debate, I would say they do more from Twitter than they do from perhaps any other platform.
Now, Jack Dorsey, like Zuckerberg, has been, and I've argued this before, kind of a bad guy.
And by that I mean he has made his peace with censorship.
He has allowed the platform to be a vehicle for banning people, for throwing them off, and also for...
Pegging annoying notifications, often on statements that are merely statements of opinion, or in some cases, even statements of fact, which are somehow determined to be, you know, lacking context, or we want you to read this article also.
And so Twitter has...
He departed from the John Stuart Mill idea of allowing untrammeled free speech.
As long as it's legal, you should be allowed to say it.
Now, remember with John Stuart Mill, he never said that free speech is limited just to government enforcement.
His point is that free speech is an important value in society.
It's much bigger than the First Amendment.
Now, with Zuckerberg, I think he was tamed a little bit when he went to the Bitcoin conference.
This was in 2021 in Miami.
And he was confronted there by, of all people, Laura Loomer.
Laura Loomer basically shouted at him and accused him of being a champion of censorship.
And the Bitcoin guys, many of whom have libertarian leanings, were sympathetic to Laura Loomer.
And I think Dorsey began to feel, in a crowd that he valued, Dorsey is very excited about Bitcoin.
He wants to be a cool Bitcoin mogul himself.
And so I think he realized that among these young people, these cool cats, he had suddenly become the ogre.
And I think that the effect of that on Twitter has actually been very good.
Twitter today, at least in my experience and from my observation, is less censorious than YouTube or Facebook.
So in that sense, it's a little bit of a pity that of the sort of digital moguls, the guy who is the most protective of free speech, not that much, but at least more protective of free speech than the others, is departing the scene.
And there's a lot of talk about his replacement.
I won't discuss his replacement now because I'm looking more into him.
I'll do separate segments subsequently on him.
I think for Dorsey, he will be remembered.
He'll be seen as somebody who created an important digital media company, a company that I hope will have lots of alternatives in the years going forward.
But this guy could have made history as the guy who said no.
This guy could have made history as the guy who said, the rest of you can be on board with censorship, but I'm going to create a platform where we're going to resist it.
Unfortunately, he didn't do that.
And now he's leaving the company, I would say, in questionable hands.
In other words, he's leaving the company with this censorship regime in place, and perhaps not even him at the helm, in order to interpret these rules in a way that allows more rather than less free speech.
So I'm worried that Twitter, going forward, will be even more prosecutorial, more censorious, Free speech in America with Dorsey's departure will have suffered yet another blow.
Don't you get a little sick of the news?
I mean, every day it's the left trying to make another money grab, whether it's spying on your accounts or taxing your unrealized gains.
There's just no shortage to their bizarre creativity when it comes to taking your hard-earned money to fund their expensive, far-reaching, radical agenda.
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You know, guys, I'm not sure Alan West needs much of an introduction.
Lieutenant Colonel Alan West, you know him, combat veteran, former member of U.S. Congress from Florida.
He's been the chairman of the Republican Party in Texas.
He's running for governor.
Alan, delighted to have you on the podcast.
Thanks for joining me.
I really appreciate it.
You're now a Texan, and I want to talk to you about Texas a little bit because we have all these people pouring into Texas, many of them coming from blue states.
Now, presumably, they're fleeing something over there and coming to Texas because they're looking for a better life over here.
But as you know, some of them bring their liberal and democratic convictions with them.
Is Texas in danger of losing its identity by importing I'm not even talking about the southern border now, but just by importing liberals from the rest of America.
Well, it's great to be with you, Dinesh, and I pray that you had a great Thanksgiving and Happy Hanukkah and also Merry Christmas to all the people watching this podcast.
You know, I was born and raised in Georgia and I went to the University of Tennessee and, you know, we have a very unique nickname at the University of Tennessee.
We call the Volunteers. And it really is because of so many Georgians and Tennesseans that came here to fight for liberty in Texas.
And so when I look at what is happening today, you're right.
There's a different type of migration that is coming to Texas.
You do have people that are leaving California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, these blue states, because they're tired of those failed policies.
But also the thing that we have seen happen in many red states, we've had a lot of governors go out and recruit businesses and corporations to come from those states and move here into our red states because of the policies and policies.
Principles that we have.
But what those businesses and corporations are not doing is talking to their employment base that they are moving into states like Texas.
And I think that's where we really have the problem.
And we can see it happening in Austin, Texas.
We see it up here in North Texas.
So I think the most important thing is that if you're going to go out recruiting these corporations and businesses, especially Oracle, Google, coming from Silicon Valley, have a discussion with that CEO to say, don't bring people I mean,
part of what you're saying, and I agree completely, is that That these entrepreneurs who benefit from a system of capitalism need to become more aggressive defenders of the system that makes their success possible.
So, are you saying that they can be apostles within their own company of evangelizing a little bit for capitalism and saying, hey guys, we're moving to Texas because it's a more hospitable environment.
Let's support the policies that keep Texas, Texas.
Yeah, you're absolutely right.
I think it's important that these CEOs explain to their employment base, this is why I'm leaving California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey.
And if you want to be a part of the reason why we're leaving, please come.
But if not, if you're going to try to, you know, make it like the place that you are right now, we don't want you to come with us.
And I will give a hats off to Elon Musk, because just recently, In this month when we had this election going on in Austin, Texas, over Proposition A. And Proposition A was to refund the police in Austin because they've seen a 66% increase in violent crime, 71% increase in homicides.
And he told the people of Austin to vote for Proposition A. Do not allow Austin to be more like San Francisco.
But unfortunately, he had George Soros money that came in, ran a shadow campaign against that proposition, and it failed.
So again, we want more responsible CEOs of these major businesses and corporations that talk about the reason why they have to leave.
Toyota North America, up here.
We also have American Airlines.
We also have ExxonMobil.
All of these people need to be talking about free market, entrepreneurship, and capitalism.
One of the most heartening developments, I think, has been the movement of Hispanics in Texas toward the Republican Party.
Do you see that as something that can be sustained?
In other words, it's one thing for people to say, I'm unhappy about what's happening with the border now.
I think that Biden is kind of an incompetent fool now.
And so this time I'm going to sort of vote the other way.
It's a whole different thing for Hispanics to move out of that culture of allegiance to the Democratic Party and begin to think of themselves as identifying more with conservative values and with the Republican Party.
You're absolutely right. And when I was the chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, one of the things that I told people is, I never want to hear you say the word outreach.
We have to talk about engagement, which means we have to be there 24-7, 365.
We just don't show up and, you know, respect the Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and then two months before an election.
We've got to make that connection based upon what you just said, conservative principles and values.
And when we did that, we went down into the Rio Grande Valley.
And look what happened in November 2020, and look what continues to happen with that type of engagement, because their principles and values in the Hispanic community and also in the Black community are conservative in nature, but they don't hear that enough, and we don't engage with them enough.
So I think it's so important that we do that.
And there are so many people in the Republican Party that say that you shouldn't talk about social issues.
You shouldn't talk about murdering unborn babies.
You shouldn't talk about marriage.
Well, guess what? Family and things of that nature, those social issues are so important in the Black communities and Hispanic communities, and that's why we can have that engagement on top of the safety and security issues we see with the very open borders.
So right now, Joe Biden has an approval rating with Hispanics in Texas of about 32 to 35 percent.
That is an incredible opportunity for us to connect with that community based upon principles and not so much about party.
I mean, I've long said that Asian Americans who should be 90% Republican because in terms of their lifestyle, conservative family values, frugality, savings rates, rates of entrepreneurial formation, these are people who almost are to the right of Pat Robertson.
But it seems the particular ineptitude of the Republican Party not even to get this kind of low-hanging fruit, right pickings, if you will.
What does the Republican Party need to do to convey this message to minorities more effectively?
They just need to show up, Dinesh.
I mean, that's the problem that they never have been able to understand.
And the thing is that they write off so many of these communities saying, you know, it's not worth our time, it's not worth our effort.
I can tell you that in November last year's election cycle, you know, great connection with the Vietnamese community down there in Houston, Texas.
Why? Why? They've seen socialism.
They've seen communism.
They've seen Marxism. They lost their original country because of that.
They don't want to lose their new adopted country.
And so you have people that are wholeheartedly on our side when you talk about principles and values.
And same thing with the Indian American community down there in Harris County in Houston.
You talked about the rate of entrepreneurship and business growth and development and education, things of that nature.
I had a young man came up to me, an Asian American young man, and he asked me, he said, do you support affirmative action?
I said, no, I see affirmative action today as being very racist, because it says to me that I can't achieve a standard.
And he said, it also says to me as an Asian American, I get punished for being successful.
And I said, you're right.
And so we have to connect with people on these type of issues.
But again, it is about the constant engagement, not just showing up for election cycles, but also recruiting people to be at those local levels, city councils, school boards, county commissions, state house districts, water management districts, get people in these communities involved in their local level of politics.
Let's take a pause. When we come back, I'm going to ask Alan West about two big issues swirling around in Texas.
The first one is abortion, and the second one is the border.
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I'm back with Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, who's running for governor of Texas.
Allen, let's talk a little bit about this abortion issue, because the Supreme Court is about to take it up in a big way.
They're going to look at the Mississippi law more specifically, but there's the Texas law.
We've essentially been living in a state without Roe v.
Wade now for several weeks.
And a lot of the convulsions that the left predicted would happen if Roe versus Wade were ever set aside have not materialized in Texas.
Talk about the Texas example on this issue, and do you think it might be a formula or recipe for other states going forward?
No, I full and wholeheartedly support the heartbeat law.
And I think it was very well written.
Brian Hughes, the state senator, who is the author of that, did a fantastic job.
This is not about the Texas government going after individuals.
It's about citizens being able to be a part of this.
And I think that's what we want, responsible citizens.
And I don't like to use the word abortion because that's the word that the left uses.
This is talking about the murder of unborn babies.
And again, in the previous segment, we talked about the connection with the minority communities.
The left is always talking about white supremacy and racism and things of this nature.
Well, guess who the founder of Planned Parenthood was?
A woman who referred to Blacks as undesirables and human weeds.
A woman who, without a doubt, spoke at Ku Klux Klan rallies.
And you can go back and look at some of the things that she said.
Margaret Sanger. And most of those Planned Parenthood clinics are located 71 to 73% in minority communities.
So this is a huge issue.
And since Roe v.
Wade and Roe v. Wade was a court decision, it's not law, and we have to go back and understand that courts don't make law, I think that it's important that we have states We're good to go.
It's very disconcerting because we're supposed to operate under the system of federalism, which, you know, realizes that the states do have their sovereignty and do have the ability to create laws and govern themselves, and we cannot have an onerous, intrusive federal government that comes down and tries to supplant that based upon their ideological agendas.
Now, this very distinction between the federal government and the states, I want to pivot for a moment to the issue of the border, because clearly the border is a dual responsibility.
And what I mean by that is it's the Texas border, so it involves the state, but it's also the US border with Mexico.
Now the Biden administration seems to be taking the view that federal laws trump state laws, federal laws are supreme, and that their policies, which are a de facto open border, are policies that Texas can and should do nothing about.
My question to you is, what is it in this hostile environment where Biden is in effect working, I wouldn't say directly with the cartels, but in conjunction with the cartels and all these traffickers to create this chaos on the border?
What can be done by a state like Texas to say no and to enforce the territorial integrity, if not of the country, then at least of Texas?
Well, sir, you're talking about a state, Texas, that has a 1,254-mile border with a foreign country.
And when you look at the United States Constitution, the Guarantee Clause, Article 4, Section 4, states two things that the federal government is supposed to guarantee to every state in the union.
First of all, a Republican form of government.
That means a constitutional republic.
And then the second thing is to protect every state from invasion.
And then when you go and you read the supremacy clause in the Constitution, it says that the federal government is supreme over the states as long as they are doing things, passing laws pursuant thereof to the rule of law.
When you are implementing an open borders policy, you're violating the Guarantee Clause.
You're violating your oath to protect the sovereignty of the United States of America, which includes the sovereignty of Texas.
And so the Founding Fathers were brilliant, Dinesh.
In Article 1, Section 10, Clause number 3 of the Constitution, it says exactly what states can do if actually invaded when there is imminent danger without any admit of delay.
And when you look at what is happening, the drug trafficking crisis, a record amount of drug overdoses in America, the human and sex trafficking crisis, we are aiding and abetting human and sex trafficking in the United States of America.
And then the public health crisis.
You know, unconstitutionally, we've been told we have to get a jab in the arm, but yet people, 200,000 a month, are coming across the border not getting any type of shot in the arm.
So Texas, by the Constitution of the United States of America and also the Texas State Constitution, We have the ability to defend ourselves and protect ourselves from invasion.
And that's what illegal immigration is.
Very interesting. Alan West, thank you very much for joining me on the podcast.
I really appreciate it. My pleasure.
Thank you so much, Dinesh.
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I want to conclude my discussion of Shakespeare's Macbeth and the tyrannical temptation that this play is all about.
In fact, It's a play about tyrants with a conscience.
Part of what Shakespeare is getting at here is that tyrants aren't these cardboard evil figures that can be seen as purely psychotic, lacking a conscience.
Macbeth has a conscience. Lady Macbeth has a conscience.
But you could say that they struggle with their conscience and prevail.
They override their conscience, and Shakespeare vividly shows the consequence of that.
This is the play in which Shakespeare is looking at tyranny from the inside, tyranny from the point of view of the tyrant.
And he shows that tyranny is self-destructive.
It isn't just destructive to its victims.
It is not just terrible from the point of view of the onlooker.
It is also terrible from the point of view of the perpetrator.
Now, we are in medieval Scotland, a society of warrior clans.
Macbeth is a warrior himself.
And yet, it is a society that has been Christianized, which is to say it has been moralized.
And the conflict between the warrior creed and the Christian creed is at the center of this play.
I'll begin with a scene in which Macbeth is talking to these two guys that he wants to employ as murderers to kill a fellow named Banquo.
And the murderers are a little bit reluctant to do it.
And so, Macbeth says to them, Are you so gospeled to pray for this good man?
And what Macbeth is saying here is that, Are you so Christianized?
Has the gospel gotten to you?
Has the gospel emasculated you?
Has it taken away your warrior spirit?
And we know that this is what Macbeth is saying, because one of the murderers replies this, We are men, my liege.
Meaning? No, we're warriors.
We'll do what the warrior code requires if it is necessary.
And so what we see here is this great clash between warrior culture, which is represented in the play as masculine, and Christian culture, which is represented as gentle and feminine.
Notice that at one point Lady Macbeth Who is, of course, a woman.
She is on the feminine side.
She prays to evil spirits to unsex her.
In other words, to take away her femininity, to implant in her the warrior code.
In a weird way, Lady Macbeth is sort of one of the earliest people undergoing what today we would call a transition.
She is a woman who's trying to identify as a man.
I mean, part of Macbeth, if you want to look at it in a comic spirit, is her transition doesn't really work.
She's unable to pull it off, and eventually it drives her to commit suicide.
Now, I want to turn to the great speech that Macbeth gives at the end of the play, a speech which is the most famous in the entire play, and it is a speech that conveys a kind of nihilism to it.
Here we go.
Out, out, brief candle, life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
It's the word nothing here that conveys that profound nihilism.
A nihilism that's the very opposite, of course, of Christianity.
In fact, when Macbeth says that life is a tale told by an idiot, who's the idiot?
Well, presumably God.
Presumably the author of this tale, the creator of the universe, has no plan, has no plot.
It's just one ridiculous, meaningless thing after another.
And, in a sense, Macbeth here is expressing what some people take Shakespeare to be expressing.
In fact, some critics have taken this nihilistic speech as an expression of Shakespeare's own view that life is somehow meaningless and that there's no moral order in the universe and that there's no providence, in a sense, overseeing it all.
Now, interestingly enough, that is not what the play itself shows.
This is Macbeth's nihilism, not Shakespeare's nihilism.
In fact, if you look at the play as a whole, you can see how does it end?
Well, it ends with Macbeth being killed in combat by Macduff.
It ends with Lady Macbeth, the evil plotter.
Committing suicide, so the two murderers, although they caused a great chaos or disruption in the body politic, are purged at the end.
Malcolm, who is the son of King Duncan, assumes the throne.
Macduff, who killed Macbeth, now becomes the protector of Malcolm, and so order appears to be restored.
I'm going to read a few lines from Malcolm's closing speech, the last lines of the play.
What's more to do?
Which would be planted newly, and the time is calling home our exiled friends abroad?
So let's call the people who have fled Macbeth's tyranny.
Let's bring them home. That fled the snares of watchful tyranny, producing forth the cruel ministers of this dead butcher and his fiend-like queen?
And then it talks about the grace of grace.
Basically, what Malcolm is saying is we are now under divine supervision.
The grace of grace, capital G, grace.
In other words, by the grace of God, we are going to rule.
And he says, we will perform in measure, time, and place.
In other words, we will do everything we can to restore the social and the moral order.
Now, it's tempting to conclude on this happy note and say that Shakespeare has kind of tied all the loose ends, brought it all together.
This is actually a happier ending than we see in Macbeth, where you have corpses all over the stage, or King Lear, which ends in dark despair.
But you have to remember that this is a warrior society.
When Malcolm says about Macbeth, He says, this dead butcher.
And yes, Macbeth is a butcher.
He has actually murdered people.
Well, he murders one person in the play, Duncan, and he orders the murders of others.
But at the very beginning of the play itself, we have this amazing scene in which the king is notified that his soldier, Macbeth, has actually helped him win a battle by repelling some rebels.
And one in particular, Macbeth, took his sword and cut him from the waist of Really, to the neck.
And you might expect King Duncan, who is the Christian monarch, to say something like, Oh my gosh, well this is just awful.
I'm really sorry you had...
No! He basically goes, Well done, Macbeth!
So you see here that the warrior code is very much present, even in Duncan.
And Macbeth's violation of this code is not that Macbeth is a killer.
Macbeth was a killer in the beginning, and he was praised for it.
Macbeth is being condemned in this play because he killed the wrong guy.
Instead of killing the enemies of Scotland, he kills the king.
So Macbeth's bloodthirstiness, if you will, is pointed in the wrong direction.
And what happens at the end?
Well, you could say that the sort of...
Macbeth is in fact replaced by men who are better than he is.
He's replaced by Malcolm.
He's replaced by Macduff.
But they too are barbarians in the mode that Macbeth was at the beginning.
They too are going to be bloodthirsty in taking on Scotland's enemies.
You also have the different clans kind of at war with each other.
And Malcolm is able to forge, you may say, at best, a temporary peace.
And so what is Shakespeare's message here?
I think it is... That in the fight between concupiscence, or lust, or tyranny on the one hand, and morality on the other, there are no permanent victories.
God may be superintending the universe as a whole, but human choice is also involved, and human choice can produce a great deal of malevolence.
And so the fight between the tyrannical mode, the tyrannical temptation, And the temptation to decency and goodness and morality, that's a perpetual temptation that was there with Macbeth and is there with us now.
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