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April 25, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
47:49
TO THE LIFEBOATS Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep317
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Time Text
The Democrats are panicking over the prospects for the upcoming November election.
Their mentality is to the lifeboats.
They're trying to save democracy by preventing Marjorie Taylor Greene from running...
For re-election. Imagine the irony.
Obama and Hillary are now all in on the censorship brigade.
But the good news, Elon Musk looks like he's going to be buying Twitter.
A great victory for free speech.
I'll talk about that. Like a kid watching a falling building, I'm taking a moment to appreciate the full implosion of CNN+. And also, more Dante as we're at the very end of the purgatorio.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
♪♪♪ America needs this voice.
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.
Hey, quick announcement, guys.
So we released a movie trailer, and this is the official trailer.
We had put out a teaser trailer before, but this is a full three minutes.
It gives you a kind of little sketch of the storyline of the movie, and it's really powerful.
If you If you haven't seen it, by the way, you can go to my Rumble channel and watch it there.
Or just go to the movie website, which is 2000, the number 2000mules.com.
And you can also start, I mean, I would get early tickets for next week.
This movie is out next week.
Next week is our premiere week.
And so we have 300 theaters playing it May 2nd and May 4th.
7 p.m. showing.
We've also got an exciting virtual premiere, which you can sign up for.
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And Debbie's going to sing.
We're going to play the movie. There's a Q&A afterward.
It's going to be a lot of fun.
I would recommend highly you consider the virtual premiere.
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And then the movie is going to be available widespread for digital download.
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This is the movie you've been waiting for.
Now, the Democrats are...
Happy birthday, honey. Hey!
I'm getting a happy birthday yell from Debbie.
A shout-out. And thank you, Heidi.
I appreciate it. So we can fit into our outfits.
Oh, yeah. You know, we were going to go to this Indian restaurant today, and I'm doing media all day.
So Debbie's like, oh, it looks like we have to cancel.
So we're actually going to have someone pick up the food for us and bring it to our home, and it's going to be Indian food day at the D'Souza household.
And I'm looking forward to it, let's just say.
All right. The Democrats are apparently...
It's dawning on them how bad their situation is.
And it's dawning on them that they put this complete loser in the White House.
I think put is here the correct word.
And they're now realizing that he's like a millstone.
He's dragging them down to the bottom of the ocean.
And there's a New York Times article, which is literally titled, It's Time to Head for the Lifeboats.
Democrats at one point were talking about, yeah, we're going to try to hold the House, we're going to try to hold the Senate.
They've pretty much, as it turns out, given up on the House.
The margin right now is really narrow, just a few seats.
The House is basically gone.
The Senate, there are a few Democrats who are like, we'll try to hold the Senate, but it's increasingly looking like even that's going to be really hard for them to do.
Quote, it's going to be a terrible cycle for Democrats.
This is Doug Sosnake, a former advisor to Clinton.
There's an Obama advisor who says pretty much the same thing.
And apparently Democrats now at the local level are running away from Biden.
In fact, there's a little funny detail here in the article.
Gretchen Whitmer, quote, Quote, quietly removed the president's name from news releases about federally funded infrastructure projects.
So when people realize this is Biden, they react so negatively that Whitmer's like, let's take the guy, let's white out the guy's name.
Like in the old days where you get the old white out and just white him out.
Now, of course, some Democrats are saying, well, you know, it's not all that surprising.
Usually the party in power loses seats in the midterm election.
Well, there is such a thing as sustaining losses and there is such a thing as a wipeout.
And I think the real question is, what is November going to bring one or the other?
Are the Democrats going to take severe losses or are they going to be absolutely decimated?
I'm obviously hoping for the latter.
And this guy, as I say, this Obama advisor named Kessler, says, if you are in a district that is Biden plus 12 or less, you need to run like you're losing, which kind of shows you how bad the situation is for the Democrats at this point.
By the way, I think that these guys were counting on rigging the system.
And by rigging the system here, I mean things like shutting down debate, controlling discussion on social media platforms, so that their own propaganda organs, namely the New York Times, NPR, CBS News, would control the messaging.
So they're trying to have a captive population that is indoctrinated.
And in this context, it's worth mentioning, and I'll talk about it again further down the podcast, Elon Musk's stunning decision to push ahead with this purchase of Twitter.
And it looks like after putting up some brave, you know, some bravado, we're not going to let Elon Musk go.
Come into the building.
It looks like the Twitter shareholders were like, oh, really?
Well, he's making a very nice offer that would put a lot of money in our pockets, and you better entertain it.
And finally, the Twitter board basically made up of these nerdy PhDs who are like, We don't really care about money.
We just like to control people.
These guys are finally like, okay, we better meet with Elon Musk.
And I see today, at least early reports, that this looks like it might be announced today that Elon Musk is buying Twitter.
And that's huge.
It's huge because it goes in the other direction We're good to go.
Either later today or in subsequent podcasts about the three things that he needs to do to secure his hold on Twitter to assure the return of free speech in America.
And more free speech means more bad news for the Democrats.
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The left is making a, well, pathetic but also disgusting effort to throw Marjorie Taylor Greene off the ballot as an insurrectionist.
And a judge, this is a left-wing judge, has allowed a case to go forward in which she had to testify, Marjorie did, And they tried to get her on all kinds of issues.
In fact, the most amusing part of this conversation focused on the year 1776.
In fact, the lawyer for the guy for the people suing Green, they were like, isn't it true that you repeatedly used the phrase 1776?
Yeah. The year of the Declaration of Independence.
This is actually, if you think of the American Revolution, there were two American revolutions, the Revolution of 1776 and the Revolution of 1789.
The first one was the actual revolution against the British.
And Marjorie Taylor Greene, very coolly with her sort of characteristic aplomb, she goes, well, actually 1776 is on our Georgia state seal right here in this building!
To which the other lawyer was like, eh, he didn't really know what to say.
But, you know, this whole idea that 1776 is sort of a dangerous notion to conjure up, this is being also used, Julie Kelly made this point, by a number of the Biden DOJ attorneys and also by some of the Obama and Clinton judges where they will fault January 6th defendants on the basis that they invoked 1776.
Here, for example, is Judge Harvey.
He's talking about the January 6th protesters.
So suddenly invoking the American Revolution itself is taboo and is also considered to be somewhat dangerous.
So, back to this hearing from Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The reason this has gone forward is it was pushed basically by leftists like Harvard professor Lawrence Tribe, and they're hoping to use an old law.
It's called the Disqualification Clause.
Of the 14th Amendment.
It was written after the 39th Congress convened in December 1865.
What happened was there were a number of Southern Democratic traitors.
These are people who had fought for the Confederacy.
People like Alexander Stevens, a Democrat from Georgia, who was the Vice President of the Confederacy.
And these guys basically were back in Congress.
And so the idea of passing this law was, listen, if you have taken up arms in a massive rebellion against the country, you should be disqualified from running for office.
Now, it made sense in the Civil War context, but let's remember that this was a war in which more than 600,000 people died on both sides.
This was a war in which the Confederacy broke with the Union and created its own country, its own government, its own currency, its own army.
And so, That is the definition of rebellion.
That is what a real insurrection looks like.
This is totally different from the people who went into the Capitol on January 6th.
And let's remember, Marjorie Taylor Greene wasn't one of them.
If she went into the Capitol, she had every right to be there.
She's an elected congresswoman.
The same tactic, by the way, was tried against Madison Cawthorn, and it went to federal court, but the federal court dismissed the case.
They realized that this was silly.
They also realized that, you know, how do you claim to be protecting democracy when you're actually subverting it?
How do you claim to be saving democracy when you're trying to get elected people, elected leaders, off the ticket so that their own constituents can't vote for them?
If you think that these people are so disloyal, why don't you go make the case to Marjorie Taylor Greene's constituents and tell them, don't vote for an insurrectionist.
She doesn't belong. And let them make the decision, not you.
But no, the left realizes that's not going to work.
So, their strategy is to make these preemptive strikes using the legal system to try to achieve, judicially, a result that they could not achieve democratically.
So, this is a, the judge involved here is Amy Totenberg, obviously another, you know, activist masquerading as a judge, because this is someone who should have known that, you know what, even if the, even if you're going to invoke the 14th Amendment, even if you're going to try to employ the disqualification clause, you have to pay attention to who is it that disqualifies a sitting congressman or congresswoman from running.
Well, the answer is Congress.
Congress has to take the action to do that.
You can't just simply decide to have a judicial proceeding and some judge decides, well, you know, I think that you've made comments that sort of qualify as an insurrectionist, so you're off the ballot and your constituents don't get to make a decision about this anymore.
This is what happens when you have judges who don't really believe in the rule of law.
And I don't think it's going to work.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to be fine.
She handled herself with grace and aplomb.
But the very idea that you have a proceeding in the first place is a national disgrace.
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It looks like Elon Musk is going to buy Twitter.
And just in time.
I say just in time because Twitter was just about to up the ante on the censorship front.
In fact, here's an article in the Associated Press.
Twitter says it will no longer allow advertisers on its site who deny the scientific consensus on climate change echoing a policy already in place of Google.
So think about this.
They're not only not permitting dissent, which is bad enough, but they won't even allow you to advertise a contrary point of view.
Why? Because there's a scientific consensus, they say.
First of all, it's a bogus consensus.
It's a manufactured consensus.
Most scientists believe in the greenhouse effect.
But nevertheless, the point is not even that.
The point is, let's say there was a consensus.
So what? There's a consensus, for example, about relativity.
Does that mean that no scientist can question Einstein's theory of relativity?
If they question it, I believe they would be wrong on the merits.
But there's nothing to prohibit people in a free society from saying what they think, from making arguments to back up their position.
If the arguments are without merit, they fall by the wayside.
So this idea that scientific consensus has to be put beyond question, and people need to be shut down and shut up, and advertising needs to be...
This is outrageous!
So... Here comes Elon Musk, and he truly is the white knight here riding in on a horse to save us from moving in the direction of totalitarian countries, which is apparently happening not only with the support of other tech moguls,
people like Sundar Pinchai at Google, people like Zuckerberg at Facebook, but also with the cheerleading of the media, We actually have a kind of apparatchik media that likes censorship and maybe even views censorship as the best way to protect their own failing business models.
So Elon Musk has his task cut out for him, by the way.
And merely owning Twitter, there are three things that I think Elon Musk needs to do right away, essentially when he moves into the building.
Number one, fire the board.
Remove all those characters.
If they're in the building, just kind of move them out into the street.
Ask them to leave the premises and never return.
They're out of here. Number two, there's a whole bunch of people at Twitter, and some of them have already started to say this, I feel very uncomfortable working for Elon Musk.
You know what? Find out who all those people are and fire them.
By the way, this isn't... Dinesh, are you advocating?
You're supposed to be a critic of cancel culture.
Are you advocating canceling those people?
Yes, I am. Yes, I am.
You know why? Because canceling people who are opposed to free speech is not a contradiction.
You actually protect free speech by getting rid of people in power who block free speech.
There's nothing contradictory or inconsistent or hypocritical about that.
The enemies of free speech need to be moved out of a platform that is supposed to protect free speech.
And number three, I would suggest that Elon Musk simply adopt a very simple policy position, which I'm loosely going to call the free speech pledge.
And the free speech pledge can be summed up in a single sentence.
If it's legal, you can say it.
And that settles the whole issue.
If it's legal, you can say it.
Oh, but it offends me.
Well, go someplace else.
Or be offended.
Because your offense is not a reason to cancel out somebody else's free speech rights.
Any more than their offense is a right to cancel off your free speech rights.
So, grow up. And I think these three steps would be a giant blow for free speech, which we desperately need.
I've noticed, by the way, in recent days, both Obama and Hillary have come out foursquare for censorship.
And this is now reflecting a mainstream position in the Democratic Party.
The Democrats are basically the party of censorship.
So they're the party of abortion, the party of open borders, and they're the party of censorship.
I mean, look at this survey, Pew Research Center.
The U.S. government should take steps to restrict false info online, even if it limits freedom of speech.
The U.S. government, now this is, by the way, constitutionally forbidden, right?
The First Amendment, Congress shall make no law.
And yet, Democrats or leading Democrats, 65% in favor.
And Republican, 28%.
It's disturbingly high for me, even among the Republicans.
That number should be zero.
But for Democrats, it is a sizable majority.
And then number two, tech companies should take steps to restrict false info online, even if it limits freedom of speech.
Here the Republicans are at 37.
Again, ridiculously high.
But the Democrats are at 76.
So we now have a major party that doesn't believe in free speech.
And this is, in my view, a crisis.
It's a crisis because...
Because although we have majority rule in America, majority rule means nothing if it is not circumscribed by minority rights.
And those are the rights specified in the Bill of Rights, free speech being the very first one among them.
So, I think we're reaching that kind of point where we're going to have to push one way or the other.
And look, it'll be less relevant if a couple of platforms practice censorship, as long as there are mainstream platforms that don't, and as long as we can build alternative platforms that grow.
I'm happy to see, by the way, Truth Social is now expanding out to Apple customers who can get on Truth Social.
My own following on Truth Social has surged.
So there are heartening things that are occurring, but we need a lot more of them so that we can live in a country where we don't just say we're free, but we actually are.
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I want to talk a little bit more about the delightful implosion of CNN+. I mean, for me, it's like a kid watching a building come down.
You notice how kids love to see a building either explode or implode.
It doesn't really matter. It's the destruction that's kind of enjoyable.
And obviously, we outgrow those sentiments, and so we don't feel that way when we see a building.
But I do feel that way when I see CNN Plus implode.
And I've gotten to learn a little bit more about the juicy details behind all this, which are kind of fun to go into.
So apparently, when Discovery Channel took over CNN... I mean, they knew that CNN sucked.
It's not that they thought CNN is great, CNN's fantastic.
They were like, this is a problem.
And they knew about CNN +, and they were apparently kind of skeptical, but since they were coming in new...
They were reluctant to pull the plug right away.
I think their view was, you know what, let's see how this goes, we'll give it a chance, and we will then assess how it's going.
And, you know, it's worth noting here that these are these kind of major media moguls.
We're talking here about David Zaslav, the head of Discovery, who became the new boss over at CNN. These guys actually don't know anything.
And they've been in the business a long time, but most of their Most of their viewpoints are recycled cliches that they pick up from colleagues in the office.
And so they launched this massive multi-million dollar, $300 million I believe is what the whole project was, to promote CNN+. Just think about the premise.
People are so excited by CNN that they'll be willing to pay for more CNN. Now, naturally, this premise turned out to be preposterous.
Nobody cares about CNN. Everybody realizes CNN is a joke.
When they have a panel of eight people, they all agree with each other.
So it's like listening to the same person.
Very often, they even look the same.
And they're just, I concur, I concur, I concur.
So... There's nothing interesting even going on.
And the news itself is reported with such a slant that important news is ignored.
Trivialities are then put on center stage.
Of course, there have been the scandals, which I've barely mentioned.
Things like the Tubin scandal, the ouster of the...
Apparently, the top-rated anchor was Chris Cuomo.
Well, he's out. Jeff Zucker is out.
But CNN +, you know, they thought, you know, let's see if we can make this work.
And apparently, they went on a kind of hiring spree.
They brought in all these journalists.
They hired some celebrities.
Apparently, well, they say Eva Longoria in this New York Times article.
But let's just say that they hired some has-been celebrities...
She was apparently going to do a Mexico-based travel show.
They hired someone else to do a different kind of a show.
And Discovery said, okay, well, you know what?
Now that we got this going, now that we're spending all this money, let's sort of figure out how we're doing.
And they took a look and they realized they're doing terrible, that they couldn't even get 10,000 people at one time to be watching CNN+. Now, let's think about that.
Think of how preposterous that is.
That is a fraction of the number of people watching this podcast or listening to it every day.
And this is CNN with a $300 million investment.
So basically, Zaslav decided, you know what, it's time to shut the place down.
And then, of course, begins the usual journalistic, you know, sobbing and gnashing of teeth.
And so here's Chris Lick, the network's new chairman, quote, I'm gutted by what this means for you.
And then, of course, for people like me who are expressing a certain kind of gleeful satisfaction, Oh, Dinesh, you know, you should not take pleasure in people being fired, and you should express some sympathy for people whose lives are being ruined.
Well, you know what? When journalists and propagandists are put out on the street, I think that's good news for America.
I'm not so worried about...
Oh yeah, can they still eat in that Italian restaurant?
Can they still pay the prep school mortgage, the prep school tuition?
Who cares? By the way, did the left show a lot of sympathy when people were fired who worked for the Keystone Pipeline, when they were put on the street?
These are working class guys who were able to make $100,000 a year and now they can't.
So, I didn't see much of that on the left.
So, I'm not in the mood to be sort of, you know...
I think this is fantastic.
I'm delighted to see CNN Plus end up in a big pile of rubble.
I laugh when I hear these CNN guys, oh, you know, CNN Plus wasn't given much of a chance.
Yeah, this is like a store that opens up, no one shows up.
After a while, when you don't have customers, the store kind of has to close down.
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In discussing the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, I've tried to emphasize on the podcast that you have to keep in mind as you analyze all this that each country, and this is no different, this is just as true of Ukraine as it is of Russia, is going to act in its own national self-interest.
And what that means is that Russia is going to say and genuinely feel, this is not just that they're saying it, that it is Uncomfortable, to put it mildly, for them to have an adversary on their back door that is prodding and pushing and threatening them and could be the front line of an enemy coalition that would pose a security threat to Russia.
That is the Russian view of a pro-Western, anti-Russian Ukraine.
Now, conversely, from the Ukrainian side, you expect to see the view that, hey, Ukraine security is necessary to protect the security of the world.
That's actually not true.
But nevertheless, you expect the Ukrainians to say that and to say, hey, listen, we demand that the world supply us with weapons and put itself on the line here because that's kind of what you led us to believe at the beginning.
This is the free world of the West.
And so each country is looking out for itself.
No surprise. But yet, we somehow act as if it is a surprise.
And that's the point I want to raise here.
And I want to raise it in an unrelated context where you begin to see the principle at work.
Here is an article. This is from, actually, ABC.net Australia.
This is ABC in Australia.
And the article is quoting the Australian Prime Minister, Scott Morrison.
Who says that a Chinese military base in the Solomon Islands would be, quote, a red line for Australia and for the U.S. In other words, we're not going to allow it.
And when you see his statements, he says things like, This is a shared concern.
Not only Australia, this is Australia and regional governments in Fiji, Papua New Guinea.
He says that Australia will not stand to have Chinese naval bases, quote, on our doorstep.
He says that I share the same red line as the United States has on this issue.
Now, all of this is completely normal.
Of Of course, Australia doesn't want to have a highly armed Chinese military breathing down its neck or right on its back door.
But here's the point, that this is exactly what Putin is saying about Ukraine.
So, it's exactly, by the way, what the United States would say.
If we had, for example, a heavily armed Mexico that was somehow hostile to us, or a heavily armed Canada, I realize, heavily armed and Canada don't really go together.
But nevertheless, a hostile neighbor on our doorstep, this would make us feel threatened.
This would make us uncomfortable.
Why? Because this threatens our self-interest.
So self-interest, national self-interest, is the governing principle in the way that countries, no matter what their ideology...
This is going to be a constant in international relations, and it helps us to think clearly about the Ukraine conflict and about the world in general when we remember that simple fact.
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Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Dr.
Douglas Howard. Now, you actually know Dr.
Douglas Howard or you know about him.
Why? Because he is the entrepreneur and the inventor of Balance of Nature.
And I talk about Balance of Nature frequently on the podcast.
Debbie and I use Balance of Nature.
It gives us an energy boost and keeps us going...
Without stopping very often through the day, and especially now with the movie going on.
But Dr. Howard is an entrepreneur.
He's a physician. He's a medical researcher.
He's also an international speaker.
And he's also the founder of a remarkable project that I want to talk about, that I'll get to in a moment, called American Village Project.
But let's start by welcoming Dr.
Douglas Howard. Hey, Dr. Howard, thanks for joining me.
This is awesome to have you.
And what I find...
What I really like is that you have sort of taken Debbie and me under your wing.
And when we talk, you don't just talk about your product.
You actually ask about our health.
And you've been a real blessing to us.
So thank you so much for that.
Oh, thank you. And you both look great.
Well, we're trying to live the healthy life, particularly, you know, at our age, and keep our vitality, and balance of nature has been really helpful for us in doing that.
So, we're delighted to be talking about it on the podcast, but let me...
Let me pivot and talk to you about a project that's close to your heart, a project called American Village Project.
So, say a word about how you came up with this idea, and then we'll talk about what the project itself involves.
Well, you know, I'm first and utmost a scientist and a doctor, and that's what I draw it forward with.
And my son, Lex, he came in and bought Balance of Nature, so I could continue to do that, and he could do these great things and further them.
And when he brought to me, he had been out to American Village in Alabama and got to know the founder of it, a great, great man.
And he came back with me with this idea And he told me how the kids are being brought in by busloads to be taught the Constitution.
And that's what caught me first and foremost.
I have over 20 grandchildren and I want my grandchildren to understand and be patriots and that we can stand united no matter what your political party.
And so I got very excited about it with him.
And we were able to work with...
With them out there, and they're allowing us to work with them and recreate the American Village in the West.
And my goal and desire, again, is to bring the Constitution and the truth.
I just want the facts and the truth, and to preserve the truth.
And so, it's great.
I was just out there the other day.
There was a whole busload of kids, and I was behind them in Alabama, and And they drew those children into standing there as though they were in front of the courthouse where the discussion started.
And they drew them into it.
And you can watch those kids become involved and they'll never forget.
And you can go through all different processes and it's just a wonderful thing.
So, as I understand it, what you're saying is that in Alabama, they have a recreation, if you will, an authentic recreation of the environment in which the American founding was adopted so that you could almost walk through that ambiance, right, and feel it. And so the learning process becomes much easier and more...
Contagious because you feel like you're right there and you are now redoing that in St.
George, Utah. Exactly.
Tom Walker was the founder of this, and he took us so graciously in.
And our goal, I'll jump right out there.
We're doing it in Utah, and we've made it a major emphasis for everything we do.
But my goal is to see one of these in every single state, because children aren't going to get the chance to go to Mount Vernon and the church where Paul Revere rode from and all of these, you know, freedom...
All of these places where the Constitution was formed.
But you can do it all in a day and come back again and again.
It's non-profit. There's no charge for visitors coming in.
It's just a wonderful, wonderful experience.
So, Dr. Howard, describe what it would feel like as you get this project to complete it.
I understand it's going to take a couple more years.
It's finished about 2026, but there's an architectural element to it, right?
Because you're talking about streets and buildings, so there's that.
Is there also a kind of educational component?
In other words, are you going to have programs and educators?
What happens when a kid comes and is standing there and can sort of see it all?
How do you actually learn about the Constitution?
Well, every state will be obviously somewhat different because of their schools.
But in Alabama, and we believe in Utah, this is going to go very, very easily.
But before the students come out in the busloads, then they've actually been prepped and given a curriculum of the actual facts about the Constitution and how it was formed and the Boston Tea Party.
And it touches on slavery and many, many things.
And it touches all areas of it.
But not from a political view.
So they're studying it.
Then when they come out, then they live it.
They literally get to go on a battlefield and...
And holler hurrahs and charge and then they get to experience and then they go home and the curriculum is further there.
And that's all developed through the American Village and the schools are accepting it and they get American history again.
And the curriculum, when you go out there, by the way, part of that education is you have You have these wonderful founding fathers and mothers and people walking around in character all the time.
And they're only allowed to bring what they say is from the diaries and from factual notations that they can find.
Again, there's no political aspirations here in any way.
We just want the truth retold.
So it's wonderful. I mean, I think you're right that you're not conceiving of this as political or partisan in any way, but the political commitment is to the idea that what these founders have to say matters.
And not only does it matter as an historical artifact, but it has some relevance to the issues we're facing today.
Wouldn't you say that that's actually the premise of the whole project?
Completely. You get it.
You feel it. That is it.
Awesome. Well, this is just thrilling.
If people want to just get some more information about it now, is there any place they can go to to kind of get their feet wet about this as this project comes to full fruition?
Well, you can go to UnitedWePledge.org.
And you can find it there.
You can go to American Village in Alabama.
You'll find it there.
And I don't know what other websites there are coming up.
But we do have our first 50 acres that has now been brought in and donated for this sole purpose.
And so we're very excited about it.
Well, Dr. Howard, you're doing great work in the medical field, in the entrepreneurial field, but now you're moving into civic education.
I want to commend you for what you're doing, and thank you so much for sharing a little bit about it on the podcast.
Thank you for all you do, and just you and Debbie, keep up the good work.
Thanks. And I'm looking forward to your movie.
I want to today take us to the end of the Purgatorio.
And when we left off last time, we were at this remarkable scene.
Virgil has now departed.
We won't really see Virgil again in the poem.
And Dante has a new guide, and his new guide is this woman named Beatrice.
As I mentioned, Beatrice begins not by embracing Dante or consoling him or congratulating him, but by giving him a stern, well, kind of a tongue thrashing.
And Dante, you might expect...
Getting this, and he's clearly taken by surprise, would push back.
You expect Dante to say, wait a minute.
Here I've been through all of inferno.
Here I have made my way through purgatory.
And you are blasting me for all these old affections and attachments.
But no.
Precisely because Dante has made this journey, Dante has learned.
Dante has learned that rationalizing your own misdeeds, your own bad actions, your own evil thoughts, that's what gets you into inferno in the first place.
So don't do that.
So look at Dante.
Here's Beatrice giving him this stern talking-to, and here's Dante's reaction.
I lowered my head and looked down at the stream, but filled with shame at my reflection there, I quickly fixed my eyes upon the grass.
I was the guilty child facing his mother.
Notice Dante's analogies, the tailor looking through the eye of the needle.
They're very simple analogies drawn from ordinary life and from nature.
But here, while you might expect Dante to be approaching Beatrice in the form of someone who is...
Who sort of loved her on Earth.
And in that sort of mode, no.
You find Dante as a kind of child looking at the ground as his mother tells him what's what.
And he also says, Tears and sighs were frozen hard in me, in Dante.
And what you realize is going on is that Dante is undergoing a kind of self-examination.
And out of that self-examination comes Dante's own purgation.
So this is Dante's own personal purgatory.
Yeah, he's gone through purgatory.
And yeah, he's got the peas removed from his head.
But this is where he's, in a sense, made to give an account.
And what does...
What does Beatrice say to him?
What she says to him, in effect, is that she says, you abandoned me.
And she's talking about Back on Earth.
That Dante was evidently infatuated, in love with Beatrice.
And then Beatrice died.
And Beatrice says, in effect, that you, Dante, turned to other things.
Now, her point is not that Dante was choosing other attachments in preference to her.
Her point is that You know, you, Dante, were so attached to me when I was on the earth, and you thought I was the kind of epitome of earthly ravishment and earthly beauty and earthly virtue.
You thought all that.
You thought I was your very kind of symbol of perfection.
And then what happened? Well, what happened is I died.
And so couldn't you learn from that that all these earthly attachments are transient, are temporary, that they don't last forever, and that if you're going to fix your gaze on some...
And make that your guiding light, shouldn't you fix your gaze on something that isn't transient and doesn't pass away so easily, and that in fact endures and is moreover the source of all the other forms of temporary and transient beauty?
So, Beatrice, speaking again harshly to Dante, Speak!
You must seal with your confession this grave charge I make.
She's playing the prosecuting attorney here.
And Dante again, My fear and deep chagrin forced out of my mouth a miserable yes.
Notice, so Dante is not fighting back.
And then says Beatrice, had you kept silent or denied what you have just confessed, your guilt would still be clear to the great judge who knows all things.
So Beatrice is saying, you know what, Dante, I'm glad you confessed.
But frankly, even if you didn't, God still knows.
So your guilt is independent of whether or not you're willing to admit it.
And then she goes on. But when the condemnation of his sin bursts from the sinner's lips, here in our court, the grindstone is turned back against the blade.
Wow. Beatrice is saying this, that when a sinner...
I'm going to turn away from that.
Then something happens in the heavenly sphere.
And what is that? The grindstone is turned against the blade.
So the blade is the blade of accusation.
It's the blade of divine justice.
It's the blade that says that bad...
It needs to be punished and evil needs to be met with evil.
Evil arrives at an evil destination, namely hell, but the grindstone is actually God's Why?
Because the grindstone blunts the sharpness of the blade.
And so what Beatrice is saying is that when the sinner repents, what happens is that the blade of justice, of divine justice, is blunted by divine mercy.
And... Dante then accepts this and acknowledges it, and then we come to the closing lines of the purgatory.
The lovely lady took me by the hand and said to Statius as she moved ahead with queenly modesty, and you come too.
So Statius, like Dante, is going to be led by Beatrice.
Toward Paradise.
And then the closing lines. From those holiest waters I return to her reborn.
A tree renewed.
In bloom with newborn foliage immaculate.
Eager to rise.
Now ready for the stars.
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