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March 8, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
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Good stuff. All right.
So today I'm going to talk about the endgame.
What's the endgame for Putin in the Ukraine?
What is the endgame for the United States and for the West?
How's all this going to go?
A progressive writer discovers the virtues of American power at a time when I and other conservatives are becoming ambivalent about it.
I'll offer a Republican strategy for dealing with Biden's new Supreme Court nominee, Katanji Jackson.
Bye!
I want to explore the question of whether unions can become a part, an enduring part, of a new and expanded GOP coalition.
And finally, I'm going to introduce the haughty politician Farinata in Dante's circle of the heretics.
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.
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The intensity of the Russian invasion of the Ukraine Continues to build.
The Ukrainians, of course, are fighting back, and they're fighting back heroically.
But let's remember that they are a small country, smaller than Texas, and they are being attacked by a very large country, one that stretches across multiple, I believe, 10 time zones.
Now, Russia is not a superpower anymore in the economic sense.
I guess it's arguable whether it's a superpower in the technological sense.
But it does have an arsenal of nuclear weapons, and it does have, of course, a far superior military.
Both numerically, so quantitatively, but also qualitatively compared to the Ukraine.
And so what are we seeing?
We're seeing Russian artillery shells slamming into Ukrainian targets, but also civilian targets, apartment buildings.
We're seeing helicopters pirouetting in flames.
We're seeing refugees. We're seeing the debris of war.
And I think it's undeniable that behind this stands an implacable Putin.
But Putin backed here by the Russian people.
This, I think, is an important fact that Putin's support in Russia Apparently has increased since the war.
Now, sometimes wars have a sort of effect in doing that.
People rally behind the country.
Putin, of course, has been fanning the flames of Russian kind of nationalism and perhaps even xenophobia.
And the propaganda in Russia is at full pitch.
But what's Putin trying to accomplish here?
It looks like he won't be stopped.
But is his goal to reduce Ukraine to rubble?
What's the point of owning a bunch of rubble?
Is it to occupy completely and take over the Ukraine and run Ukraine and integrate Ukraine and Russia?
Ukraine becomes, in a sense, another Russian state or another province within Russia.
Is it to defeat the anti-Russian government in Ukraine?
To permanently detach Ukraine from the West and to make Ukraine a kind of pro-Russian.
I'll be an independent state.
So these are all possibilities.
And it seems to me that what Putin is trying to do here is either to neutralize Ukraine completely, and perhaps permanently, or to essentially pull it right into Russia.
I mean, that would be similar, for example, to what China might want to do to Taiwan, not merely to guarantee A kind of pro-communist Taiwan, but to make Taiwan, as China has now made Hong Kong, part of China.
It's just an extension of China.
Now, what can the West hope to accomplish here?
I take a lot of the big, let's call it, trash talk from people like Adam Kinzinger as pure bluster.
Let's establish a no-fly zone over the Ukraine.
This, I think, as a practical matter would be impossible to do, or if possible, so provocative that it would...
It would push us toward a nuclear confrontation, perhaps toward World War III, and in a region where we don't have vital strategic interests.
In other words, the Ukraine is less important to us than many other countries in which we have We've had conflicts in over the last several decades.
So the no-fly zone, I think, is not going to fly.
So what then is the West's strategy here?
Is it essentially to capitulate?
Yeah, you know, Putin, go do it.
It's yours. I think that's a little dangerous, in part because Putin's then going to say, well, wow, I got the Crimea, I got the Ukraine.
Well, how about the Baltics next?
Not to mention the emboldening effect that will have on China.
Hey, wow, Putin got the Ukraine.
The West did nothing. What are they going to do if we take Taiwan?
And we, of course, we, China, are militarily more powerful.
We're economically more powerful.
The West would have to commit tremendous resources to repel a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
So I think the endgame here is that, and there's some talk about this, there was a guy, a retired Army Colonel Douglas McGregor, He was talking on Fox News.
And I think he spelled out what probably is the strategy of the few smart people who are strategizing on our side inside the Pentagon.
And that is to turn the Ukraine, in a sense, into Afghanistan.
And what I mean by that is Afghanistan became, over time, a sort of graveyard of empire.
It became It was increasingly costly for the U.S. to maintain this kind of hold on the country.
It whittled down America's morale and will.
But it did so at the cost of sort of destroying the country.
I mean, in Afghanistan, of course, there's not a whole lot to destroy because there wasn't a whole lot there in the first place.
But I think that the West strategy now, and it's a little bit of a cynical strategy, is in a sense to turn Ukraine into a kind of Beirut.
And what I mean by that is Beirut used to be a very prosperous, beautiful, tall skyscraper as a country people would go to to visit tourism and so on.
And then Beirut was turned into complete rubble, essentially a scene for guerrilla warfare, a scene for insurgencies.
And it looks like the West strategy...
Although it's rarely being said explicitly, is sort of, we can't stop the Russians from taking Ukraine.
We can't stop the Russians from destroying Ukraine.
But the Ukrainians have a strong will.
They're going to fight back.
And if they fight back over the long-term guerrilla style, yes, their country will be in ruins.
But maybe we can make it over time very costly for Russia to maintain this kind of hold or occupation.
And Putin will have the same kind of grief Over the Ukraine that the United States has had, first over Iraq and then over Afghanistan.
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As a consequence of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we're seeing an interesting shift in the psychology of the progressive left.
The shift can be summarized in an article just out in The Atlantic called, There Are Many Things Worse Than American Power.
Now, the writer, a guy named Shadi Hamid, by the way, a fellow at the Brookings Institution, professor of Islamic studies at Fuller Seminary, he can't bring himself to say American power is great.
It's a good thing.
The world is better off because of American power.
But you can tell from his title that what he's saying is, well, it might be not so bad compared to, say, Russian power or Chinese power.
And so what you have here is a blazingly obvious insight that is finally kind of penetrating the thick head of the left, which is that, look, the power in the world is going to go somewhere.
There's going to be one or two or three dominant powers.
And who would we rather it be?
Not just for our own interests.
We obviously like to be in charge because it's us.
We trust ourselves to be good to ourselves.
But which is better for the world?
Is it better for the world for America to be top dog?
Or... China to be top dog or Russia to be top dog.
Who's going to treat the other countries, let's call it the smaller countries, the less important countries, the less powerful countries, more benignly with a better sense of openness and justice?
The answer to this question should not be difficult.
But for the left, and this guy, Shadi Hamid, gives a pretty good idea.
He says, look, we kind of came of age in the universities.
Now, here he's talking about the way in which he and his fellow liberals were propagandized.
He goes, I spent my college years reading Noam Chomsky and other leftist critics of U.S. foreign policy.
And then again, he doesn't want to back off completely from all this, so he goes, and they weren't entirely wrong.
In other words, the United States, he says, in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, was acting kind of like an imperialist power.
And... And then he says, but now what's become clear is because of the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, Putin and China have mobilized.
They've realized that the kind of global playing field is tilting.
And so Putin goes, you know what?
I can easily get away with an invasion.
I've already taken the Crimea.
I've intervened brutally in Syria.
The United States, precisely because of this fear of getting entangled once more, stayed out of it.
So now, hey, it's open season on the Ukraine.
And the writer, Shadi Ahmed, says, you know, all along, we on the left have been...
Talking about imperial overreach and we've opposed U.S. military action and we've imposed even the use of American power.
And then he goes, but now we have to sort of rethink all this.
I'm quoting him. He goes, in the span of a few days, skeptics of American power have gotten a taste of what a world where America grows weak and Russia goes strong looks like.
And so he goes, the liberals have to sort of put their thinking caps on here, and he says many on the anti-imperialist left aren't really anti-imperialist, they just have an instinctive aversion to American power.
So what he's pointing out here is that if you claim the anti-imperialist mantle, and your main focus is on your own country, America, let's make sure America doesn't act like an imperialist power, Let's, in a sense, throttle our own country.
Think of all Obama's slogans leading from behind, the self-limiting principle, essentially a kind of anti-colonial shackle on American power.
He says, but that doesn't put shackles on anyone else.
It doesn't put shackles on the Chinese.
It doesn't put shackles on the radical Muslims.
It doesn't put shackles on Russia.
Now, this article, I think in one of its weaker moments, goes on to say, Joe Biden has declared the battle between democracies and autocracies is the defining struggle of our time.
And then he goes, Biden was right.
Now, here is where I think you're getting an analysis that's breaking down because, and I was on Fox News last night talking exactly about this, the line between the free world and autocracy is becoming more blurred.
If you look at the defining elements of autocracy, you find that they're now present in the United States.
Kind of a corrupt gangsterism at the highest levels of government.
We find that in Russia.
We find it here.
Corrupt oligarchs who dominate the power rudders of society.
Yeah, you find that in Russia.
You find that here. The idea of a one-party state that is suffused with media-supported propaganda, the idea that the opposing party is somehow delegitimized, it's an enemy of the state, it's potentially a terrorist arm that needs to be suppressed and not argued with.
All of these ingredients of classic autocracy are fully present in today's United States.
So the article I find interesting in that it seems to have a reassessment of the value of American goodness and American power in the world.
I think to that degree it's a healthy development, but it's completely blind to the autocratic tendencies that are being imposed within America from the left itself.
The Russia invasion of Ukraine has sent the markets into an uproar, big drop in the market yesterday.
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I want to make the case for why Republicans should trash the reputation and the record of Biden's Supreme Court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Now, Ketanji Brown Jackson is a leftist.
She is a known leftist, and she was supported by the left wing of the Democratic Party.
There was, for a while there, a...
A lot of talk about another woman, Michelle Childs, who had been advocated by Lindsey Graham.
And of course, that would be a great benefit to Biden if he could get Lindsey Graham, maybe a couple of other Republicans, then claim, even with obviously two or three Republicans, this is a bipartisan vote.
But the left was outraged because Michelle Childs had said a couple of good things about business.
Had said that no, a judge's job is to interpret and not make laws.
And so the idea was, oh, no, no, no, she might be a little too moderate.
And so we get Kattanji Jackson.
And here's an article in CNN, the theme of which is, hey, Republicans, you know, you don't really want to oppose this nominee.
The argument is that, and they're quoting Republican sources, and so it may be that there are some Republicans who think like this.
We need a measured approach.
Yes, we need to vet this woman, Judge Jackson, but look, it's not really going to change the balance on the court.
It's 6-3 now with Robert's maybe, so it's 5-4, maybe 6-3.
This isn't going to change things, so why sort of create a big fuss about it?
The Democrats don't need Republican votes.
If they can get a solid 50 Democratic senators, obviously Kamala Jackson can break a tie.
And so the Democrats are pushing for, let's call it, an uneventful nomination process.
But here's why I think that's a mistake.
First of all, there's plenty of fodder with this woman.
She's inexperienced.
She's got decisions that were slapped down by the higher courts on the idea that she had overreached her judicial authority.
So this is not exactly the top drawer nominee.
Basically, Biden sort of admits that because he's kind of saying, well, listen, I'm going to limit the search to black women.
So kind of this is the smartest black woman I could find.
But, Republicans need to teach Democrats a lesson for the way that they treat our nominees.
That is the point here.
And it's a critical point, because if we don't do this, then the Democrats will take the lesson.
And rightly so. Look, we can bruise and trash their nominees, however qualified.
It doesn't matter how good Kavanaugh is, we will destroy that guy's reputation by going back to stuff that he might have done in high school or at some party, and make stuff up.
Allegations completely unsupported by someone who has a political axe to grind.
And in the case of Amy Coney Barrett, someone who has an impeccable record, a kind of spotless personal life, no, that's okay.
We're going to pile on Amy Coney Barrett.
So that's how the left operates.
And why should we operate any differently?
If we do, we're basically going to be saying that we're the weaklings who don't mind being bullied in the schoolyard.
Go right ahead and keep doing it because we're not going to do it to you.
I think we need to do it to her, Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
And in that sense, even if she goes through, that's all right.
But nevertheless, we will have taught the Democrats a very valuable and memorable lesson.
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Guys, I've talked off and on in the podcast about the trucker's convoy and the trucker's protest, both in Canada and in the United States.
But I haven't had someone on who actually drives a truck, who's been part of all this, can sort of give a first-hand account of it.
So I'm delighted to welcome Gerard De Los Santos.
He is a Canadian trucker, although originally from South America.
He got his license for trucking in 1993.
He's been a trucker since 1995, so really over 25 years.
Hey Gerard, thanks for joining me.
Am I right? It looks to me like you're in your truck.
Good morning. Thank you for having me on the program.
Yes, I am in my truck, coming back actually from Ottawa.
It's going to be, it has been quite some time being there and a lot longer than what we thought.
And just halfway back home, I will say.
You said you're in Saskatchewan.
Where are you making your way toward?
Where are you going? I am going to Saskatoon, then Edmonton, and then my way down to Calgary.
Okay, terrific. Now, Gerard, looks like you've been in Canada a long time, you've been driving a long time, but you're originally from South America.
Say a word about your background.
Yes, I am from Uruguay.
I came to Canada in April of 1989, so it's going to be, April now is going to be 33 years that I'm here.
In 95, I got my license and started driving in 93.
I actually got my license and started driving in 95.
I've been doing trucking ever since.
Car hauling, this is my specialty, what I like to do.
Due to all this mandate, it was getting more difficult every day to deal with everything.
And I decided to join the convoy and ask for freedom, basically.
The only thing we were asking was freedom of choice and to open the federal mandate to be able to cross the border to the United States.
When you moved from Uruguay to Canada, would it be fair to say that you came...
In America, we talk about the American dream, by which we just mean an idea of being able to make your own life, make your own success in an environment in which you have that kind of freedom.
It seems like Canada, too, has offered that kind of freedom.
But are you saying under the Trudeau government there's been a using of the COVID as an excuse to...
To restrict freedom.
Talk about that. Exactly.
Canada always has been a country that opened the border for refugees all around the world.
And freedom was number one here in this country.
And now, lately, we have lost everything.
Everything has been arrested.
I was arrested for asking for freedom.
Talk about that. How were you arrested, and by whom, and for what, and on what charge, and what happened?
I was arrested by all the police, the forces that they sent in.
There were three different ones.
Calgary police, RCMP, and there were police on green that didn't have any budget.
Any name?
We didn't know.
Some of them didn't speak English.
I don't know where they came from.
And we were ready.
We knew they were coming.
So we planned what to do and we decided to stay.
We were not blocking the road.
We were just parked, I guess, illegally.
So we got some parking tickets.
And in the morning that I got arrested, I got a message.
They said, they're coming.
And I sat in my truck and I looked at the mirrors.
They were all behind me. About 300 of them.
And that was it.
They came to my window.
They said, come out. And they go, I am under arrest.
They didn't want to answer.
So I didn't move. Basically, they opened the door and got me out and pushed me against the truck and bent my arm.
And then one by one, I was the first one because I wasn't back on the line.
And then all of the other guys on the same street, there were about 12, 14 guys, they started breaking windows, smashing windows.
And it was a little bit, yeah, it was an experience.
Now, let me ask you, the idea of the protest is for citizens and truckers to convey to the government that what?
That it's time for these mandates to end?
Is it the vaccine mandate you're objecting to or the mask mandate or both?
Both. I think we think the vaccine is a choice.
Whoever wants to get vaccinated, go ahead and do it.
Whoever wants to use the mask, do it.
But we don't want to be obligated to do it.
It's our own choice.
Now, here you are. If you're driving in a truck, I don't see anybody next to you.
Why on earth should it matter to the Canadian government whether you have a vaccine or not?
What's the big deal? Exactly.
All this started, obviously, at the beginning, I believe, and then I started doing my research, and maybe it took me two weeks to figure out that something was wrong.
And I never wore a mask.
I never used alcohol in my hands.
And I never got sick in two years.
Not even a cold. So I don't think a vaccine is necessary.
Where do you think all of this is going to go?
Of course, the Trudeau government has essentially acted as if this is a small minority of truckers.
These are extremists.
You don't look to me like any kind of a political extremist.
You seem to me like a normal guy who is standing up for his own freedom.
How is this going to end?
I think the mandate is going to be left all across Canada and on the border.
So far, it has been five provinces and one territory that left the mandate.
And we are hoping that everything will be done soon.
But before the convoy, we were losing hope.
They were going to implement a mandate, a vaccine to cross I see.
All right. Well, thank you for joining me.
This is really interesting.
I really appreciate you sharing your experience.
Thank you, Gerard. You're very welcome.
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Feel the difference. I want to talk about the ruthlessness of the left.
And in this case, about a campaign that the left is mounting.
This is being organized, it seems, by David Brock, the founder of Media Matters.
A one-time conservative who, partly because of the gay issue, pivoted to the left has now become a ferocious left-wing activist, worked for Hillary.
And so this is a group that they've created called the 65 Project.
Why 65? Apparently because There were some 65 lawsuits brought by Trump or the Trump campaign or various independent groups kind of on behalf of or allied with Trump in the aftermath of the election.
And these were contesting in some ways procedures or practices in the 2020 election.
And the left's view is that that is something that...
Not only is illegitimate, but you need to be punished for it.
And this is what I'm talking about.
So the left won't say, okay, well, you know what?
It didn't work. We move on.
This is how Republicans tend to approach things.
Their view is, listen, let's identify all the lawyers, there are about a hundred of them, that participated in any of these lawsuits in any way.
And let's go ruin their lives.
So... They've created a group to do this.
It's called, as I say, the 65 Project.
Apparently the idea came from a woman named Melissa Moss, who's a Democratic consultant, a senior Clinton administration official.
And they put people like former South Dakota Senator Tom Daschle on the board.
And here you go.
They go to the liberal billionaires.
They get millions of dollars to do this.
And so they're targeting evidently 111...
Right-of-center attorneys in 26 states.
They're going to air ads in those states trying to expose these people, I guess put their face on TV. They're going to go to the ABA, the American Bar Association, and other state bar associations and try to I mean, think about it. These lawyers are making cases.
They believe in these cases.
They believe they have evidence. They might be wrong.
Lawyers are wrong all the time.
Every time there's a case, one side is wrong in the sense that one side loses the case.
But these are guys, and here's Brock, David Brock, very telling.
He goes, quote, The idea is not only to bring grievances in the bar complaints, but shame them and make them toxic in their communities and their law firms.
This is what they're doing. Ruin your life is the name of the game.
And so, Republicans better get the message that this is what the other side is doing to us, and we either wake up or we just become easy prey for these kinds of continuing and ongoing campaigns.
Let's continue. This is David Brock.
I think the littler fish are probably more vulnerable to what we're doing.
You're threatening their livelihood, and you know they've got reputations in their local communities.
What Brock is saying is that, look, if you're some big, high-powered partner, you started your own law firm, obviously there's not a whole lot they can do to you.
But if you're some guy kind of trying to make it, moving up the ladder, they can make your life very miserable, and that's exactly what they intend to do.
They're also clear that part of their goal is to deter future lawyers from entering similar campaigns and to say, listen, this is what's going to happen to you.
We're going to make an example of the guys that did it in 2020, so nobody dreams of doing it in 2022 or 2024.
Now, all of this is based upon, and this is how the left operates, they sort of create a presumption.
Presumption is, you know, most secure election in history.
Out of that comes the idea that anybody who questions the election, bad guy, you know, disgrace to the legal community, so let's go after them, let's punish them.
Anyone who comes to Washington, D.C. January 6th to raise questions, those guys become enemies of the state, they're insurrectionists, let's go after them.
And all of it is hanging on this premise.
Most secure election in history.
you.
I've been on Hillary Clinton's trail for a long time.
In my film, Hillary's America, I detail the dangers she posed to the country.
And fortunately, the American people got the message.
But there's a lot more that needs to be done to reveal the full, ugly truth about the Clintons, the Clinton Foundation, and their corrupt ways.
Especially since the Biden family seems to view the Clinton example as a kind of how-to guide.
And you won't find the truth about Hillary or much else in today's fake news media.
You have to turn to a powerful source like Capital Research Center.
I just interviewed Scott Walter, the head of Capital Research Center, in my new movie, 2000 Mules.
That's coming up. So my friends at Capital Research Center, they expose the left like no one else can.
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Check it out. I think it's time for Republicans and conservatives to really rethink their attitude toward unions.
I'm not talking about the union leadership, which is largely corrupted both in private and public sector unions.
I'm talking about the actual members of unions.
And I think if conservatives and Republicans start working more actively with these union members, we can change the leadership, particularly of the private sector unions.
Public sector unions, I'm not even sure why they exist.
They're not real unions in the sense that their goal is not collective bargaining in the traditional sense.
their goal ultimately is to lobby to get bigger government.
And so they are a little bit of a deviation from what unions are supposed to be.
So public sector unions to me are largely hopeless, although there probably are some public sector union employees who would be sympathetic to our side.
But it's in the trade unions that the opportunity exists.
Now, let's remember that a new kind of progressive coalition is emerging and has emerged in America, which includes the high tech establishment.
It includes the financial establishment, the academic establishment, to some degree the media establishment, government bureaucracies.
And the big corporate sector is part of this.
Think about tycoons like Bezos and Bill Gates, Buffet, so many others.
These bigwigs are in it with the left.
And so the old idea that big business is the party of Republicans, of course, is now completely obsolete.
So, if the left is making inroads and allies and taking over, to some degree, the big business sector, why aren't Republicans doing the same thing to the union members, to the union sector?
Now, part of that has been a libertarian tradition that unions are bad and unions are anti-capitalist.
Now, first of all, the idea of a union is in no way anti-capitalist.
Why? Because people do collective things all the time.
And by collective, I just mean a group of people coming together.
I'm not in favor of people being forced to join unions, but if you voluntarily join a union, Why shouldn't you and your fellow workers be able to bargain for a better deal with your employers?
That's a purely voluntary activity that fits right within the logic of capitalism itself.
Now, what happened to unions in the 20th century, this is starting in the middle of the century, well, starting really with FDR. As FDR consolidated his power, he began to prod the union movement to move into a different direction.
In other words, instead of being a movement that mainly focused on bargaining for better wages, better working conditions with employers, FDR turned the union movement into a lobby for more government services.
So unions now began to push for things like guaranteed health care and a mandated shorter work week or maternity leave or paternity leave.
And so unions became, in a sense, lobbies.
And this created a union leadership that was more attuned to Washington, D.C., And playing that kind of political game than it was to the traditional business of sitting across the table with the employers and negotiating and arguing it out.
Now, the leftist alliance I mentioned earlier of academia and media, the financial sector, this is an elite alliance that is completely indifferent to the American worker.
They could care less about the American worker.
And they've got in the bag union leaders who have a lot to gain personally and a lot to gain themselves, even though they're shafting the American worker in the bargain.
And just think about the kind of issues, for example, that this left-wing alliance embraces.
Climate issues. Environmental issues more generally.
All of which, in embracing those issues, that has a detrimental impact on the worker.
It has a detrimental impact on the energy sector, for example.
So, illegal immigration.
The idea that you just let as many illegals as you can through, have them join the workforce.
I mean, the simple law of supply and demand says that's going to drive the wages, which is the price at which labor offers itself down, down, down.
And that's been happening.
We've seen a lot of groups over the last 30 years or so who have done much better.
But the American worker and the American middle class have not done better.
And they haven't done better precisely because the very people who purport to be on their side are not in fact on their side.
So I guess what I'm saying is if conservatives, if Republicans say, we are on your side and we will help you overthrow your bogus leaders.
And we will defend your values and your economic interests both.
This provides a window of opportunity for a broadening of the Republican coalition.
Again, if you have reservations about unions, just think about it.
If you look abroad, who is it that brought the Soviet empire down?
Well, Reagan did, and I guess the Pope did, John Paul II, and I guess Margaret Thatcher did, but an important figure was a union leader, Lech Walesa.
Electrical shipyard worker in Poland, and he led the revolt that brought the Jaruzelski communist government down.
That was the first sort of domino to fall, then Eastern Europe, then the Soviet Union itself.
So these are anti-socialist and anti-communist unions that moved Poland at first into a free direction.
Now we're facing many of those same socialist tendencies here in this country, and we can use an invigorated union movement.
A movement that is traditional in its values, patriotic in its general thrust, and devoted to the rebuilding of American manufacturing and the rebuilding of the American middle class.
And those are all worthwhile objectives for an invigorated Republican right.
We're in Dante's circle of the heretics.
And as I mentioned last time, we think of heresy as a rejection of Christian teaching.
And there are hints in this canto that the two figures that we come across, a guy named Farinata and a guy named Cavacante, they do in fact do this.
They do reject Christian teaching.
But... That's not the subject of discussion at all.
The subjects of discussion turn out to be politics first and then poetry second.
And this all raises the question of what's Dante getting at?
What's the bigger point he's trying to make about heresy?
I think the question he's trying to raise is, what is heresy?
I mean, what is it really?
And second, why is it bad?
What is the harm that it does to take, let's say, a point of view that's different from the official teaching of the church?
Now, here's Dante in the Circle of the Heretics.
There are flaming tombs, and Dante is taken in by the glare and doesn't see that a guy has popped out of a tomb, a very majestic figure who's sort of almost, you could say, posing for his own statue.
And Dante describes him as...
As someone who is, quote, proclaiming his disdain for hell.
That's his manner. It's aristocratic.
It's majestic. It's even, Dante uses this term, a little contemptuous.
A little contemptuous.
And now we're going to do a close reading of what happens in this canto.
This is the figure speaking to Dante, having come out of this flaming tomb.
Oh, Tuscan! Walking through our flaming city alive and speaking with such elegance.
Be kind enough to stop here for a while.
So this is the guy, turns out to be this fellow named Farinata, speaking to Dante.
And he continues, Now, What's happening here?
You've got Dante in a remote place, and this guy recognizes him.
Oh, Tuscan is a way of saying you are a fellow from Tuscany.
Tuscany is the area encompassing Florence, also encompassing places like Pisa.
It's that region of Italy.
So this is a guy who is from that region himself.
In fact, a fellow Florentini recognizes Dante.
He goes, And then he says, your mode of speech.
So he's kind of saying your way of talking, i.e.
your accent, identifies you as a Florentine, as a member of that birthplace, of that noble city.
And then he goes, with which in my time perhaps I was too harsh.
Now we'll come back to that part of it for a moment.
But Dante is taken aback and he turns away, he turns to Virgil.
And Virgil says...
Turn around and look at Farinada, who has risen.
You will see him from the waist up, standing straight.
So Virgil is telling Dante, here's a guy that you need to talk to, presumably because he's got something that Dante needs to hear and needs to think about.
And then Virgil says this, be sure you choose your words with care.
So... Think about what you're going to say, because this is a guy who's going to draw you into a conversation.
And it turns out that this figure, Farinata, is a very commanding presence, and right away he seizes the verbal initiative from Dante in this way.
This is Dante. And when I reached the margin of his tomb, he looked at me, and half-contemptuously he asked,"'And who would your ancestors be?' Now, this is a very interesting question.
And it's a very odd question for someone to ask, right?
Because, first of all, picture the scene.
Flaming tombs, a man pops out.
He recognizes Dante as sort of someone from the old neighborhood.
It's kind of like if you or I are in a remote place and we see another guy, another American, he goes, hey, you're from America?
Yeah, I am too. So you'd think that the first thing he would say would be he would talk about what he has in common with Dante.
But no, he actually asks a very pointed and kind of sarcastic question which has a presumed answer.
And who would your ancestors be?
The idea is your ancestors are probably not as good as mine, are they?
In other words, I am from the aristocratic class and quite evidently from your manner and your way of speech, you're not.
And then, we're continuing now, Dante says, quote, he lifted up his brows a little.
So think of how beautifully Dante paints a picture here.
Here's this guy standing majestically, posing in a sense for his own photograph or his own statue.
And he puts his eyebrows up.
And here's what he says.
Bitter enemies of mine they were, and of my ancestors, and of my party, I had to scatter them not once, but twice.
Bitter enemies of mine they were.
Who's they? Dante's ancestors.
So, without Dante even answering, Farinata saying, your ancestors were bitter enemies of my ancestors, They're enemies of my family and of my party.
Now, in Italy at the time, family and party kind of went together.
And what I mean is that, by and large, in the factionalism of Italy, you had the Guelphs, you had the Ghibellines.
This was the party of the papacy or the party of the empire.
But remember, when I say party of the papacy, I don't mean that the ordinary Guelph would sit around worrying theologically about the papacy.
It's more like two gangs who are fighting, and they're looking for help from the outside.
And if one can get it from the papacy, okay, they're the party of the papacy.
And if one can get it from the empire, okay, they're the party of the empire.
They're just looking for outside forces to help them to win the local battle so that they can rule Florence.
And Farinata, it turns out, is a Ghibelline.
He's a member of the rival party to Dante.
And the Ghibellines were a minority in Florence.
The Guelphs, Dante's party, was the majority.
And what does Farinata mean when he says, I had to scatter them not once, but twice?
I'll tell you in just a moment, but let's keep going.
Dante, taken aback by this, this idea that his ancestors were thrown out, replies like this.
He says, they were expelled, but only to return from everywhere, not once but twice, and art your men, however, never mastered.
Okay, so what you have here is a kind of...
A kind of back-and-forth debate, a kind of jibe, in which Farinata's saying to Dante, you know what?
Your ancestor's not as good as mine.
And by the way, my ancestors and I kicked your ancestors out twice out of Florence.
And Dante goes, well, yeah, but you know what?
My ancestors came back, and yours didn't.
So you have Dante trying to kind of one-up Farinata.
And what they're talking about is a battle that I will get to next time.
It's a famous battle called the Battle of Monteperty.
And this is a battle in which the Ghibellines allied with the outside nation of Siena.
So the Ghibellines were a minority in Florence.
They couldn't beat the Guelphs on their own.
So they go to the Sienese and they team up with the Sienese army and then they invade Florence, defeat the Guelphs on two occasions.
First in 1248, then in 1260.
1260 is the Battle of Monteperati and Dante is born the next year in 1261.
And so what Fainada is appealing to is the history of Dante's youth and pointing out that his ancestors came out on top and Dante's were kicked out.
And Dante goes, Dante says to Fainada, but yes, you know what?
After you died, my ancestors came back.
The Guelphs returned. They were able to reestablish themselves in power after the Battle of Monteperati, even though they lost.
And then the Ghibellines were never able really to return.
It was a permanent defeat for the Ghibellines.
They became an exile, a party of exiles.
And so Dante is going to say, we won in the end.
We learned the art of coming back and your party never did.
But you notice what's happening here is that Dante is, in a sense, falling into Farinata's trap.
He's playing the same game as Farinata.
And think about where it got Farinata.
He's in hell. So the lesson that Dante apparently needs to learn and isn't learning is that this kind of bitter factional warfare that brings everybody down in the end is not a good thing for society.
And we want to think about what this kind of factional infighting, what resemblance it bears to heresy.
Think of what heresy does.
It splits the church.
It breaks Christianity into rival pieces that then go to war with each other.
It really ends up with a much weaker Christianity in the end.
So we're beginning to get here, even in the beginning of this conversation with Farinaud, which goes on and will go on with it, is a little hint that heresy is more than just, I don't accept a doctrine.
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