All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 19, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
52:57
WHO WAS JIM CROW? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep252
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Guys, I want to let you know that tonight I'm going to release a new teaser trailer for my new film.
The film will be out in April, but the trailer is going to open your eyes quite a bit.
So keep an eye out for it.
It's going to be, I think, exploding on the scene tonight.
Now, coming up, I'm going to talk about Biden, who is equating voting rights and voter integrity bills with Jim Crow, raising the question, of course, who was Jim Crow?
What was Jim Crow all about?
I'm also going to reveal how Biden, not Trump, has turned out to be Putin's pet.
Harriet Hageman, the Trump-endorsed candidate who's running against Liz Cheney, is going to join me to talk about the evolution of Liz Cheney.
I'm going to ask whether Asian Americans are going to follow Hispanics and start making a kind of move toward the GOP. And finally, I'm going to continue my discussion of romantic irony in Pushkin's Eugene Onegin.
And 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.
The Democrats do not have the votes to pass their Voting Rights Act.
This is the terrible piece of legislation that would federalize elections and really overturn all the voter integrity laws that have been passed in so many different states.
The Democrats are desperate to do this.
But to do it, they have to overcome the filibuster.
Well, it's not even clear that they have the 51 votes, but they certainly don't have 60.
And so they are simultaneously pushing the voting rights bill, and at the same time, they're railing on the filibuster, and they're trying to make life miserable for Sinema and Manchin.
And they're going through this kind of theater, which seems to have a known outcome.
But nevertheless, they're pushing it through anyway.
I think they feel like if we can get Manchin on the record, we can get Cinema on the record, this will somehow maybe pressure them to change their mind.
Joe Biden, who's a pawn of this whole operation, recently tweeted, and I'm going to put this up on the screen so you can take a look while I'm reading it to you.
His favorite phrase these days is Jim Crow 2.0.
Jim Crow 2.0.
He goes, Jim Crow 2.0 is about two insidious things.
Let's see what they are. Voter suppression.
Voter suppression and election subversion.
He goes, it's about making it harder to vote and And who gets to count the vote and whether your vote counts at all.
Now, this is really over-the-top rhetoric because, well, I mean, you would think that somebody making these kinds of claims would be able to produce a long procession of people who have been trying to vote but have been unable to vote, voter suppression.
Then he goes on, it's about who gets to count the vote.
As if election integrity bills are somehow creating Republican counting teams that can somehow rig the vote.
And whether your vote counts at all, as if you've now got a committee that's throwing out votes into the trash.
I mean, this is beyond the pale.
And even the equation to Jim Crow obviously raises the question, what was Jim Crow?
Who was Jim Crow?
People use that phrase, Jim Crow, Jim Crow.
But who was Jim Crow?
Well... Jim Crow was a kind of persona, a character, both in writing as well as in the theater.
It was primarily developed by a guy named Thomas Rice in the early 19th century.
It was a kind of stereotypical, and today's sensibility, very offensive.
A cartoonish portrait of African Americans and of black culture.
It was based upon a kind of folk trickster named Jim Crow that was apparently popular in the kind of folk tales that were around slavery.
But this idea, which was a negative depiction of blacks, came to symbolize laws that were passed starting in the late 19th century, continuing in the 20th century, And these were called the Jim Crow laws.
And essentially what they meant is they separated blacks and whites into two independent worlds.
Now, this is not to say that blacks and whites didn't interact at all.
They did, but they interacted only in very controlled settings.
You might have, for example, a black maid cleaning the home of a white family.
But by and large, if you were a black guy and you wanted a haircut, you had to go to a black barber.
At least this was in states that had Jim Crow or segregation laws.
Black businesses were separated from white businesses.
You had, for example, in Durham, North Carolina, white banks and black banks.
Blacks and whites went to different schools in segregated cities and segregated states, and so they didn't attend school together.
And so this isolation of one race from the other, somewhat a kind of American version of apartheid, you'd have to say, Well, all of this is utterly removed from anything that Biden is talking about now.
Because obviously, no one is talking, no one's even considering any return to those kinds of...
That kind of racial separation.
Now, it is true that in Jim Crow days, in the days of segregation, the Democratic Party, and only the Democratic Party, systematically practiced voter suppression.
Their techniques were things like the poll tax, so you have to pay money to vote.
And the idea here was to disenfranchise people who essentially had no money or couldn't afford to.
So this was a kind of open way of isolating only you guys can vote and you guys can't vote.
Again, there's no resemblance to anything going on now.
And the other technique of voter suppression was the Ku Klux Klan.
It wasn't just that the Klan would randomly perpetrate violence against blacks, but they would stand.
You'd have all these Klan guys who'd come to the polls and look to see which black guys show up.
And it's like, listen, we're going to be paying you a visit later.
You're going to really regret you showed up for the polls.
Of course, the fear on the part of the Klan was that these blacks were going to be voting, as they typically did, Republican.
So this is the actual history of voter suppression.
So think of the irony of Biden, who's himself palled around with segregationists.
He was a friend of Robert Byrd.
He was a friend of a lot of the worst racists in the Democratic Party.
This guy is lecturing us about Jim Crow.
When you turn to the voter integrity laws, what you find out is that the provisions in the voter integrity laws in states like Georgia are only trying to implement now things that already exist in democratic states.
And so, for example, right now, even with voter integrity laws, it's easier to vote in Georgia than it is, for example, in New York.
And yet, you never hear Democrats calling New York a racist state.
It seems that only when Republicans pass laws to protect the vote, then suddenly it becomes racism, whereas if the exact same laws exist in Delaware or New Jersey or New York, no problem.
We're not even going to mention that, pretend that no one notices, count on the media to kind of play the same fiddle, play the same tune that we are playing.
And here's Amy Klobuchar basically talking about why the filibuster needs to end.
She goes, democracies around the world do not use the 60-vote threshold.
As if to say that because the filibuster is American, it's not used by other democracies.
It's sort of, we don't really need it.
It's not a necessary concomitant to democracy.
Well, okay, but many democracies around the world have no protection for free speech.
Many democracies around the world don't protect civil rights.
They elevate one tribe, the majority tribe, over the minority tribe, the Hutu over the Tutsi, or the other way around.
Some democracies, Great Britain is a good example, coexist with the monarchy.
Other democracies in the Muslim world, Pakistan is a good example, use majority rule to impose Sharia law.
So this idea that sort of democracies around the world don't do it the way we do is not exactly what, doesn't make the point that Klobuchar is trying to make, that somehow they become exemplary and we should follow their model.
Not at all. America has struck a balance between majority rule and the protection of minority rights.
Yes, the majority gets to rule, but within a certain limited domain, with rights for the minority, including people who live in states that didn't vote for Joe Biden.
All of this, I think, is being obscured, if not lost in this debate.
I think the good news is that even though we're hearing a lot of nonsense in the debate, the debate, as far as we can tell now, is going to have a satisfactory outcome.
Mike Lindell, as you've probably heard, has been debanked, has been canceled by the Minnesota Bank.
And this is all his accounts, not just Frank's speech, but even his addiction recovery program.
It's crazy. His personal accounts, all been canceled.
And so this is a guy who's paying a heavy price.
I mean, the... The level of cancellation, but also ridicule.
Debbie just showed me, was it Saturday Night Live, honey, you were talking about?
It was Jimmy Kimmel ridiculing Mike Lindell.
So they're trying to make this guy really pay the price for standing up for his beliefs and for exposing things that the left doesn't want you to see.
I think the best we can do with Mike is support Mike across the board.
And the great thing is he makes all these fantastic products.
I've talked about his towels.
I've talked about his slippers.
Of course, his classic MyPillows.
He's got more than 150 products on his website.
So call 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com.
If you use promo code Dinesh, you can take advantage of all kinds of special offers and discounts up to 66% off.
Again, that number 800-876-0227 or go to MyPillow.com.
make sure to use promo code DINESHDINESH.
I talked yesterday about the hypocrisy of the Democrats who are calling the filibuster racist, even though right now, in the past few days, they've been using the filibuster to block a bill in the Senate being pushed by Senator Cruz. And this is a bill that has 55 senators behind it, including, I believe, 6 Democrats.
So this is a bill that would impose sanctions on Russia on its Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
This is the pipeline, by the way, that connects and pumps oil from Russia to Germany and through Germany to other parts of Europe.
Now, interestingly, Trump, who was supposed to be, you know, from the left's point of view, Putin's puppet, Trump did everything he could to block the Nord Stream pipeline.
And he did block it. And Biden, who actually is in some ways Putin's puppet, at least if actions are any measure, Biden has actually enabled the Nord Stream to go forward and has enabled Putin to use it, as he is, as a weapon against Europe.
And also against the Ukraine.
By the way, Zelenskyy, the president of the Ukraine, has been begging America to impose the sanctions, exactly the sanctions that Ted Cruz is trying to impose, and the Biden administration is resisting it.
So, let's talk about what Putin is doing with this pipeline.
Putin is getting ready to menace, so he's already menacing in some ways, the Ukraine.
And he is mobilizing troops on the Ukraine.
Who knows whether Putin will actually take action against the Ukraine?
He might. But even if he doesn't, he's going to do what he can To bring Ukraine to heel, to bring Ukraine to its knees, to establish that he has practical domination over the Ukraine, whether or not he deploys troops against it.
Now, obviously for Putin it's a problem if all the European countries join the United States in collectively resisting that.
And so what is Putin doing?
He's using the leverage of oil, he's using the leverage of the Nord Stream pipeline to say, hey guys, listen, we know that you kind of are concerned about human rights, but frankly, aren't you more concerned about your energy prices?
Aren't you more concerned about your own economies?
Isn't it more important for you to have a tank full of gas and no energy problems to worry about cheap energy available through Russian oil than to worry about what's happening to a bunch of Ukrainians whom you don't even know?
So Putin is using both the carrots and the sticks of the Nord Stream 2.
Hey, listen, I can always cut off the oil supply, and where would you be then?
In order to Twist the arms of the Europeans.
Now, Biden says, that's not going to happen.
I've had a conversation with Angela Merkel.
She assures me, blah, blah, blah.
But the simple truth of it is we know, and we know this from experience, that the French, the Germans, the Europeans, by and large, are very amenable to practical benefits.
They are actually very Machiavellian in the way that they think about things.
They would be happy to sell out the Ukraine for a barrel of oil or for a sufficient number of barrels of oil.
So the point I'm trying to make is that we're not just dealing with democratic hypocrisy here in the filibuster.
We're also dealing with Democrats enabling Putin to exercise leverage over Europe and thus to push forward with his plans for the Ukraine.
Panics and pains are very familiar to Debbie and me, not because, well, it's not that we have chronic pains, but we tend to bump into things.
I think we're both known to be somewhat clumsy, and we're known to hit into this, and oh, my leg, and Debbie reclaims falling down the stairs.
Well, I don't know if that's...
Well, Debbie, you actually did fall on the stairs more than once.
Well, I guess for everybody, you get aches and pains one way or the other.
But now there's a 100% drug-free solution, and it's called Relief Factor.
Relief Factor supports your body's fight against inflammation.
And inflammation is the source of aches and pains.
The vast majority of people who try Relief Factor...
They're so content, they order more.
Why? Because it works for them.
Debbie's a true believer. She's had this problem with her frozen shoulder, and relief factor's been a real game changer.
Debbie knows if she doesn't take it, pain's gonna come right back.
So she's like, I'm not gonna be without this again.
I know if I need it, it's there for me.
And for Debbie to lift her arm, exercise, this is all super important to her.
Relief factor's the tool she needs.
She's glad she's got it. So you too can benefit.
Try it for yourself. Order the three-week quick start for the discounted price of just $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call 833-690-7246 to find out more about this offer.
That number again, 833-690-7246 or go to relieffactor.com.
Feel the difference. Do you realize that taxpayer money, well, your money, is going toward providing legal representation and legal defense for illegal aliens?
Now, in any normal circumstance, people would go, what?
Well, as it turns out, This is a report that just came out from the Immigration Reform Law Institute.
It's called IRLI. IRLI and its research tumbled upon the fact that, look, a bunch of cities throughout the United States are using city money, which is to say tax money, To provide legal representation to illegals.
So who are these illegals? Well, these are illegals who, as you know, some of them don't even bother to show up for their court dates.
But others do. They show up for their court dates and they're fighting deportation and they're trying to show that they deserve to be in the United States.
But no one knew, I didn't know, that they're getting public funding for their legal defense.
Now, if you're a US citizen and you're accused of a crime, you are entitled to a lawyer.
And if you can't afford one, the court provides one for you.
But this is a constitutional protection that is enjoyed by legals.
It's well established in American law, That illegals don't have any right to free legal representation, not to mention in deportation cases.
In other words, we're not even necessarily talking about criminal cases.
We're talking about cases where the guy's like, I want to stay in the United States.
Here's my lawyer who's going to speak on my behalf.
Well, the question is, who's going to pay that guy?
And it should be the guy who's hiring him.
But it turns out that cities are funneling money to provide legal representation.
These are democratic cities.
No surprise. Now, how does that actually work?
Well, it turns out it works because there is a left-wing group called the VERA, V-E-R-A, Institute of Justice.
And the VERA Institute of Justice has been really successful in lobbying these cities to provide this.
basically kind of conniving the money out of the cities to be able to divert it to the representation of illegals.
Now, Vera Institute concedes that it's not the law that illegals deserve this protection, but Vera says it should be.
They say, quote, it is the government's responsibility to protect the fundamental rights, health, and security of everyone in our communities, including immigrants.
They mean illegals because illegals aren't immigrants.
So this is the deliberate rhetorical obfuscation that we've all now become very familiar with.
Including immigrants who are targeted by our expanding federal enforcement Well, our federal enforcement system isn't expanding.
It's actually contracting.
Sometimes it seems virtually non-existent.
So, Vera says, quote, our goal is to lay the foundational blocks that make federally mandated universal representation.
What they mean is anyone who's physically in the United States has the right to a free lawyer funded by the taxpayer.
That's what they mean by universal representation.
Everybody universally within the U.S. borders, whether legal or illegal, has the right to a lawyer funded by, well, funded by you and funded by me.
So this is... This is part of this bigger campaign by the left to get these illegals to come here, to stay here, to get you to pay not just for their education, but also, in this case, for their legal representation, so that at the end of the day they will become, well, not Americans, no one really cares about that, but Democrats.
Not everybody likes fruits and veggies.
Very few people eat the recommended number or quantity of fruits and veggies, and it's kind of hard to pull it off, even if you are pretty dedicated to the whole project.
But Debbie and I have found a solution, and having found it, we find all kinds of people around us.
People here at the studio, people who are connected with Debbie's mom.
We mentioned this.
There's a way to get around the fruits and veggies problem.
They're like, what's that? Well, here it is.
It's called Balance of Nature.
We take three capsules of the veggies and three capsules of the fruits.
There we go. That's it.
Debbie also, by the way, swears by this.
It's called the fiber and spice.
She says it makes her really regular.
And Balance of Nature works.
That's why everyone that we have recommended it to, they become sort of regular customers.
So you should too.
Call 800-246-8751.
That number again, 800-246-8751.
Or go to balanceofnature.com.
To get a discount, you've got to use the discount code, which is AMERICA. Guys, as you know on this podcast, I've done more than once a stinging critique of Liz Cheney.
And I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast the woman who's running against her.
This is a U.S. congressional candidate in Wyoming.
She was born and raised in Wyoming.
She's a conservative constitutional attorney.
She's endorsed by Trump.
Harriet Hageman, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you for joining me.
It's a real pleasure to have you.
You're running against Liz Cheney, who is kind of a known, if somewhat, ambiguous character.
But let me start by asking about you, because I'm assuming that a lot of people don't know a lot about you.
So tell us a little bit about you, why you're running, and how you're going to be different from Liz Cheney if you get into office.
Well, thank you very much for having me.
It's wonderful to be on your program today.
I grew up on a ranch about 100 miles north of Cheyenne.
I am Wyoming born and bred, Wyoming born and raised.
I come from a very large family.
The vast majority of my family still resides in Wyoming.
I went to Casper College after high school on a livestock judging scholarship.
Then I went to the University of Wyoming and received both my bachelor's degree and my law degree.
I graduated in 1989.
I am a constitutional attorney.
For the last 25 years or so, I have been fighting hard to protect Wyoming, to protect our private property rights, our water rights, and our civil rights.
A lot of my cases, or the vast majority of my cases, are against the federal government.
I've been pushing back against the EPA, the USDA, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Forest Service, and all of those different types of Organizations that really want to turn Wyoming into nothing but a national park.
How am I different from Liz Cheney?
I think that my background, my history, and the work that I've done provides a very stark contrast between Liz Cheney and I. Liz Cheney is from Virginia.
She lives in McLean, Virginia, and really her entire existence is based upon the swamp in Washington, D.C., I actually live out among the people that really matter in this country.
I'm a Wyomingite.
I'm an American citizen.
I'm someone who understands the issues that we're facing, the problems in terms of what this administration is doing to all of us in the United States.
And Liz Cheney is just really a creature of Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia.
Harry, as I think about Liz Cheney, am I right to think that she actually started out with a fairly conservative voting record and has now sort of evolved into a different stance?
Is it fair to say that you're someone who was probably warmer or friendlier to Liz Cheney before this kind of evolution, and now she has sort of...
You know, turned in a different direction and now you feel like, listen, she's no longer representing Wyoming values at all?
Or is it the case that you always thought that she was in the swamp and she was always a bad representative for Wyoming?
No, I think that your first description is very apt for not only me, but the majority of people in Wyoming.
I think a lot of us were taken in as to who and what Liz Cheney was.
When she first ran for office, she really ran as a Tea Party candidate, as a conservative, as someone who was going to go back and And actually clean out what was going on in Washington D.C. and represent Wyoming, really focus on Wyoming's interests in protecting us.
I don't know that it is so much of an evolution on her standpoint.
I think that it was just simply the veneer that she presented to us because she knew that's what she needed to say when she was running for office in Wyoming.
I think that the more I've learned about Liz Cheney, the more I've learned that, again, she's a creature of Washington D.C., And Northern Virginia.
I think an example of that is, number one, the work that she's doing on the January 6th Commission and her vote to impeach President Trump.
But she started attacking President Trump long before the election in November of 2020.
Keep that in mind. And so people in Wyoming really started questioning who and what she was and what her intent was, what her agenda was, even before the November election.
But as my brother says, the reason we have elections every two years Is to hold people accountable.
And I'm not only going to hold her accountable by voting against her, I'm holding her accountable by running against her.
We have the right to do that.
She's not representing Wyoming.
She's representing her own agenda.
She's not even on the Natural Resource Committee for Congress, which is one of the very first times in history, which demonstrates that she doesn't have our best interests at heart.
She has her best interests at heart.
I mean, I see that she's getting praised by Kamala Harris.
The Lincoln Project, which has its own agenda, is putting money into her campaign.
I read an interesting article that says that when she's communicating with her constituents, she leaves out...
Probably the thing that she's most famous for, which is all her aggressive performances on the January 6th committee.
She's basically the front person for Nancy Pelosi and sort of doing Pelosi's dirty work.
But none of this is apparent if you look at her communications with her constituents back home.
So do you think that what we're dealing with here is just a blatant two-facedness and she's kind of hoping that her constituents are...
Too dumb to figure out that there she is on C-SPAN, and there she is in the national news, and she's the darling of the Washington Post, and the left is praising her, so she obviously is doing something that is advancing their cause, isn't she?
Well, absolutely.
I'll start with what you said at the very end.
There's no question that the work that she's doing with Nancy Pelosi and the January 6th Commission is designed, specifically designed, to deflect attention from the failures of the Biden administration.
And to deflect attention from the radical leftists that are running our government right now.
So that's number one. Number two, she is being praised by folks such as Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff.
Adam Schiff is one of the most dishonest people we've ever had in government.
And the fact that Liz Cheney has aligned herself with Adam Schiff is really terribly embarrassing to the folks in the state of Wyoming.
As far as being two-faced, it is rather interesting because I receive her weekly newsletter and I receive her information.
And they're full of all kinds of glowing information where she zoomed into a meeting somewhere in Wyoming, or she met with some folks in her office in Washington, D.C. But for the longest time, she never ever mentioned the fact that she was on the January 6th Commission.
But as you point out, it's really the only work she's doing at this point.
To my knowledge, there isn't anything else that Liz Cheney is doing.
Well, actually, I will take that back.
Last September, on the Armed Services Committee where she serves, She took time to praise General Miley and attack her fellow Republicans for not being obsequious enough to General Miley and what he's done.
This was shortly after the pullout, the disastrous pullout in Afghanistan, and the loss of 13 of our own military, as well as the bombing of a family of 10.
She actually took time to praise him and talk about what a great public servant he has been, which I disagree with.
But she doesn't talk about her work on the January 6th Commission.
But also keep in mind, she really doesn't come back to Wyoming either.
So she doesn't probably have a lot of opportunities to come to Wyoming, to Casper or Cheyenne or Douglas or Newcastle or Rock Springs and actually really talk about the work that she's doing.
And that's by design. She's not representing Wyoming right now and we need to replace her.
Do you think, Harriet, that this is a winnable race for you?
I say that because, you know, by and large, it's difficult normally to unseat an incumbent.
But second of all, this is not any incumbent.
This is an incumbent with a big name.
I remember when I was at the American Enterprise Institute, her dad was a regular over at AEI. I've been to a number of events with him.
I actually did like Dick Cheney in the old days.
So she comes from a prominent family.
She's the incumbent.
Is there enough momentum with Trump's support and your credentials and the money you're raising to be able to win this one?
Absolutely. There's no question in my mind.
Now, there's no question that Liz Cheney is going to raise massive amounts of money.
She already has. As you pointed out, she's raising money from folks like from the Lincoln Project.
And people who want to donate to me and help me out, they can go to HagemanForWyoming.com.
And it's very important that we be able to take her head on in that arena.
But the fact is, I'm the one traveling the state of Wyoming.
Between September 20th and December 17th, I visited all 23 counties in Wyoming, some of them several times, and I drove over 9,000 miles in the state of Wyoming during that three-month period.
Liz Cheney may fly in and out, but she is not meeting with our constituency.
I just, over the last couple of days, I've traveled another thousand miles meeting with people from various places around the state, and I will continue to do that over the next eight months.
The difference between Liz Cheney and I is I live in Wyoming, I'm from Wyoming, I have Wyoming values, and I've spent my professional career protecting Wyoming.
She is, again, she is someone who comes from Northern Virginia, she is the part of the swamp, and the people in Wyoming are Are really tired of being represented by someone who does not represent our interests and is not carrying out and working on the issues that are important to us.
Again, an open border inflation, these terrible vaccine mandates that we're seeing come out of this government, the unconstitutional overreach.
So she's absolutely beatable.
No question in my mind.
Again, people can go to HagemanForWyoming.com.
But the fact is that I'm excited about this race and people in Wyoming are excited to replace Liz Cheney.
Harriet, I wish you all the best and I want to thank you for coming on the podcast.
Thank you. Did you ever read the fine print that appears when you start browsing the internet in incognito mode?
It says your activity might still be visible to your employer, your school, or your internet service provider.
How can they even call it incognito?
Now, to really stop people from seeing the sites that you visit, you need to do what I do and use ExpressVPN.
Think about all the times you've been using Wi-Fi at a coffee shop, a hotel.
Well, without ExpressVPN, every site you visit could be logged by the admin of that network.
And that's still true even when you're in so-called incognito mode.
What's more, your home internet provider can also see and record your browsing data.
And in the U.S., they're legally allowed to sell that data to advertisers.
Now, ExpressVPN is an app that encrypts your network data, reroutes it through a network of secure servers so that your private online activity stays just that private.
Works on all your devices.
It's super easy to use.
The app has one button.
You tap it and boom, you're connected.
Your browsing activity is secure from prying eyes.
Stop letting strangers invade your online privacy.
Protect yourself at expressvpn.com.
If you use this link, ExpressVPN.com slash Dinesh, you'll get three extra months free.
That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com slash Dinesh.
The main thrust of the rhetoric of the left is that they are the champions of democracy, and we, the Republicans, the conservatives, are against democracy.
They justify a lot of their measures and some of them they concede are kind of extreme as necessary to protect democracy.
We need to override the filibuster to protect democracy.
But what does the left really think about democracy?
I want to suggest that hidden in their bloviating rhetoric is actually a distrust and even deep hatred of democracy itself.
Here is an interesting article in the New Republic, fairly typical.
I'm going to read the summary of the article because it conveys the whole spirit of the article and it kind of lets the cat out of the bag.
They're talking about the Supreme Court's ruling in the Biden vaccine mandate case.
Here's what the New Republic says, summarizing its own article.
The real Supreme Court ruling appears to be this.
This is what it comes down to, in other words.
The Biden administration can only try new solutions to new problems if it runs them through a gerrymandered House and a filibuster-friendly Senate first.
So, let's think here about what the New Republic is saying.
What they're saying is that the court is insisting that laws...
In this case, the Biden vaccine mandate, be passed by the lawmaking body of the United States, namely the Congress.
And the New Republic is saying, why should we do it that way?
Why do we need laws to be passed by the legislature?
In fact, they deride the legislature.
They say that the House is, quote, gerrymandered, so presumably it's not a real House.
It's not a real elected body.
And then they say a filibuster-friendly Senate.
So the Senate is now illegitimate because, after all, you can block things with the filibuster.
So let's think about this.
Aren't congressmen elected?
Aren't they the voice of the people of particular districts that elect them?
Aren't senators elected?
Aren't they the voice of the states that elect them?
Don't we have a constitutional structure that has the Congress making the laws, the executive carrying them out, carrying out the laws made by the Congress, that is, And a judicial branch that is supposed to make sure that this is all being done in a constitutional way.
Now, the irony is that even though the left is always bashing the court, the court is undemocratic, it doesn't reflect the diversity of America, we need to pack the court to make it more democratic, to make it more representative, to reflect the will of the majority.
What's really interesting about the court is that the court, though unelected, is, at least in its majority convictions, very deferential to the democratic process.
In fact, the majority of the court argued that the reason the vaccine mandate is unconstitutional is because it needs to be done by Congress.
In other words, the Biden administration, and not just the Biden administration, not just Biden himself, but regulators who are unelected, who are basically in a regulatory agency named OSHA, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, they shouldn't be able to make laws.
Who authorized them to do that?
Congress certainly didn't. So the point of the Supreme Court decision is to place the onus for For COVID laws on the lawmaking, the elected, the democratic body that makes laws, namely the Congress.
Now, of course, the New Republic has to pay lip service to this, so they go, quote, In theory, in theory, the conservatives' approach, the conservatives on the court, could be seen as bolstering congressional authority at the expense of the executive branch.
And in theory, that might be laudable.
Okay, so what's the problem?
By leaving it up to Congress, which can barely agree to keep the government afloat or avoid defaulting on the national debt, the court achieves right-wing goals, blah, blah, blah.
So what they're basically saying is that, yeah, we can kind of see that the court should be placing lawmaking authority with the lawmaking body, but Congress really isn't doing any very much these days.
They're kind of like in a deadlock.
Well, maybe they're in a deadlock because the American people are in a deadlock.
Maybe they're in a deadlock because the American people do not agree by a clear majority to move the country this way or that way.
And so, in other words, the deadlock itself reflects democratic opinion.
But, of course, what the New Republic wants to do is override that deadlock, override that opinion, and allow Biden unilaterally.
Now, Biden's elected, true, but Biden is elected as an executive.
To execute the laws, not to make them.
So I think it's fascinating that suddenly, for the new republic, as for the left, constitutional democracy becomes a problem.
Oh, the House is illegitimate.
Oh, the Senate is illegitimate.
Oh, the court is illegitimate. Apparently, Biden is the only one who is legitimate.
And so, so much I say for the great progressive fight to, quote, protect democracy.
We all know in order to keep our immune system strong, we need some extra protection.
My friends at Centurion Labs have combined five key ingredients to defend your immune system against allergies, colds, the flu, even coronavirus.
It's called Centurion Defender, and it incorporates vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, copper, and quercetin in just one capsule.
No more swallowing 10 pills a day or not taking supplements because the individual cost is too high.
Debbie and I just take one Defender with breakfast, one Defender with dinner, and this keeps the germaphobe in our family happy.
Just like the Centurions of Rome, led by example, held themselves to the highest possible standards, Centurion Labs has dedicated the last 15 years to research and develop safe, effective, and affordable health care products made in the USA that you can trust.
For a limited time, listeners of this podcast can save 20% off their first order of Centurion Defender when you visit centurionlabs.com.
slash Dinesh.
Use the promo code Dinesh.
Defend your health today with Centurion Defender.
Once again, that's centurionlabs.com slash Dinesh.
I want to talk about whether Asian Americans will be joining Hispanics in making an exodus out of the Democratic Party and toward the GOP. Now, the GOP does not need to win decisive majorities of Hispanics or Asians in order to crush the Democrats.
By and large, if the Republicans got 30-40% of Hispanics, 30-40% of Asians, this would be curtains for the Democratic Party.
And the Democrats know that.
They need very large chunks of both the Hispanic and the Asian vote.
It's a very interesting article by Rui Texaria.
Rui Texaria is a leftist.
He's a democratic sort of strategist.
And he has been arguing over the past 20 years that there's going to be a long-term built-in advantage for the Democratic Party as the country becomes more diverse.
And his assumption was that, by and large, the Democrats could count on blacks, could count on Hispanics, could count on Asians.
So the Republicans would be essentially relying on an increasingly dwindling share of the white, or at least the white non-Hispanic vote.
But Rui Texera has been changing his tune lately.
He had an article... Which I did not discuss on the podcast because it was in line with things I'd already been talking about.
About, hey, Democrats, Hispanics are basically out of here.
They're losing faith in the party.
And in fact, he says, the problem is not as bad as you think, it's worse.
That was the theme of his article.
But now he has another article, which I think is very interesting, the Democrats coming Asian voter problem.
Now, he says the Asian voter problem hasn't really manifested itself clearly yet.
He goes, by and large, even in 2020, while Biden saw real declines in his black vote and a 16-point decline among Hispanic voters, he basically dropped only one point among Asians.
So the Asians were still kind of in the democratic fold.
But, he says, let's note, Asians are the fastest growing racial group in the country.
He goes, if you start looking at some key races in California and in New York, you begin to see that the Asians in California are moving away from the Democratic Party.
The same thing in New York.
The Asian population, which has been strongly Democratic, in fact, began to push away against Democratic candidates, including Adams.
Eric Adams was successful in his race in New York, but a lot of Asian Americans voted for Curtis Sliwa, who was running on the Republican ticket.
It was actually a 14-point swing for the Asians over the last time the Asians voted.
Now really, the race that Texera focuses on is the Youngkin race in Virginia, where he points out that even though McAuliffe got the majority of Asians, Glenn Youngkin got 46%.
46%.
Now, quite frankly, to my mind, that's actually low.
If you really look at the way that Asian Americans are, the way they live, look at the values that they live by, the emphasis on education, the emphasis on entrepreneurship.
Many of them are more, they live to the right of Pat Robertson.
These are guys who should be voting 90% for the Republican Party.
But you know what? We'll take 50, we'll take 60 to start.
And that's Teixeira's point.
He goes, number one, Asians are worried about public safety.
They're not for defund the police.
He says, So he says...
The key issue for Asians today, education.
They see it as a tool for upward mobility, and even a poor Asian family, their kids can do better than their parents.
Why? Because they go to good schools, they study hard, they get into a good college, they have a good life.
So, lowering academic standards in the name of racial equity.
This anti-meritocratic push in democratic cities.
He goes, listen, whether it's well-meaning or not, I don't care.
He goes, the Asians are turning against this big time.
And so the warning of Rui Teixeira, and quite frankly, what is, you know, for me, it's not a warning.
I actually hope the Democrats keep on this path because I would like them to see, I'd like to see them lose the Hispanic vote, lose the Asian vote, begin to see even erosions in the black vote.
And in this way, Republicans become what Kevin Phillips wrote about many, many years ago in the title of a fascinating book that I hope becomes an enduring reality.
It was called The Emerging Republican Majority.
Inflation is at 40-year highs.
It doesn't look like it's going anywhere.
And you know, here's the government's dirty secret.
They kind of want it. Think about this.
Right now, inflation rates are higher than the interest on Treasury bonds.
So with every day that passes, the government owes less on its mountain of debt.
Imagine if your mortgage had a negative interest rate.
Would you be in a hurry to pay it off?
Well, exactly. So your pain is their gain.
Protect your savings now.
Hedge against inflation with gold from Birch Gold because the government is sabotaging the value of the U.S. dollar.
Birch Gold will help you to convert an IRA or eligible 401k into an IRA backed by real gold.
Now that's peace of mind.
That's why I'm a customer.
With thousands of satisfied customers, an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, you can trust Birch Gold to protect your savings.
Text Dinesh, To 989898, you'll get a free information kit on holding gold in a tax-sheltered account.
Then you can call Birch Gold and figure out how to protect your hard-earned savings.
Text Dinesh to 989898 and get your free information kit now.
I'm continuing my discussion of Alexander Pushkin's great poetic work.
It's called Eugene Onegin's And yesterday I talked about the plot which revolves around Onegin, this sort of interesting and sensitive but also roguish character, somewhat drawn on Pushkin himself.
Who meets a young woman, shy, but also beautiful and sensitive and refined.
Her name is Tatiana.
She falls in love with him and confesses her love of him, but he...
He claims to be a man of the world, not too good for her, but too bad for her.
He says, you have no idea the kind of life I've lived.
I would make a horrible husband.
So he sort of rejects her offer of love and humiliates her in the process.
That's where my plot sort of left off, so I'm picking it up today from that point.
So we have to fast forward now to much later in the novel.
There are very interesting developments in the middle, which I'll actually talk about tomorrow.
But I want to move to the end of the novel, where essentially Onegin has left that rural area.
He is moved all over the place.
In fact, he left to, by and large, get away from a duel.
And toward the end of the novel, he returns.
But he doesn't return to the rural estates.
He returns to St.
Petersburg. And Pushkin draws a marvelous contrast between the warmth of the Russian countryside, this is where Onegin had met Tatyana, and the kind of cold formality of St.
Petersburg, which is defined by It's aristocratic class.
It's manners that are very European in style.
And so what does Onegin do when he gets to St.
Petersburg? He does what sort of landed gentry do?
He goes to a ball.
And he's at this ball and he's talking to a friend of his who is a Russian general, a general in the Tsar's army.
When his head turns and he sees in the distance across the hall, if you will, Tatyana, the very same woman, but he had encountered her in the country and here she is in the city.
And not only is she in the city, but she's dressed in a kind of regal outfit.
She's not royalty by any means, but nevertheless she is one of the, you may say, aristocratic dames, one of the grand dames of St.
Petersburg.
They're called the Petersburzanka.
And so she has undergone this kind of transformation from rural simplicity to sophistication.
And so Onigin asks the Russian general, he goes, who is that lady?
And that guy goes, Onigin, you've been away for a while, clearly. That lady is my wife.
I marry Tatyana.
And Onegin is, like, shocked.
He can't believe it. And so he begins to mutter.
He's like, well, you know, he's like, could you reintroduce us?
I actually know her.
We used to live next door in the old days.
So the general goes, of course, of course, follow me!
And so... On again goes up to Tatiana, and he's trembling, but she greets him with unbelievable serenity and coldness.
She just says, in effect, well, it's very nice to see you again.
I fondly remember the old days.
And then she says to her husband, she says, you know, I'm a little tired.
Can you take me home?
And she leaves. And Onegin is forced into a kind of interior examination.
He is kind of shocked.
Part of his reason for rejecting Tatyana in the old days is he thought of her as a country girl, and he's a man of the city, and he's been everywhere, but here she is, a lady in the kind of inner precincts of aristocratic Petersburg.
And so Onegin begins to think, and he says, I just realized I'm in love with her.
So here's Pushkin's irony.
She was in love with him before.
Now he is in love with her.
She wrote a letter to him before, confessing her love.
And so what happens now?
Well, Onegin sits down and he writes her a passionate letter, confessing his love, and he sends it off to her.
And I would say, not surprisingly, no reply.
Weeks go by. And so, Onegin is like, I can't stand this.
I'm going to go. I can't stand the suspense.
And so, he goes to her estate.
He kind of sneaks his way into the estate, sneaks his way into the house, even sneaks his way into her sort of a private bedchamber.
And he sees an amazing sight.
He sees Tatyana right there sitting, and she's shedding tears, and sitting right in front of her, or laying right in front of her, is her letter, is his letter.
And so he bursts in, and he confesses his love to her, and he says, oh, I see you have my letter.
And he's expecting her to be receptive.
But she turns to him and says, in effect, she says, Onegin?
She goes, really?
She goes, now?
You're here? You're doing this to me?
You're sending me this letter?
She goes...
Why? What are you trying to accomplish here?
Are you trying to make me your whore, your mistress?
Are you trying to create a scandal?
Are you trying to ruin my husband, who's a decent man, well-known around Petersburg?
Are you trying to make him the object of ridicule?
Are you trying to boost your image as a great seducer?
What you are here for can only end in disaster, can only end in tragedy.
Stop it. Get out of here.
And, um, and Onegin, of course, can't believe it, and he protests bitterly, and he goes, um, he goes, no, I love you, and, uh, he says, um, and you love me, and, uh, and then she says lines which have become very famous, and Pushkin, very famous in Russian literature, um, She says, well, she goes, yes, I love you.
She says, why should I deny it?
But she says, I am given, very interesting word, I'm given to another man, and I will be faithful to him for life.
I think what she means by given is this was not entirely kind of a chosen love marriage.
It was partly arranged.
But nevertheless, she goes, so what?
That's a life I have opted into.
And that's a life I'm going to abide by.
And then she says to Onegin, in effect, control yourself.
So this is the great irony of Pushkin.
Pushkin gives full reign to Romanticism.
And then he pulls back.
And he pulls back because, think about it, at the beginning of the story...
It was Onegin who was lecturing Tatyana and saying, control yourself.
You should not have written me this letter.
That was very unwise on your part.
And now it's the opposite.
Tatyana is saying to Onegin, control yourself.
What you're trying to do now is ridiculous.
And it can't happen.
She's giving him exactly the same advice.
And then, in an ultimate move of Pushkin irony...
The husband enters the room.
Now, you might expect Pushkin to go into it, but this is Pushkin's ironic ending for the story.
He basically goes, and now, dear reader, now that the husband has entered the room and things are gonna get really exciting, he goes, I'm gonna be bidding you farewell.
I'm going to be bidding you farewell.
I'm going to be bidding Eugene Onegin farewell.
I really hope that you've enjoyed this tale.
I hope you've gotten some good laughs out of it.
So suddenly, with this emotional build-up, Pushkin does a twist, and he kind of chuckles at the end.
Now, this is interesting because while Pushkin ends Eugene Onegin in ironic mockery, Tchaikovsky, the great composer who did an opera based upon Eugene Onegin, he didn't want to end it that way.
And so you have two geniuses, Pushkin on the one hand, Tchaikovsky on the other, dealing with the same material, but the way Tchaikovsky ends the story is Tatyana says no, she walks out of the room, and then basically Onegin drops his head into his hands.
It's essentially, oh, anguish!
And Tchaikovsky's opera ends right there.
So Tchaikovsky ends it with the sort of dignified anguish of Onegin, whereas Pushkin, having given reign to these romantic sentiments, turns on them with irony and mockery and basically says to Onegin, ha ha ha, you didn't come to a very good end, did you?
I'm out of here.
▲
Export Selection