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April 26, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
47:58
LET THE CRYING BEGIN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep318
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Today I'm going to explore the implications of Elon Musk buying Twitter, but let's begin with the obvious one.
Let the crying begin.
What's going to happen to alternative platforms like Getter and Truth Social?
What's Trump going to do?
I'm going to explore that also.
Some of the Twitter people are now saying, oh, we never censored anyone.
We never restricted anyone.
And Debbie begs to differ.
She'll be joining me to talk about her experience.
I'm going to clarify what natural law means by looking at a very interesting article on the subject.
And then I'm also going to introduce the ingenious scheme of Dante's Paradiso.
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.
I've been watching with great interest and trying to step back and think about the implications of Elon Musk buying Twitter and also the very telling reaction of so many leftists on Twitter.
I mean, first of all, let's start with Musk.
Here's a guy who recognizes the importance of culture.
That is, for entrepreneurs, quite rare because most of them are so focused on their business that they don't recognize that culture matters.
But it seems that Musk fully appreciates that there's a cultural environment in which business operates.
And there's also kind of a patriotic responsibility on the part of Businessmen and women who have been successful in this country.
And so he's made this big move.
He's put $45 billion on the line.
Most of it, not all of it is money, but most of it is money to wrest control of Twitter.
Now, this is a, you've got to say, a big blow for the left.
Why? Because their censorship depends on all these issues.
Certainly on issues like the trans issue, abortion, climate change, COVID, but most importantly, the one you know, election fraud, the subject of my film.
Well, they know that they need to have a coordinated system to block discussion of these topics.
They need Facebook, they need YouTube, and they need Twitter.
Twitter is actually the driver of these conversations.
And essentially, they've lost Twitter.
This is why they're so mad, because their control is lost.
Now we're in a genuine free market of ideas.
And quite frankly, I think that the free market will vindicate the free speech platforms.
So long term, we're going to see places like YouTube and Facebook erode.
Because who wants to be on a censorship platform?
And by contrast, you're going to get vigorous discussion and argument on the free speech platforms, and Twitter, in a sense, has a chance to be restored.
Now, this is not to say that there aren't a lot of problems at Twitter, because let's just say that Elon Musk is buying a building that is chock full of termites.
And the termites are all running around like crazy right now.
But let's be clear, they're destroying the building.
And if you want to save the building, you've got to get the termites out.
I think Musk does know this, and so although he's not gonna do it overnight, it's something that I think he recognizes must be done.
Now, for conservatives, it is just great to see the sense of exhilaration.
I mean, it's almost like you've had a foot on your neck, and the foot is now pulled off, and you feel that sense that you can breathe again, and so having this chokehold broken has a sense of liberation.
Now, there is a little bit of a kind of a fear side to all this, which I don't want to duck, and that's this.
Quite honestly, if some other guy, some bully, has their foot on your neck, and they take it off, your first impulse, well, your first impulse is to gasp for air, but what's your second impulse?
Well, your second impulse is to put your foot on their neck.
In other words, to respond in kind, to teach the bully a lesson.
I think this is really what the left fears, that we will respond to them the way they're responding to us.
And you might have seen that comic little clip, the MSNBC guy, he goes, well, now at Twitter, you could actually, you know, this Elon Musk guy, I mean, he could actually start restricting the political opposition.
He could be turning down the volume on what they're saying.
And we wouldn't even find out about that till after the election.
I mean, the idea that you can say this with a straight face is just downright shocking, I think.
And at Twitter now, there are all these guys expressing, they're calling up the New York Times, they're calling up friendly leftist media.
The leftist media, by the way, have been cheering censorship all along.
And they're like, oh man, Elon Musk is going to clean out the cockroaches.
We cockroaches were really having a good time in the building.
We thought this place, Twitter, was for cockroaches only.
This guy is now planning to do a major fumigation.
So Elon Musk is bringing the sunlight.
And this is obviously terrifying, terrifying the left.
Now, this is when Musk gets in there, there's a lot he has to do.
And it's not simply that he needs to let people back on.
It's also that he needs to get rid of these shadow manning algorithms, these ways of shutting people down.
I think some of the leftists are already running away from those dials because maybe they feel that Musk will come in with his engineers.
He'll figure out who's been doing what.
He'll get rid of those people.
So these guys are now suddenly, it's like they're letting go of the controls and you can already see the liberating effect of that on Twitter.
So for social media, it's a very good day in America with, I think, a lot more to come.
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Elon Musk is not a conservative.
In fact, here's what he says.
I hope that even my worst critics remain on Twitter, because that's what free speech means.
Now, here you've got a guy who has a principled commitment to free speech.
And by the way, this used to be something on which the left and the right could agree.
If we go back to when I first came to America, the debates in the 1980s and 90s, there was a debate over whether we want more or less government control of the economy, but there was really no debate on whether or not the First Amendment, whether or not there should be a public square in which people should be free to speak.
And that's really all that Musk is committed to, is protecting that infrastructure of free speech.
And it's so telling that that alone is causing this kind of volcanic eruption on the left.
One thing that got me thinking was, what is the impact of this going to be on other platforms?
And particularly kind of alternative, conservative-leaning platforms that were set up because Twitter was so closed and closed-minded.
What's going to happen to Getter?
And what's going to happen to Parler?
What's going to happen to Truth Social?
Well, here's some good news.
I actually just saw this.
And then Devin Nunes texted it to me.
I'm looking at the apps and the top free apps in America right now.
Number one, Truth Social.
Number two, Twitter.
So this is very telling, and this is good news.
In fact, just in recent days, Truth Social has really opened up.
I've noticed, for example, my own following on Truth Social was a Hovering around 70,000 or 80,000, growing by 1,000 or so a day.
And suddenly I notice it's over 100,000.
It's 150,000.
Now it's over 200,000.
And all of this has happened in a few days.
So this really shows you how platforms can grow when you're not being restricted on them.
And I don't think that even straightening out Twitter is going to eliminate the need for these alternative platforms.
Not to mention that I think in a free marketplace of ideas, you want multiple options.
I mean, there's no reason you can't have, in a sense, just as you, you know, you don't have to be limited to sort of one type of car or one type of restaurant.
You're going to find that each of these platforms sort of finds their own particular style and their own particular niche.
Trump apparently is not going to go back on Twitter, even if they let him.
And of course, I see no reason that Musk wouldn't let him.
But Trump basically goes, you know what, I've set up my own.
I've got Truth Social. And Trump actually says that he's going to begin truthing over the next week.
This is very interesting because so far, well, it's been mainly in the beta phase, and a lot of us have been vigorously posting on Truth Social, but no Trump.
Trump just sort of a little bit of a welcome to Truth Social, but apparently he's now moving into gear to start posting, and I think that's going to drive explosive growth on the platform.
I think also the association between Truth Social and Rumble has now become consolidated, which means that Rumble servers and Rumble technology is going to be helping and driving Truth Social, and that is That is all to the good.
Hey, by the way, I just want to mention that Rumble just put out its press release today, that I'll be releasing the new film, 2000 Mules, on Locals, which is a Rumble-owned platform.
It'll also be on Salem now, because I'm partners with Salem Media, but Locals is a giant platform, and you notice I'm putting the movie on uncancellable platforms.
So... I welcome the opening that's occurred at Twitter.
It couldn't have come at a greater time for me to market and get the word out about this movie.
But I'm going to put the movie where the left, which is going to be desperate to sort of shut it down and block it, is not going to be able to do that.
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Feel the difference. Debbie and I were chatting this morning about Elon Musk and Twitter.
And we were noticing that in response to this purchase of Twitter, you now have a lot of the leftists on Twitter, by the way, people who have had a relative monopoly of their ideas being pushed on Twitter, now suddenly saying, Wait a minute.
What's all this talk about censorship?
What's all this talk about free speech?
We haven't been doing that.
And of course, Debbie was like, yeah, well, I remember.
Well, you remember. Yeah, so they actually, you know, We're going to have Brian Miller on in the next segment.
And he is actually, he composed, he did the arrangement for America the Beautiful, the song that I sang for Trump Card.
And of course, I love the arrangement.
I've sung America the Beautiful many times, but this is my favorite arrangement.
So I put it on Twitter.
And the weirdest thing happened.
All of a sudden...
And I'm going to put it on the screen here, but they put a warning on the song, on the clip of the song, because it might have sensitive content.
Sensitive content. Anyway, so we have a little clip of the song.
I'm going to play it, and I'm going to see if you think it's sensitive.
America, America God shed His grace on thee.
And crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.
I mean, can you think of anything more ridiculous?
I mean, really, I was a little shocked.
It took you a while to even get into their head, but I think you figured it out.
I think I did figure it out.
Basically, at the end of the clip, it's a video, it's a music video, at the end of the clip, we're promoting the movie Trump Card.
And it says Trump card.
So you think that just the name Trump is so radioactive?
Well, you know, I've always told you that I think Trump is actually like holy water on Satan.
So these guys are like, Trump, Trump.
So they have to label it sensitive content because of his name.
It's ridiculous. But what's more ridiculous is that they act like they don't do this.
In fact, yeah. Look at these Twitter.
They're doing a clarification of their rules and they say things like, Twitter does not shadow ban.
Twitter does not censor.
Of course, as you read the fine print, it's somewhat nuanced because they have to admit that they do censor and they do restrict people.
But they say things like, wait a minute, hidden replies aren't censored.
You can't actually click on the icon and see the hidden reply.
Yeah. Well, you know, what's really funny is I see Twitter doesn't do anything to combat hate on the platform.
And they say, oh, yes, we do.
Do you know how much hatred my husband gets on Twitter and how much they get away with it?
That's because it's a one-sided rule.
I mean, all their rules are like that.
Oh, of course not. All their rules are like that.
And we are so happy that Twitter will finally be a platform where people can actually share ideas, discuss ideas, argue with other people.
You know, that's what makes America free.
But you know what, Twitter? I think that I will be happy when YouTube gets the same treatment.
Oh, I mean, these guys, look, right now I bet Zuckerberg is kind of quivering a little bit because, you know, again, monopolies work when everybody is part of the...
when everybody cooperates and blocks outsiders from getting in.
And now you have all these alternative platforms, but you now have one of the major mainstream platforms, in a sense...
Breaking loose. Yeah, yeah.
And we've talked about how it's not going to be a right-wing platform.
And we don't want it to be a right-wing platform.
Well, hold on for a second. Frankly, if I were Elon Musk, I would say, listen, every day, just for fun, I'm going to kick one leftist off for no reason, only to let them know how it feels.
I don't like what they do to us. Yeah, it's not because he doesn't believe in free speech.
It's just that you've got to teach these guys a lesson because their commitment to censorship is all based upon a hidden premise.
And here's their premise. We'll never be censored.
Right? Because it's kind of like, I won't be opposed to manholes as long as I never fall into one.
Yeah. But the moment I realize that I might fall into a manhole, suddenly I'm kind of worried about manholes.
Yeah. I hope you talk about this more tomorrow and the next day and the next day.
Because it's really important to show the hypocrisy of these people.
I mean, you've shown me some clips.
I hope you play them tomorrow.
Of some of these, you know, CNN people that are like, they are so upset about this whole thing.
And, you know, it just really goes to show you just the hypocrisy of all this.
Well, I mean, they believe deep down in a one-party state.
Yes. And they believe in a one-party state in which they are the sort of licensed propagandists for the one-party state and nobody else gets to speak.
In fact, at one point, I think it was Mika Brzezinski who even said, you know, this guy is now trying to control what people think.
That's our job. Yeah, exactly.
She literally blurted out that it's our job to control what people think.
Sorry, Mika, it's no longer going to be you.
It's not going to be someone else.
Hehehe. We're good to go.
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Guys, I'm really thrilled to welcome to the podcast Brian Miller.
Some of you might wonder as you watch my movies, well, who does the score?
Who does the music that makes these movies come alive?
Well, here's the guy, Brian Miller.
He's composed music for four out of my five films, including, by the way, the latest one...
2,000 Mules. Bryant's company is called Sensory Overload.
This is a guy, he's a composer, he's a music producer out of LA. His work has been featured on Dancing with the Stars.
He's scored TV, commercials, documentaries, feature films.
And he's also done some work with St.
Jude's Children's Hospital.
Brian, welcome to the podcast.
Great to have you.
And man, it's so much fun.
You know, when we get our movies done and we sort of deliver them to you, we always wait with bated breath to see what you're going to do with them.
But isn't it true that a score is kind of the...
What would you call it?
Is it like the emotional undercurrent of a movie?
How do you understand what a score does in a movie?
Absolutely. The score is a major part of that movie, right?
And it's a little bit, in some cases, a subconscious part, right?
That people aren't necessarily paying super attention to it, but it's guiding you on how you feel, you know, what you're experiencing, if you're angry, if you're crying, if you're cheering, right?
Music has contributed to all those things.
So if you take music out of the most iconic movies in America, they're largely different experiences.
Because of what the music is creating.
Brian, talk about how you do a score.
Because as I understand it, and I'm not really a music guy.
I mean, Debbie is, but I'm not.
A score is a different set of skills than, say, composing a tune or composing a symphony.
Is it that you pay careful attention to the storyline of the movie and then, in a sense, guide the viewer as to how to feel about this particular...
How do you actually do it?
Sure. It's an interesting skill.
There's similarities to being a songwriter.
There's some shared skills there, but it's also a very unique craft, right?
Because the music has to contribute in a significant way, but it is not the star of the show, right?
So you're very much of a servant.
You're serving the story.
You're supporting the story.
You're trying to maximize the story.
And if you try to make it too much about yourself or your music, you start getting in the way and it starts getting distracting.
It doesn't work. Because you need music to support the emotion without grabbing the attention from the viewer.
You're basically trying to support that emotional story.
That's what's been great on some of your films, like America, underscoring these famous speeches by Lincoln or Washington, having these great moments.
Those moments lend to great music because they're epic moments by themselves, but it gives you a chance to I mean, Debbie and I have talked more than once about how the scene that we have of, you know, of John Wilkes Booth coming up to Lincoln, walking up the stairs, and Lincoln sort of, you see the kind of the whites of his eyes, and the music underneath that is...
I mean, what I find so powerful is it's not sad.
It's a combination of very complex emotions that it brings out in you of tragedy, but inevitability.
There's a sublime element to it.
So, I mean, this is why we think you're a genius is because you're able to tap those chords in a very subtle way.
It is very much of a skill, and that's, you know, you experiment, you try it, but yes, you're absolutely right, that you're trying to, sometimes the very complex emotions, it's not happy, sad, you know, minor, major, it's these very much, you know, that's a very conflicted scene, as you kind of know what's coming, and you're building, but you know, that's again, great filmmaking, it's a great, it's shot really great, there's anticipation as he's going up the steps, it gives you a chance as a From a musical standpoint to really support that.
So that's a combination of where great film and great music really work together hand in hand.
You could have a great piece of music, but if it wasn't to cut that same way, it wouldn't have that interaction.
That's the beauty of cinematic art is those two art forms really working well together.
I mean, also in the last film where you composed, you really composed your own rendition of America the Beautiful, a song that, by the way, Debbie and I had both heard, you know, hundreds of times.
And Debbie had said that she sang it many, many times, but there was a uniqueness to your rendition.
that gave it a poignancy.
And I remember you kind of guiding Debbie in the singing process because you were trying to capture a different range of emotions, in some ways make it almost a creepier, more ominous rendition than the kind of normal America the Beautiful.
And it just took on a whole new coloration.
Yeah, I got to do that same type of thing in 2000 Mules too on the end title credit.
So the trick there is both those songs, Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful, are in the major key, right?
And they're kind of, you know, this Americana, feel good, happy.
And, you know, a lot of things you're talking about in your movies are there's some real reason to be concerned about what's going on.
So the idea, the creative process behind that was, what if we took those songs and twisted that and put that in a minor key, even though it's really in a major key?
So you have all that familiarity, but now you kind of have a darkness and a uniqueness to it.
And Debbie did such a great job on that song.
I'm very proud of the way that came out.
I just like watching the reaction and the comments on YouTube from all the positive.
It's great to see people reacting so powerfully to that song.
Brian, talk a little bit about you're a conservative, you're a Christian, and you're also an artist.
And by and large, it seems like, at least in today's culture, the art world is dominated politically on the left.
Do you see your musical work as a sort of vocation?
Talk about the importance of culture here and how important it is for those of us who are conservative, who are Christian, to participate in the culture and in some cases to create our own culture.
Sure. That's a very deep question, and I definitely agree.
I think a long time ago, the church just basically abandoned the arts and abandoned Hollywood, and we saw with the absence of any kind of moral straight line what happened, right?
So it's not a fight you can necessarily run from, right?
Or you'll be dominated by it.
So the trick is, how do you be part of that and not contribute to that?
And it's difficult in my situation because as a composer, you're basically adding music to an existing, you know, film or project.
So you have less kind of control over the content, right?
Which is why it's great to work on projects like that we've been able to work on is because they have a real positive, you know, especially this new one, it has an opportunity to really, you know, change the system, right?
If people will really stand up and pay attention, it's such a great thing.
So it's great to find those kind of opportunities where you can take your vocation and your craft, but then marry that with a project that has really significance.
Well, Brian, thank you so much for joining me.
You know, if I'd met you earlier, you would have done all my films, but you've done pretty much all of them since we met.
It's been a thrill working with you.
I know Debbie feels exactly the same way.
We look forward to seeing you at the movie premiere that's coming up.
Have And Debbie also wants to know, if people want to learn more about your work, what's the website?
Where can they go to learn more about your musical compositions?
Sure. So it's Brian, with a Y, B-R-Y-A-N, emiller.com is the best site for all my music stuff.
And I'm on LinkedIn and a great place to connect.
Okay. Thanks very much, Brian.
Really appreciate it. Absolutely.
And Dinesh, it's been a real pleasure.
I love working with you guys.
It's always a class act and a great chance to stretch my creative genius.
And as you guys say, because you guys give me these great assignments and say, we want this and make it like this.
And we want something iconic and epic.
And it's just a great umbrella to work within.
Good stuff. Thank you, Brian.
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Or go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code BALANCE. I want to talk in this segment about the concept of natural law.
And I want to do it by looking at an article, one of my favorite publications, the quarterly journal called First Things.
And the article is by a theologian named David Novak.
Who is a chair of Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto.
The article is called The Bottom Line.
And it gets to some of the conundrums around this concept of natural law, which I think are very illuminating.
So Novak begins by...
Talking about reading Martin Luther King's letter from the Birmingham jail.
And he says what's really interesting here is that Martin Luther King is breaking a law.
It's the segregation law of Birmingham.
And yet Martin Luther King is arguing that he is right to do this.
He is right to break the law.
So, David Novak raises the obvious question, how can you justify breaking a law?
And Martin Luther King answers, in effect, I'm breaking the law because the law itself is wrong.
The law is unjust. So, since the law is unjust, it is just to violate the law.
Now, if I'm punished for doing that, so be it.
But I am in the right and the law is in the wrong.
This is King. So here's Martin Luther King saying, in effect, that there is a law above the law.
Well, what law is that? A kind of a higher law.
And this is a very direct appeal to natural law.
The concept of natural law is nothing more than the idea of a higher law, a kind of a God-given law, a law embedded, you may say, in the code of nature itself.
And what King is saying is that our ordinary laws, our positive laws, so-called laws that are passed by legislatures and so on, need to be judged themselves by this higher standard.
King specifically appealed to Thomas Aquinas, quoted Aquinas to this exact effect.
Now, David Novak steps back from all this and he says, you know...
It is true that people recognize that human laws can fall short.
They don't always do the job that they're supposed to do.
But they say, like, why do we need to bring God into it?
Like, what's God got to do with this?
Why can't we just have human ideals that are sort of higher ideals and we can judge or we can measure our laws by this kind of Human idealistic standard that obviates, makes unnecessary the need for some kind of appeal to a higher power.
But David Novak argues that that doesn't really work because if you're going to judge a law and conclude that the law itself falls short, an ideal isn't going to be sufficient to do that because an ideal is nothing more than an aspiration.
It's a feeling. I have my ideal is this.
Your ideal is that.
And if a law is passed through, let's just say, a democratic process, and much as we object to the content of segregation laws, they were in fact passed by elected legislatures who decided this is how we want to do it.
So there's a kind of democratic legitimacy to those laws.
So does it make sense to say even though those laws were passed democratically through the legislature, that somehow...
Well, we happen to have an ideal that trumps them.
That doesn't really work.
I agree. And David Novak says, look, the only way to find a law inadequate is if there is some kind of a higher law.
But then that raises the obvious question, who made that law?
Because, clearly, you don't have a Birmingham Assembly passing that law.
This higher law appears to be written in our conscience, you may say embedded in our nature, but who is its source?
And David Novak says, look...
The source has to be our creator.
In fact, it doesn't even, and here I'm going beyond the realm of the article, it doesn't even make sense to say that this higher law is somehow a product of evolution because evolution is a strategy for human reproductive survival and success.
Evolution is a strategy for sort of making good and getting on in the world and, of course, leaving descendants.
And there's absolutely no reason that evolution needs to produce this kind of A set of commandments, imperially delivered, in a sense, within us.
Adam Smith sort of talks about, he uses the phrase, the impartial spectator.
It's almost like we've got a little being inside of us, and every time we want to do X, there's a voice in us that sort of says, wait a minute, hold on, or that's not right.
And it speaks to us with this kind of unimpeachable moral authority.
So, David Novak then turns to his final point, which is that while these laws are identified and were, in a sense, articulated by Jewish and then Christian thinkers and philosophers, David Novak says there's nothing particularly Jewish or Christian about them.
In other words, these are universal laws.
You can find a guy in Sri Lanka or a guy in Mogadishu or a guy anywhere in the world, and they will have an in-built sense of right and wrong.
This sense of conscience is not something that is culturally particular.
In some cases, it finds a culturally particular expression on a given issue, but the idea of conscience itself is not particular to individuals.
And it's not particular to any particular religious tradition.
In other words, the American founders were right when they spoke about the laws of nature and nature as God.
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In the last segment, I spoke about natural law as a conscience or anchor for the way that we live.
And natural law supplies that guide that tells you if you're getting off the right path and moving on the wrong one.
But we seem to live in a society, Western society today, where the distinctions between right and wrong have become blurred.
Not blurred inside the individual conscience, but blurred in public culture.
And what is it like to live in the kind of drifting world of...
Western nihilism.
Well, one writer who talks about this and discusses it through novels, so you have to sort of tease out what he's getting at, is the French writer Michel Houlebecq.
And Ullebeck's novels and his works are, they take as their subject, you could almost call it the generation of 1968.
In other words, the leftist generation that came of age in the 60s and created in the West, in Paris and in Munich and Berlin and in New York and in San Francisco.
And then spreading out into Western culture, this sort of nihilistic outlook, nihilism here referring to the sense that everyone has their own set of values, but no one really believes in anything all that strongly.
And We have societies that are technologically advanced and quite prosperous, but you have people who are morally adrift.
In other words, people have more than ever before, and yet never before have they had less of a clear idea of what their lives are for or where they're going.
One of the ways that Ullebeck depicts this, and I'm looking here at his latest novel, it focuses on a protagonist who is in the political class, and he's among all these guys who are in some ways either running for office, aspiring to run for office, but even though these are men that Ullebeck is focusing on, they're surrounded, their communications are dictated entirely by women.
And so, what Ulebeck is getting at here is the way in which sexual identities become not only blurred, but transposed.
All this communication in the end, says Ulebeck, is about nothing.
It's merely style.
There's no substance to it.
No one's actually concerned about what is being said.
It's all about how you say it, how it's being received, what impressions are being produced.
All of this should sound kind of eerily familiar.
And for Ulebeck, the women always take the initiative.
Why? Because you're living in a world with feminized men and masculinized women.
This is a kind of transposition of the old patriarchy.
But it's not that everybody's becoming more androgynous.
In fact, the women become more...
Concerned and obsessed with power, and the men are now represented as weak and sort of losing energy and succumbing, not just in the domestic sphere, but in the public sphere, to the influence of women.
In one of the stories, Ullebeck talks about this guy who has this younger brother, and his younger brother is really focused on medieval tapestries, but is married to this woman who's a journalist.
And his wife decides, I want to have a child but not with you.
Not that she wants to actually sleep with somebody else, but what she wants to do is she wants to have a child by artificial insemination from a black sperm donor.
Now just try to picture the scene here because, and this is Ullebeck kind of in his mode, in the zone, because what the wife is really saying is that you're not sterile, but I'm choosing to have a child with a black donor so I can prove I'm not a racist.
So what you have simultaneously is a kind of betrayal of the marriage vow, because obviously think of the humiliation of a man who's now going to have a son who's clearly not his.
And not his by choice.
The woman is actually deciding against him and in favor of having a child with another man.
And at the same time, the wife isn't going to feel bad about it because in public she can demonstrate her anti-racism by, in a sense, parading this black or half-black offspring as a kind of signal of her social virtue.
So you see here, and this is the point I think that Ullebeck is getting at, is that the Virtue signaling, the political virtue signaling, is completely compatible with, in fact, derives from a sense of a kind of vicious and callous personal lack of virtue.
So the lack of personal virtue is somehow combined with this fake demonstration of public virtue.
And there you have the liberal.
I mean, that's the progressive move, and that is to be a despicable individual in ordinary life, untrustworthy, unreliable, essentially a practitioner of all the vices, a kind of indulger of all the seven deadly sins, but then somehow, therefore, you know, Bill Clinton-style Yeah, I might be a predator and a pervert, but I'm for women's rights.
I support the Equal Rights Amendment.
You can always count on me for that.
And it puts me in mind of Edmund Burke's description of the French Revolutionaries, lacking a single habit of decent behavior.
They all prefer moral opinions instead.
Well, now we're going to begin a series of segments, which I'll do over subsequent days.
In which we travel with Dante the Pilgrim through paradise.
Now, a couple things to say as introducing this topic.
And the first one is...
I want to set you at ease right away because you might think, wow, you know, Inferno is really fascinating.
You meet all these strange and troubled and dangerous and vicious characters.
Purgatory is also very interesting because...
You've got a similar cast of characters who have lived very checkered lives and are now being humbled in their pride or being blinded from their lust or are being constrained from their avarice.
They're being purged of their sins.
But gee, in paradise we're going to be meeting these namby-pamby guys who are like, oh wait, you know, what are these, a bunch of monks or people who have never done the wrong thing.
And we're going to discover that this is not true at all.
That you're going to find horrendous...
Sinners in paradise, no less than in purgatory and no less than in inferno.
Now, we'll find more of them in the kind of lower rungs of paradise, and that itself is going to raise an interesting question.
Dante seems to imply that heaven isn't like a single place.
Where, you know, there's everybody's treated exactly the same.
Hey, guys, we have pure equality in heaven.
Yes, there is actually equality in heaven.
There's a certain profound equality in heaven.
Everyone in that sense is equal in God's eyes.
But at the same time, there are spheres and rungs and Dante implies even sort of different proportions.
Welcome to my show!
Another thing I'd like to say is that as we read Dante, there are, particularly for the reader who isn't just reading for the first time, obviously when you read for the first time, you want to read straight through.
And we are kind of making our way straight through the poem.
At times, I'll pause...
To reflect back.
And sometimes I'll also draw analogies to something that's happening, say, in Purgatory by looking back at what's happened in Inferno.
And you'll also notice that very often, if we're in Purgatory of Five, We'll find something very interesting by analogy in Inferno V. And this is another way to say that Dante can be read both vertically and horizontally.
So, reading Dante vertically means reading straight through.
But reading horizontally means when we look at, when we get to, for example, Paradiso V, We're going to want to think back to Purgatorio V and Inferno V and we're going to find that Dante's already been there.
In other words, it's not that we are implanting through intellectual ingenuity meanings that were never intended in the poem.
Once we begin to think back, we'll realize, oh my gosh, this A craftsman, Dante, has very carefully put things in Paradiso V that build on Purgatorio V and Inferno V. So this is the horizontal reading that gives great texture and depth to this poem, and it allows you to be able to read it many, many times.
Let me finally say a word about the geography of Paradise, because it's actually not the same.
In fact, it's radically different from Inferno and Purgatorio.
Why? Well, the first question to ask is, what is Paradise?
I mean, is Paradise a place?
Is it a location somewhere?
Well, where? Where is it?
And Dante has to deal with this, because Dante is going to construct a kind of architecture of paradise, and it's going to be different from the architecture of Inferno and Purgatory.
Now, Inferno is actually on Earth.
According to Dante, Inferno is basically going into the bowels of the Earth.
You may say drilling down.
And somewhere in the center of the Earth, you've got this burning and at the center of it, ice-cold hell.
And so the geographical journey is sort of downward into Inferno.
Purgatory is a mountain.
There's a purgatorial mountain which rises above a sphere of water.
And it, too, has a definite...
And particular geographical location.
But Dante recognizes that paradise is not like this.
It is, well, first of all, there's a sense in which paradise is out of this world.
It's beyond space and time.
And so Dante very ingeniously constructs This architecture of paradise.
And he does it by using the concept of the geocentric universe, which, of course, is the only universe that people knew at the time.
This is, of course, before Copernicus and Galileo.
So, you have the Earth at the center of the universe, and then you've got the moon, and then you've got the planets, including the sun, going one after the other, and then leading to the...
Outer stars, and then beyond that, in a different realm, Dante recognizes, you have the emperor reign.
And this is actually where the souls in heaven really are.
They're not in the stars.
They appear in the stars to Dante, and I'll say more about this the next time.
The souls in heaven are manifesting themselves through particular virtues in particular stars or planets.
But the souls themselves are in the emperor reign in a kind of golden ring, contemplating and enjoying the bliss of the creator himself.
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