What? This may seem a little out there, but it was actually Danielle, my daughter's idea.
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Now, coming up today, things are really heating up in the Ukraine, and I'm going to talk about Putin's Gambit, which is going pretty well for him so far.
New York has been launching a two-pronged witch hunt against Trump, and I'll tell you why it's not going all that well.
Now, there are some people who say they're looking at the truckers in Canada.
They say, oh, that's going to come here sometime.
That's going to arrive in the United States.
And part of what I want to argue is it has.
It's already here.
And Debbie's going to join me. We're going to talk about how early voting results in Texas seem to favor the GOP. Very good news.
And then I'm going to continue my exploration of the beginning of Dante's journey in the inferno.
This is when he sees the inscription on the gates of hell.
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 Russians are now in Ukraine.
The Ukraine... Crisis has escalated, if you will.
And already we're beginning to see that our enemies around the world are getting emboldened.
They're really moving.
And who's next?
Probably China. If China sees that Russia is able to gobble up the Ukraine or even checkmate the Ukraine without needing to have a full-scale invasion, And if China sees that Biden is just bungling and mumbling and Kamala is cackling and the rest of the Western alliance is fulminating but ultimately doing nothing or nothing meaningful, then China goes, hey, this is our opportunity.
We've got this bungling fool in the White House, a senile dotard.
And so there's nothing to worry about.
It's a Democrat in the hot seat.
And this is a moment of opportunity for us.
I was reading the Biden statement that they put out, and it's just so weak and pathetic.
Things like, well, our best wishes go out.
Our hearts go out.
We're standing with the people of Ukraine.
And then it goes on in an almost mechanical way to talk about Biden's...
I'll be meeting with...
I'll be making some phone calls.
I'm just putting myself in the place of Putin and reading this and just thinking, wow, this is...
This is a kind of, what is this?
I mean, this is a kind of demented drag queen empire that is showing on its last legs.
That's the impression, I think, that we're projecting on the world stage.
Our enemies are scornful.
The rest of the world, I think, is gazing in dismay and horror.
And quite honestly, this is something that, well, I won't say we did.
I didn't do it. You probably didn't do it.
But some Americans did do it.
They put these clowns, they put this menagerie in charge.
And now we're beginning to see, well, you'd have to call it something like a great unwinding.
Now, the media is being exposed almost daily for the complete liars and frauds that they are.
For four years, from 2016 to 2020, they told us uninterruptedly, Trump is a Russian asset.
And my question is, if Trump is a Russian asset and Biden was always ready to stand up to Putin, you know, Biden goes, I'm the last guy Putin wants, you know, in power.
If that's the case, why didn't Putin invade the Ukraine...
When his fully-owned puppet, Trump, was in the White House.
Think about that. And the fact that he didn't makes you question the premise.
Maybe Trump is not a Russian asset after all.
Maybe all of that was just flim-flam that was being put out by the media.
Now, if it was someone other than Biden, you might think that this was some kind of a ploy on Biden's part.
I remember Nixon in the 70s had what he called this crazy man routine.
At one point, I think he told Haldeman or Kissinger, listen, you know, I'm trying to give the impression to the Russians that I'm a little crazy, but that's because I don't want them to be able to predict my next move.
I want them to be a little scared of what I might do.
But for Nixon, this was a thought-out strategy.
So I think to myself, is Biden putting on the kind of decrepit old fool act?
Is he trying to kind of...
No, I don't think so.
I think he is a decrepit old fool.
He's not acting. This is not an act.
Come on, man. Don't do that.
We don't really need you in Ukraine.
I've been getting 50 grand a month from the Ukraine.
It's been really good for my family.
So, you know, here you have Biden.
He's like, you know, we'll take 50 grand for family expenses from the Ukraine.
And here's Putin. We'll take Ukraine.
Wow. Now, Trump, of course, is all over this and he goes, you know, he goes, listen, there's no reason this should have happened.
It wouldn't have happened if I was in charge.
And I think we kind of deep down know that's true.
Because think of it, Putin's the same guy that he was before.
Putin hasn't changed. So what's changed?
What's changed is American leadership.
And even today, you have to put that word in quotation marks.
A small example of this is that Trump, the so-called Putin puppet, blocked the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Biden comes in and he okays it.
Now that the Russians are making their way to Kiev, Biden's like, uh-uh, I'm going to pull back my support for the Nord Stream pipeline.
So I guess his support lasted a few weeks.
But this is the kind of dithering, appeasement-oriented type of leadership that emboldens adversaries.
And then there's also the hypocrisy that undermines a little bit of our support for our own governments.
For For example, think if you're a Canadian.
You're one of these truckers.
You're sick. Your life has been essentially shut down.
And then here's Justin Trudeau cutting off your bank accounts.
And here's Trudeau. I'm going to quote him.
He goes, Canada stands against authoritarianism.
And so we're going to be supporting sanctions in the Ukraine.
I'm thinking, what?
If Canada stands against authoritarianism, what have you been doing in your own country?
So it's difficult today to con people with this kind of thing because they're going to look first at home.
And so even the old distinction between the free world and the authoritarian world has deeply eroded.
There's a lot of unfreedom going on right here in the United States.
There's a lot of unfreedom going on in Canada and in Europe.
And so we've got to get a little bit off our old Reaganite high horse here because our own governments are a greater threat to us in some cases than Putin.
Your life, for example, is it more endangered right now by Putin?
Or is it more endangered by Biden?
Are you more afraid of some Russian Cossack, you know, some soldier in a kind of khaki outfit?
Or are you more afraid of the FBI under Merrick Garland being ordered to raid your house?
Look, I just saw an article, you know, some pompous never-Trump-or-type.
This is a defining moment for the Republican Party.
Yes, it is. It's a defining moment, but not in the sense he means.
It's a defining moment in the sense that we will not automatically salute when they say, go.
We're not going to support every single war because, oh, we're patriots.
We've got to line up. You know, we've got to sing out of the same choir book.
No, we're actually not going to do that.
So we can think for ourselves.
We're going to evaluate each situation as it comes.
We're going to recognize what are the values that America itself is trying to project around the world, and are those healthy values?
And if we look out for our own self-interest and we look out for our own The Russians are going to be doing the same.
And the same leftists who keep saying things like, think of it, when they're talking about immigration, suddenly it's like, you know what, we don't care about borders, Dinesh.
Borders don't really, what's the point of a border?
Besides, in a globalized world, we don't need borders.
Suddenly these same people were very concerned about the integrity of the Ukrainian border.
Yeah, well, wait a minute.
Isn't that the exact opposite of what you have been telling us insistently for a long time?
So, suddenly we're kind of on to your rhetorical charade.
We recognize that there's no principle, no consistency behind it.
And as a result, we're going to be obstinately reluctant to go along.
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I want to talk briefly about a topic I don't normally cover in the podcast, which is Trump's finances.
But the reason I'm covering it now is because the kind of legal investigation of Trump's finances, which is a two-pronged effort, both prongs, by the way, being conducted inside of New York, the leftist democratic establishment of New York, Which is to say the Manhattan District Attorney on the one side and the New York Attorney General Letitia James on the other.
And both of them are trying to get Trump.
And they've been trying to get Trump, by the way, since day one.
And the finances is just the latest effort to do that.
And it looked like it was actually going pretty well for them because I saw a statement from Trump's accounting firm called Mazars, and they were basically saying, you know, we're like washing our hands off of this.
We're backing off. We, you know, we're not claiming that all our statements here are reliable.
And I thought, wow, you know, it looks like, and Trump put out a statement himself basically saying, they've browbeaten my accounting firm.
They've, you know, they just can't take it anymore.
And at a certain point, the number of subpoenas, the ongoing, um, The gimlet eye of the New York establishment causes a private company to feel like, look, we have other clients, we have other things to do, we cannot afford the stigmatization, and so on. And so it looked like this was a bad news.
This was a reversal for Trump.
This was actually going to stimulate further aggression by the New York authorities.
But now I see... In the New York Times, the two leading prosecutors leading the Manhattan District Attorney investigation into Trump's finances have both resigned.
And why have they resigned?
Well, apparently they've resigned because they went to the Manhattan D.A., And they said, this is a guy named Alvin Bragg, and they said, here's our evidence against Trump.
And that guy goes, this is not going to fly.
There's not much here. And so these two guys, Kerry Dunn and Mark Pomerantz, basically go, okay, well, if we don't have enough, we're out of here.
So, for a long time, it appeared like all this stuff was cooking.
By the way, the grand jury had been convened by the previous DA, a guy named Cyrus Vance.
But then Cyrus Vance said, I'm not going to run for re-election.
But the grand jury was a kind of meeting and hearing witnesses and hearing testimony.
In fact, Trump's longtime accountant went before the grand jury.
And you know, grand juries are basically a kind of initial preliminary jury that looks at the case.
Now, their job is not to determine guilt or innocence, but sort of probable cause.
Is there enough here to let this investigation go forward?
And grand juries normally, they kind of have a low standard for going, yeah, because it's It's sort of like, what's wrong with letting the investigation go forward?
We don't know if it's going to actually lead to criminal charges.
It might, but it's a long way from actually proving those charges.
So normally when prosecutors convene a grand jury, grand juries are going to be like, yeah, keep going, keep going.
But in this case, the grand jury appears to be sort of stalled.
Nothing's really been happening for a while.
And of course, you've got reporters camping out outside the Manhattan...
To see what's going on with the grand jury, and to their disappointment, the answer is, it's all quiet around here.
Now, what's the issue with Trump?
Well, it's actually a stupid, petty, and ridiculous issue.
They're claiming that the Trump Organization, to get loans for the company, inflated the value of its own assets.
Kind of like you want to get a loan, you say, I'll offer my house as collateral.
They go, what's the house worth?
And you go, well, it's worth $2 million.
And let's just say it's worth $1.5.
So the idea is you inflated the value of your assets to be able to get the loan.
Well, normally that would be something to worry about, except that Trump was dealing with highly sophisticated banks, and all these banks had their own appraisers, and all their own appraisers went into Trump's finances and went into Trump's assets and go, yeah, we're satisfied that he's got the assets to justify the loans.
So obviously, it's like this is a game that companies play.
My assets are worth X. You say they're worth Y. You argue about it.
You decide what kind of loans you want to provide.
But where's the public interest involved here?
There really isn't any. The New York State Attorney General, this is Letitia James, she's investigating Trump for what?
For exactly the same thing.
Except she doesn't have the power, by the way, to criminally charge Trump.
So her idea is, I'll try to bring a civil case.
So a civil case would be a case that's not aimed at putting Trump in jail.
It's a case aimed at sort of trying to get monetary damages out of Trump or make Trump pay in a civil way for this.
But all of this is just, it's just part A and part B of the witch hunt.
And so that's the way to look at it.
It's not a matter of even evaluating the particular detail of it.
It's like, how's the witch hunt going?
And the witch hunt, from the point of view of the left, seemed to be going pretty well.
And now it's going, well, not so well.
Ronald Reagan saw it 40 years ago.
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The tyrannical crackdown in Ottawa and in Canada against the truckers appears to have subsided, although only a little bit.
Apparently, they've told some of the banks that were systematically cutting people off, shutting down their accounts, they're like, let's slow down on this.
Let's restore some of these accounts.
So apparently, there's a little bit of a pullback I think motivated not by civil liberties concerns or even humanitarian concerns, but just political pressure that the Trudeau administration is under.
But nevertheless, one of the themes that I'm reading about and seeing in conservative commentary is, you know, this is very troubling because there's been such a rapid metamorphosis in Canada toward tyranny, and that could come to the United States.
But I think a lot of the people who say this, and some of these Republican establishment figures who are echoing this...
Don't realize that that kind of tyranny is already here.
In fact, arguably, and Julie Kelly actually in American Greatness does argue this, she goes, we sort of invented it.
We started this.
The January 6th prosecutions have been a kind of model for the Canadians.
The Canadians have been learning from January 6th and not the other way around.
I mean, here's a little tidbit.
Here's Steve Bell, the acting chief of the Ottawa police.
And he's making a public announcement.
He says, if you're involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges.
Absolutely. And he goes on to say basically that this is an investigation that will go on for months.
And he goes, we're going to get the people who, quote, took over our streets.
Now, notice the close similarity between what he's saying and what actually happened on January 6th.
We're going to look you up.
We're going to find you. We're going to use geo-tracking and other ways to get you.
Don't think you're going to get away with it just because you got home.
We're going to find you and we're going to prosecute you and we're going to criminally charge you.
They could have added, we're going to put you in solitary confinement.
We will keep you locked up for a year or more, even if you are charged with only a misdemeanor, non-violent offenses, quote, parading in the Capitol.
By the way, a public building is That's supposed to be the people's house.
And the other thing is there's a massive, massive allocation of resources to January 6th.
And Julie points out it's thousands of Justice Department employees, FBI agents from 56 field offices around the country.
In fact, Merrick Garland has confessed this is the biggest investigation in the department's history.
More than 730 people have been arrested for January 6th related events.
And by the way, that is...
Three times the total number of federal arrests in the Antifa-BLM riots.
So think of it. The Antifa-BLM riots lasted for like months.
They resulted in far greater carnage, much greater violence, much greater death and destruction.
And yet, the number of people arrested in all those riots combined, one-third, which is to say somewhere around 250 people total, right?
Another interesting phenomenon is that the Trudeau government has been asking people to sort of turn in their family, turn in their neighbors, let people know, oh yeah, my neighbor down the street, you know what, he's a trucker, he's involved in the protest.
Let's go, you know, you go get him.
Same thing with January 6th.
The FBI is always putting up notices.
Do you know a family member or a cousin of yours or do you recognize this guy from your high school?
No. As having been inside the Capitol, you know, rat him out.
Tell us his name. We'll go get him.
We'll send some SWAT teams.
We'll send some helicopters.
So this mobilization of terrifying force, of shock and awe, you might say, but against our own citizens, this is not something that Trudeau came up.
This is something that was patented well over a year before right here in the United States.
And one may say that the Canadians are taking our example, not the other way around.
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Debbie's mom, Mitzi, lives down in the Rio Grande Valley, pretty close to the border.
Thirty minutes. Thirty minutes away.
And it was her birthday, and you went down there.
Yeah. And you saw some interesting things on the way.
Yeah, yeah. So I drove down there.
I don't like to tell people I'm going down there just because, you know, with my mom being elderly and being high risk and all those things...
She has already had COVID, but I just go see her, you know, so I don't go visit people.
I don't do any of that. But anyway, all that to say...
As I was driving down there, there's a section of Highway 77, and it's King Ranch, you know, on both sides.
And it's very desolate, very, very desolate.
But I noticed there were, like, every couple miles or so, there were these blue canisters, big tubs, that said agua.
Agua is water in Spanish.
And I thought, wow, I've never seen this before.
It just kind of took me by surprise, and I called you.
And I said, I've seen these canisters.
What the heck? You saw the first one, and then you're like, I wonder if I'm going to see more of these.
And what appears to be going on, right, is the fact that...
The federal government, the border authorities, under instructions of Biden, it's like, listen, we have these illegals.
They're going to come through.
Instead of sending them back or blocking them, we're going to accommodate them, right?
Isn't that the meaning? That's what it sounds like.
I mean, obviously... We're not against...
Exactly. Obviously, it's humane because these people are thirsty and everything.
But... It's almost like an open invitation.
And I know it's an open invitation because my cousin from Venezuela told me so.
He said that word on the street in Venezuela is that if you come through the Mexican border, you can get into America.
So this is someone that is not political from America saying this.
This is someone that is in Venezuela and he's hearing word on the street.
On this. So I, you know, I completely believe him because it's just terrible.
Now this is related and probably a little bit on a happier note.
Yes. Fox News, Texas early voting data, early voting data suggests Hispanic vote shift to the GOP continues.
Now I'll just give the data, but I'd like you to interpret it.
So it turns out that there's a polling company, Orion Data and Research, And they're matching the early turnout in the Republican primaries to 2018.
They're comparing. In Hidalgo County, the turnout is 65% of 2018, meaning already.
In Cameron County, 76%.
Now, compare this with the Democrats.
On the Democratic side, Cameron County, only 59%, and Hidalgo County, 47%.
So, I think, to me, that suggests not just the volume, but the level of voter enthusiasm.
Oh, absolutely. Well, you know...
My mom lives in Cameron County, and so Harlingen.
And the signs, the yard signs, the billboards, all Republican candidates.
I've never seen this before.
I was so excited to see this.
Well, I mean, this is a little telling because I remember when Trump was drawing all this support from Hispanics, you were concerned it's only Trump.
It is the personality of Trump and that this is not going to carry through to other Republican candidates, but it appears like it is.
I think so, I think, you know, I think the reason is because I think Trump made them realize, he articulated the values of a Republican in a way that no one else ever had.
And that's all that we needed to hear from him.
So.
Here's a guy, this guy's running for Texas Land Commissioner.
So this is, you know, he goes, I've spent time and a lot of time in Cameron, Hidalgo and Willis-Ede and all the counties in the Valley.
This has been our mentor.
And he goes, and there's just been a very different vibe with Republican voters.
And he says, there's a new and different type of energy.
And he goes, when as a Republican candidate, I'm talking to him and I just asked him, in the last 13 months, is anything better for you?
He goes, the answer is no.
So it looks like the message is getting through at the bottom level.
But I will say this. It's really important.
And I remember just growing up in the Valley, we were forgotten really from Republican candidates.
They didn't come down to the Valley.
I guess they thought why waste our time if the Valley is already a blue area, we don't need to go down there, they're gonna vote Democrat anyway.
But see, Trump never did that.
And I think that because of that, the people in the Valley were able to know, you know what, I think I've been voting for the wrong party all this time.
And Reagan did that. And that's how I became a Republican.
Because Reagan went down there.
So don't be shy Republican candidates in Texas.
Go down to the Rio Grande Valley.
Don't write it off. Don't write them off.
The largest significance here is this.
You know, the Democrats have certain kind of bedrock states, California, New York, and they've got those locked in.
And what I mean is it's very difficult for a Republican to win statewide in New York or in California.
But Texas, which is the bedrock of the conservative side, has been a little fragile.
And the Democratic hope in Texas is based upon the idea that as the ratio of Hispanics to non-Hispanic whites increases, Texas will kind of inevitably...
Slide into the Democratic camp.
I think they're waking up and going, oh no, our plan is not working.
I mean, you've had, I mean, I would say for as long as I've known you and long before, a kind of a heart for Venezuela, but you've also had a heart for the Rio Grande Valley.
Of course. Yeah, that's half of my identity.
Yes, yes, absolutely.
And as I've always told you, my dream was to turn the valley red.
Right. Yeah. No, absolutely.
So it looks like while your first stream, which is basically the rescue of Venezuela, and you want to show me Venezuela one day, and we don't know if that day will ever come.
But at least on a different note, and they're in the Rio Grande Valley, it looks like the Rio Grande Valley, believe it or not, might help to secure and keep Texas red.
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Feel the difference. Debbie and I were talking this morning about the Supreme Court because we're noticing a trend on the left to go after Clarence Thomas.
And the way they go after Clarence Thomas, at least this is the latest way, is to actually go after his wife.
This is Ginny Thomas, whom we know.
And who's a feisty, politically active, engaged, very interesting woman.
And here's an article in CNN, which says that the biggest threat to the legitimacy of the United States Supreme Court is not its potential expansion, nor the likely reversal of Roe v.
Wade. It is Ginny and Clarence Thomas.
What? Well, Jill Filipovic, who's the author of this article, goes on to say, oh, it's very troubling, you know, and her basic argument is this.
I'm just going to read it. Judges are supposed to evaluate cases impartially.
What? What, honey? The left is discovering the virtues of impartiality.
They've got to just read the Constitution and apply it, you know.
And then she goes on to say, given his wife's involvement, there's no way for the public to trust that Thomas will impartially judge the cases.
Now, what is his wife's involvement?
Well, his wife appears on Zoom calls with guys from the Heritage Foundation.
She's active in a whole bunch of political causes.
Now, it's kind of weird, honey.
You know, women... We've been hearing from the feminists, you know, women are not an extension of their husbands.
Women have their own life.
Women should have their own professional involvement.
But now, apparently, it's the one and the same.
Now, suddenly, Ginny Thomas has no right to do any of this.
This is really casting a doubt on Clarence Thomas and the Supreme Court.
And, of course, your point was to stress the hypocrisy of this argument.
The hypocrisy. More importantly, the hypocrisy of this.
Because, as we know, liberal judges are activists.
Themselves. Not their spouse, but themselves.
They are activists.
And one example, I mean, well, there's several, but one of them is Sonia Sotomayor.
She's the most notorious. She's probably the most notorious.
In fact, when she was nominated by Obama in May of 2009...
They touted her as the people's justice.
Now, how is it possible that a Supreme Court justice who was supposed to interpret the Constitution is a people's justice?
I thought that it was supposed to be blind.
Didn't they just say that for Thomas and, you know?
Right. And the people here is a phrase I think that needs to be decoded.
Because whenever there's a case, there are people on both sides.
Even in a case like abortion, yeah, you certainly have the woman's right, if you will, on the one side.
And you have the fetus's life on the other.
So people involved on both sides.
And so when she says the people's justice, she's ideologically interpreting the people in a kind of quasi-Marxist leftist sense.
Yeah, so in this, in a National Review article from, I guess it was 2016 maybe, they basically said, Soya Mayor's heated rhetoric seems to make reference to an overarching vision of the justice system that is flawed.
Her belief that people with certain life experiences ought to see the law differently has long been clear.
So how is this not bad?
Well, right.
What they're getting at here is the kind of application of almost a kind of critical race theory to the law, which is to say that sort of disadvantaged minorities have one set of rules that apply to them, and they have a unique set of perspectives.
They don't fall into the general kind of objective view of things.
They're looking at it from a different angle, and the judge needs to be a partisan on their behalf.
That's right. Yeah, and obviously she's not.
In this case that was decided, she was basically trying to fix cosmic injustice, and that is not her job.
I mean, Clarence Thomas, whatever you think, you can disagree with his rulings, but he's actually maintained the decorum of the court.
By contrast, here's Sotomayor in the wake of some of the court's recent abortion considerations.
She goes out there and she talks to young women and says, listen, you know, you're going to have to get out there.
You're going to get involved at the state level.
You're going to have to be activists. So here's a Supreme Court justice literally engaging in outright political activism and exhortation.
And meanwhile, I mean, I think Jill Phillip, who wrote this article, knows all this.
But she kind of conveniently forgets it.
She puts it to the side.
Yeah. Well, it's not even that.
It's basically that she thinks it's okay for her side to do it, but not for our side to do it.
That's basically the...
The gist of it.
Yeah, so I think that if you're the Thomases, the idea here, I think, is to put moral pressure on Ginny Thomas to sort of step out of the arena.
And my advice to Ginny Thomas is, hey, Ginny, you know what?
Laugh your head off at all this stuff.
These people are complete fakes.
Their arguments make no sense.
They're not applied consistently.
So do not feel intimidated by this kind of foolishness.
And she's actually advocating for them to pass a law To make that illegal for Thomas to sit on the bench because of his wife.
So imagine that. I mean, it's just pure hypocrisy.
Yawn, snooze. Then that would mean that.
No, that's not going to happen.
No, but it's just so maddening.
You know, it just makes me so, so, so upset when, you know, they themselves elect or, you know, elect presidents They're president on their side so that they actually put activists on the court.
That's the whole reason.
Well, it's the same thing the left does with the Constitution itself.
Generally, they don't like the Constitution.
They're always talking about the living Constitution, moving away from the Constitution.
But when it comes to impeachment Trump, suddenly it's the founding fathers.
Suddenly the Constitution is dead.
Suddenly, a deep reverence for the Constitution obliges us to take these actions.
Oh, yes. So, you're dealing here, essentially, with...
Well, you know what? We can see right through them.
Yeah, I think that's the change here, that at least in the past, these people were smarter.
They were more subtle.
They would say things like, well, granted, we have activists on our side.
And so there was at least some rhetorical effort to accommodate the other side of the...
Now they pretend like there is no other side and they count on us to be total dummies and not notice.
Wait a minute, activism? Isn't there a lot of activism going on your side?
Well, sure there is.
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I'm noticing a new theme in leftist discourse or leftist commentary.
It's the tyranny of parenthood.
Here's an article in New York Magazine.
It's called Household Tyrants.
Now, we all recognize that there are certain dysfunctional families in which you've got...
Parents who are abusing their children in some way, and of course there are extreme cases where children are taken away from abusive parents.
But that's not actually what these people are talking about.
They're talking about parenthood as being inherently tyrannical.
And the reason that they're going here is because Republicans around the country are asserting parents' rights, parents' rights in education.
As a parent, I have the right...
To protect my child from being racially indoctrinated, from being given all this propaganda, from being forced into critical race theory.
Also, I have the right to know if my child is being propagandized about their gender identity, if they're allowed to go to school.
They're at school dressed as a boy and they're at school dressed as a girl because the teacher is supplying the outfits.
So in other words, what games are the schools playing with our children?
Parents are suddenly beginning to notice that these schools are taking, you may say, liberties with children that parents didn't know about, but now they're finding out about.
And the left, of course, is shrieking.
Now, the basic logic of parental rights is simply this.
A, a child is not developed, mature, can't make those decisions on their own.
B, these are Our children.
So the children belong to dad and mom.
They don't belong to the state.
They don't belong to the school. The teacher doesn't own them.
And so the parents are their custodians who are supporting them, paying for them, raising them, and have the responsibility to kind of usher them, to transition them, but not for Male to female or female to male.
Transition them from childhood to maturity to adulthood.
So that's the basis of parents' rights.
Who other than the parent is going to carry out that function?
Well, of course, the left is obsessed with the issues of racial propaganda and the trans issue.
And so they're like, you know, we've got to dilute the authority of the parents.
And so you've got this article, which basically makes the point that That they say the right, the political right, insists that what's good for parents is good for kids.
And I would say in general, yes, I do assert that and it's true.
And then they say, this is not necessarily the truth as any queer person can say in return.
No, I don't think that that example actually proves the opposite because the simple truth of it is even if you have a gay child in a family, it is still true that the parent is the custodian of that child and the parent is in the best position to determine the so-called rights and autonomy of that child.
Why? Because that child is still in the care of and under the support of those same parents.
And so we get a lot of this nonsense.
The idea that children are already people.
Well, infants are already people.
The unborn are actually already people as well, if I can throw in that little reminder.
But unable to make the case against the parent, this article by Sarah Jones, this article, Household Tyrants, finally breaks down.
And we basically see that this campaign for parents' rights is supposedly part of a bigger campaign for political authoritarianism.
So let me read.
It says, as the conservative fringe gathers the party into itself.
So this is a reference to the fact that apparently fringe guys like me are moving the Republican Party to the right.
We're moving the Republican Party away from the Liz Cheneys of the world, more toward, let's just say, the Marjorie Taylor Greene's of the world.
They say movements like parental rights move from obscurity into the mainstream.
First of all, parental rights was never in obscurity.
It's only from your twisted point of view that this is an obscure idea.
As Republicans long for a strong figure in power, this is the political authoritarianism, they imagine the same figure in every home.
Subject of a household tyrant, the child has no freedom.
So, suddenly the home is portrayed as some kind of prison.
And the conclusion, the GOP is the party of parental rights because it is increasingly anti-democratic.
You know, what's crazy about all this, of course, is that all men are created equal.
This idea of the equality of individuals, that applies to adults.
So to try to take that political model and apply it to the home makes absolutely no sense.
Obviously, it does apply to the husband and the wife.
They are equal, as equal partners in a marriage.
But the idea that the children have equal rights against the parents, this is just political...
It's gobbledygook. It's complete nonsense.
And then I pick up an article, and this is actually from a psychological journal.
Is there a tyrant in the house?
And I'm expecting to read and go, is this some more leftist nonsense, the tyrants are the parents?
No, it's actually the opposite, because it's really clear that the real tyrants of today in the house are the kids.
The theme of the article is this.
They go, this discusses the commonly encountered problem, commonly encountered, of children who act as tyrants in their families because their parents give in to all their demands.
So the problem is not that the parents are too authoritarian.
It's the opposite. Parents are too submissive.
It goes on to say that when parents are too submissive, the child becomes a tyrant.
And then when they go out into the world, they can't function because other people don't submit to their authority.
People go, what the heck are you talking about?
We're not going to do that. And so the article concludes, and this is in the American Psychological Association, it goes, clear, consistent discipline, in other words, more parental control over the children, is seen as the way to prevent and treat children.
I'm continuing my discussion of Dante, who is, last time we left him, in a dark wood and confronted suddenly by his own hero, a fellow poet, a poet who lived many centuries before Dante, named Virgil, a pagan poet, a Roman.
The author of a great work called the Aeneid.
And the Aeneid is the story of a guy named Aeneas.
Who's Aeneas? He's a Trojan soldier.
And in the Trojan War, the Trojans lost.
The Greeks burned Troy.
And Aeneas went on a long journey, which culminated in him founding a new city called Rome, which would eventually surpass Greece in power and importance.
Along the way, Aeneas has a love affair with a queen named Dido.
And it's a tragic love affair because he has to leave.
He can't stay. He has, in a sense, you may say, the historical and moral responsibility to found this new city.
And Dido commits suicide.
So Dante, as a love poet, admires Virgil.
And Dante, as an epic poet, looks up to Virgil.
And yet, when Dante says to Virgil something like, Wow, I'm really happy to see you.
You're my hero. Virgil doesn't really go for any of that.
And the reason is that Virgil has been sent.
He's been pulled out of his own place in, as it turns out, hell.
We'll find out where Virgil is in hell.
But nevertheless, he's been dispatched to get Dante and take him on a journey through the underworld, through the afterlife, or at least part of it.
Virgil can't take him all the way.
The mission is actually conceived by the Virgin Mary herself.
She takes pity on Dante and she...
Enlists a woman named Beatrice.
Now, Beatrice was the subject of some of Dante's earlier love poetry.
But here, Beatrice has been transformed.
She's more of a, you may say, beatific figure.
She's a spiritual figure, and she's concerned with Dante's soul.
And so, she tells Virgil, Come out of where you are.
Take Dante on this journey.
Now, you can't take him all the way.
And so Virgil becomes Dante's guide through all of Inferno, 34 cantos, all of Purgatorio, 33 cantos.
And only at the very end of that does Virgil say, I'm not allowed to go any further.
I mean, I'm not saved.
I can't be in paradise.
I've got to leave you here, and other people will take over from me.
And so Beatrice... Dante has other guides for the last part of the Divine Comedy.
Now, Dante and Virgil, before they enter Hell, there's a kind of caption on the gates of Hell.
And it's a long caption, but I'm only going to read the key sentence, probably the most famous sentence in the whole Divine Comedy.
A sign on the gate of Hell, abandon all hope, ye who enter here.
And this is a little bit of an insight into Hell.
It's an eternal place.
And the suffering in hell is rendered in a way more severe by the fact that it's interminable.
It never stops. And there's no hope of getting out of it.
You can't say, well, you know, yeah, it's bad now, but...
And what's interesting is that Dante takes this in, and his immediate reaction is...
How cruel these words.
This is Dante. Master, he says, these words I see are cruel.
So you get here the idea that Dante, and we're talking now about Dante the pilgrim, not Dante the poet, is reacting in the, you may say, the normal human or even liberal way.
What a cruel idea on the part of God!
Oh my gosh! Create a place where there's no refuge.
You're never going to have any hope.
Wow! And interestingly, Virgil doesn't dispute him.
But the reason Virgil doesn't dispute him is not because Dante is right.
Virgil does not, in fact, agree.
Dante the Pilgrim is deluded here.
Remember, he's in a dark wood.
We cannot at this point, and this is part of what makes reading the poem so interesting, is we kind of feel like we've got to go with Dante.
Dante's reactions to things are like the way to think.
No. Dante the Pilgrim frequently...
He makes mistakes, makes errors of judgment, himself falls.
When he comes across sins that kind of are tempting to him or sins that he's engaged in, he's like unbelievably sympathetic.
Oh man, yeah, you were really wronged.
And all of this is a lesson for the reader that we have to separate Dante the pilgrim from Dante the poet.
This is not Dante the poet's considered view.
This is the pilgrim stumbling and learning along the way.
And so they go past the gate and into the outer portal of hell.
And the first circle, we're now like in Canto 2 and 3.
And what we find in Cantos 2 and 3 is that hell at the beginning does not seem to be like that bad.
Why? Because there doesn't appear to be any kind, there's no fire, there's no torture, there's no screaming or shrieking, it's very quiet.
And the first group of people that Dante encounters is a group of people kind of surprising.
These are, well, they're called by Dante commentators, the neutrals.
The neutrals. This is Virgil describing them.
This wretched state of being is the fate of those sad souls who lived a life, but lived it with no blame and no praise.
They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels, neither faithful nor unfaithful to their God, who undecided stood only for themselves.
So, this is the kind of person, and apparently there's an equivalent in the angelic community, who is a neutral.
Listen, I'm not going to make a decision.
I'm not going to go this way or that way.
I'm going to stay out of this one.
So, this is not just the, I'm washing my hands off of things.
This is the person who...
Dante pretends to be more rational, more calculating.
I'm waiting for the evidence to come in.
We know people like this as agnostics.
I'm not for God, but I'm not against him either.
I'm just waiting for proof, Dinesh.
And what Dante is getting at is these undecided, these neutrals in not making a choice.
Are making a choice.
Dante's point is, in the end, you do have to choose.
Why? Because life is not permanent.
At some point, you've got to go for it.
And this, by the way, is true not just when it comes to the fate of your soul.
In which, when you die, all undecided votes, by the way, become no votes.
But this is true in marriage.
It's true in so many things. You can't say, well, you know what?
I'm dating this woman. She seems nice.
I really do like her.
I think I might even love her.
But you know what? I don't really know what the next 25 years is going to be or 50 years is going to be with her.
I don't know. I'm just going to wait for the data to come in.
Well, you know what? The data's never going to come in.
You're never going to know for sure.
At some point, you've got to decide.
And if you keep wavering, I'm agnostic, I'm agnostic, you know, she's going to marry someone else.
And that's going to be the end of it.
So this is Dante's point.
And so these neutrals are, they're not harmed in any way in hell, but it's sort of like they're nothing.
And even Virgil says, quote, The world will not record their having been there.
Heaven's mercy and justice turn away from them.
Let us not discuss them.
Look and pass them by.
And Dante doesn't name a single one.
So, in a sense, the undecidedness, the I won't choose, I won't take a stand, Dante identifies with a, well, you don't really matter.
In fact, you're turning irrelevance into a virtue.
You will not take a stand for what is right, and therefore, when time comes for judgment, the right itself will kind of turn away from you.
And so, this Olympian detachment that in our secular society is sometimes portrayed as a virtue, Dante says is not a virtue.
Now again, these are people, again, in the sort of, you may call it the outer room, the porch of hell.
Hell, we will see, is based upon many circles.
And you go deeper and deeper.
There's a kind of monster there.
Dante plucks him right out of classical...
Mythology, a monster, a kind of bull with a tail, and the monster waves its tail.
So when you come up for judgment, after judgment has been given, and the monster, if he swirls his tail five times, off you go to the fifth circle of hell.
Seven times, down you go to the seventh circle of hell.
So this is where Dante will dispatch these sinners.
And as we will see, what Dante does, his technique is very cool.
We'll encounter it more than once.
And then Dante goes from the generic, here are a bunch of people, he moves into one or two of them, and then he will often have a conversation with just one.
So that is his technique of going from the big picture to the photo snapshot and then zooming into a single critical conversation that gives us a real window into the nature, not just of punishment, but also of sin itself.
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