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Aug. 5, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
50:35
FREEDOM FIGHTER? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep387
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This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walser, a financial expert who can help you protect your wealth.
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Now, coming up, Debbie's going to join me.
We're going to talk about a bunch of issues, including Brittany Greiner.
Is she a freedom fighter, as Time Magazine suggests?
We're going to talk about the verdict in her drug case.
Gianna Jessen joins me.
She is an abortion survivor.
She's going to really share her riveting story about how she ended up with cerebral palsy and a bunch of other ailments because her mom unsuccessfully tried to abort her.
And I'll discuss the role in the Iliad of compare and contrast Hector and Achilles, the one representing humanity, and the other to a degree inhumanity.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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 guys, this is a good day.
Debbie and I like at the end of the week to do kind of a little bit of a week roundup.
But I noticed that this morning we have sort of complimentary outfits.
I've got a little streak of orange here.
And you check out my FJB. FJB? I was like, what's FJB? FJB. Well, the culprit here is actually my daughter, Danielle.
She has created for me a merchandise store.
Now, I'm not smart enough to do this, but it's shop.dineshdesusa.com.
And it has all kinds of cool stuff.
I mean, it has t-shirts, it has mugs, it has hoodies.
But I love these polo-type shirts.
Yeah, those are really nice. I hadn't seen any polos ever.
No, they've got a bunch of them now.
And I think what's cool, what's funny about this shirt is it's kind of elegant as a shirt, but the message is downright savage.
It's really kind of funny, actually.
It's hilarious. So this is a way for you to send a message while still, you know.
Looking good. Looking elegant and looking cool.
Yeah. Well, somebody who's very uncool, but the left is trying to make cool.
Brittany Griner. They keep calling her a W... What's it?
The WNBA? Women's NBA. Or the WBA, maybe, is what it is.
NBA. I think she's a basketball player, no?
Right, right. Yeah, so it's WNBA. They keep calling her a WNBA star, even though no one's really heard of her.
But nevertheless, here on Time Magazine, on the cover, Brittany Griner and the fight for freedom.
Now, what's the fight for freedom?
She's been arrested in Russia for illegal drugs.
And, you know, I know when it comes to my own case, people love to go, well, you pleaded guilty, didn't you?
So, you know, what are you complaining about?
You obviously deserve whatever penalty they gave you, even if they locked you up for ten years because you pleaded guilty.
Well, Brittany Griner got nine years or nine and a half years.
Well, you know what? She pleaded guilty.
Uh-oh. So, what's there to feel bad about?
Yeah. Well, she probably gets treated better in prison than the January 6th defendants do.
Well, you're making a profound point here, which is this.
You know, if this had happened 20 years ago, my reaction would have gone something like this.
I would have said, you know, Brittany Griner needs to learn how great it is to live in America.
When you're in some other country like Russia, you're not going to get due process, you know.
So, you know. Here's a woman who's been taking a knee and all these critiques of the founders and of America.
Well, you know what?
America's not so bad after all.
That would have been my reaction, but this was actually not my reaction with this case.
My reaction was, frankly, they're trying to get me to be outraged.
They're trying to get me to care. I don't care.
My reaction to this is basically snore.
Why be? Because this is happening, and far worse, in our own country.
There are people who have peacefully protested at the Capitol.
They're facing, well, Guy Refit just got seven years.
He didn't even go in the Capitol.
So, you've got abuses of law occurring in the United States, and frankly, I'm in no way outraged by what happened to...
It used to be that anytime we had political prisoners or prisoners in other countries with no due process, it was kind of an outrage.
But we haven't been in our own country.
So we really cannot be that outraged because until we fix the problem here...
We can't really be telling Russia or China or anybody else what to do with their justice system, because look at ours.
Well, I think what happened in the case of Brittany Griner is this.
Number one, there are Americans who don't think that other countries' laws need to be followed, and they do.
They need to apply to them. Apply to them.
It's kind of like, I'm an American, so if I'm in Thailand, I have drugs, no, I don't need to be charged the way the Thai people are.
But the truth of it is when foreigners come to our country, they're under our laws.
And if they break our laws, we treat them as lawbreakers the same as American citizens.
The other point is that I think what happened with Brittany Griner, she's entitled.
You know? She's black.
She's a lesbian. So she has a sense in America that she can do whatever she wants.
She's above the law. Mm-hmm.
She goes to Russia and she discovers that other people don't see it that way.
I don't think it would really matter what she looked like or was.
If she had the goods, she's going to go to prison in Russia.
And it's interesting, even now, the preferred status of Brittany Griner, because the U.S. State Department is, like, working on the case.
Biden has offered to exchange Brittany Griner for some Russian, you know, convict.
And so, she's getting special treatment as it is.
Think of it. There are lots of other people, Americans abroad.
Think of the Americans left behind in Afghanistan.
What efforts has the U.S. government made to go get all of them?
Look at the Venezuelan Marine that is in a Venezuelan prison right now, dying...
Where's the government? Look at the Citgo 6.
Where's Time Magazine with his cover?
Right. You know what I mean?
So, basically, the fight for freedom only applies to the left.
The criminals of the left are made into cult heroes.
That's what's going on.
That's right. And part of our job is not to fall for it.
I notice even Republicans.
I just saw a couple of Republican senators and congressmen about The treatment of Brittany Greiner is unacceptable and so on.
Blah, blah, blah. It's not unacceptable.
I wish you had spent some time focusing on the political prisoners in our country.
And these are people who are exercising legitimate political protest.
Yeah, but they went inside the Capitol.
So what? What if some leftist goes inside the Capitol?
What happens to them? Nothing.
Nothing at all.
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There's still some ongoing fallout from Nancy Pelosi's trip to Taiwan.
Now, I think, honey, I mean, this trip has been from the beginning a mystery, right?
Kind of strange. Kind of strange. I mean, it's like, what is she doing?
It's so out of character for this woman to do something like this.
So, what did I say?
What's in it for her?
Right. Debbie's point in the morning when she's telling me, she goes, listen, if Nancy Pelosi goes to Taiwan, you can ignore all her stated, Taiwan is a valuable ally.
We need to be with Taiwan.
Democrats, Debbie, you made the point.
You're like, they never act out of philanthropic motives.
And they certainly don't act out of the motive of protecting the interests of the United States.
Never. In fact, subverting those interests is kind of their mission.
Always. Always. So, Pelosi must have another motive.
Now, we don't know what that is.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, it could be...
We don't know. We don't know. Maybe a little bit of...
Case of whiskey or something?
I don't know. Well, I mean, could it be that she has a big Taiwanese donor in San Francisco?
Now, if this was Hillary Clinton, we would know the motive.
And that is some major Taiwanese company is providing massive kickbacks to the Clinton Foundation.
Or Biden. We'd be looking for, you know, let's look at Hunter Biden's lap.
How much money changed? How much is going to the big guy?
So we know all that. Now, the Chinese have escalated their military exercises over Taiwan.
Yeah. I think it's because the Chinese kind of thought they had Biden where they wanted him.
They feel like, this is almost like they feel like they own Biden.
And so Biden's going to behave and he's going to keep Pelosi in line.
But I don't think Pelosi went as a form of aggression to China because she's beholden to China as well.
So I don't really, that's why it's so mysterious because she doesn't usually do anything like that.
Like this. And we do know that China, that she likes China.
Remember when, right before the virus, oh, you can't call it the Chinese virus, and you have to go to Chinatown.
Oh, I remember all that.
Remember all that? Yes. Well, I mean, there's a huge Chinese population in San Francisco, and so that's certainly true.
But I think the point, looking at this in terms of just sort of national interest and real politics, sometimes countries will do things that provoke the ire of another country, and there's some instability that results from that, but you do it because it's the right thing to do.
The problem here is, why are we sort of creating international instability over Nancy Pelosi's travel schedule?
What is she getting out of this trip?
As far as we can see, nothing.
Time will tell, right?
What it was all about and what she went for and how China is going to...
Because really, truly, I think that China wants Taiwan.
And I think they know that they have a very limited time until they can no longer do it.
You mean while Biden's in office?
While Biden's in office or even the midterms.
Even the November midterms, because Biden's not going to be able to do what he wants once that happens.
Well, he still has a lot of latitude in foreign policy.
Let's remember the president is the commander in chief.
He operates pretty much without...
So they may be looking at it in terms of 24, right?
So they're going to do it between now and 24.
So it wouldn't surprise me.
Well, I think the other thing that's going on is that...
because it has been the world's sole superpower now since the collapse of the Soviet Union, since 1992, so really for 30 years.
And I think what the Chinese are saying is sort of not so fast.
You know, it's like we're watching the show Prehistoric Planet.
And they'll talk about the old dinosaur that's ruled the roost.
But the old dinosaur is eventually confronted by a younger, strong dinosaur who's like, I'm gonna challenge you for your superiority in this kind of herd.
That's what's going on here. The Chinese are like, you know what, you may think we're the small guy, But we're not really the small guy anymore.
And your economy is very dependent on ours.
And your military is not as superior to ours as it once was.
Let alone with all the woke innovations that you're introducing.
So, I think the Chinese are pushing.
It's the young dinosaur pushing at the older dinosaur.
And basically saying, move back.
And like you say, they know they can do it easier when the old dinosaur is named Joe Biden.
Yeah. Yeah, and half asleep.
And the old dinosaur is napping.
He's taking his winter slumber.
And his brain cells have basically gone to rust.
So it's kind of a sorry picture that we're seeing.
As I said yesterday on the podcast, the Chinese today are acting far more like a superpower than we are.
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Feel the difference. It's very interesting, but in the abortion debate, we've seen a kind of shift in the rhetoric of the Democrats and of the left.
Suddenly, we find that they're talking a lot about ectopic pregnancies.
They're talking about About miscarriages.
They're making it seem like the abortion debate is not about abortion.
It's not about, you know, killing your kid who's in the process of being born.
Rather, it is about these other things.
Now, we talked, I guess last week it was, about the ectopic pregnancy, but you saw an article in the New York Times about miscarriage and abortion equating the two.
Yeah, and you know, I mean, I think...
I've talked about this before, but I was actually a pro-choice...
I wouldn't say I was a pro-abortion advocate, but I was a pro-choice person in college, you know, high school, college.
Really, up until I suffered a miscarriage in 1994 at the age of 28.
I was really excited.
I was, you know, finally pregnant, and I had a miscarriage at about seven weeks or so.
And so I instinctively became a pro-lifer at that point because I understood...
The line between my body and my baby's body, really more than I ever had before.
And so when I saw this article about why do we talk about miscarriage differently from abortion, I just about flipped over the chair.
I couldn't believe it.
And then when I started reading further...
Read a couple of lines from the article.
So it says, the line between abortion and pregnancy loss has always been blurry.
Really? Really?
You know, and then it gets better.
Let's read this. Pregnancy loss and abortion have more in common than many people realize.
The physical experiences are often virtually identical.
Early abortion with medication mimics the experience of miscarriage, and early miscarriage care often involves some drugs or procedures used for an abortion.
I mean, what...
Well, let's pause and highlight the critical difference that is being blurred over here.
The critical difference, of course, is the same difference as somebody who is, let's say, killed by an accident or killed by a disease, killed by some factor that's outside your control.
Or, as I just told you, it's like pushing Grandpa down the stairs versus him having a heart attack.
Right. In both cases, Grandpa ends up being dead.
But in one case, well, it's not really his own choosing.
So imagine the murderer going before court and saying, you know what?
This experience of Grandpa bouncing down the stairs as a result of me pushing him It mimics the experience of Grandpa having a heart attack.
In both cases, you feel a constriction, a sense of pain.
In both cases, you feel the life ebbing away from you.
So why are people making this radical separation between, right?
I mean, this is really the heart of the matter. Of course, we never would do that to Grandpa.
But you know what we're getting at here.
But it's just, you know, they also go on to say abortion and miscarriage are both common.
Well, you know, That's also very strange that we even put that in there.
It's a very offensive... It is, it is. And they go on to even say that in the old times that women were seen, you know, even if women lost babies via, you know, miscarriage or abortion, they were seen as heroines because they were making sure that they had enough to be able to feed the children that they And so that they were limiting the amount of children that they, you know...
Well, that's another massive diversion because even in that case, and these would be extreme cases of people in survival societies where I have three kids, I can't feed the fourth one.
Look, even there, what you have is that difficult trading of one life for another.
That's not the case today.
Today, no one is saying, listen, I cannot have another child because there is no way to provide food for my existing children.
Nonsense. Put the child up for adoption.
There are people who will feed it.
They will look after it.
And they also talk about reproductive justice.
And they're saying that women of color and minorities...
They get put into this box where even if they have a miscarriage or an abortion, they're looked at the same way.
And I was like, no, they're not.
I mean, really, when you have a pregnancy loss, that is not your choice.
That is basically...
Human, you know, Mother Nature saying this baby is not going to be born whole or there are, you know, maybe chromosomal or, you know, something wrong with the baby.
And I always say it was God's will that I didn't have this baby in 1994.
I ended up having one in 1995.
So the key difference is really in the intention of the mother, and more importantly, in the case of a miscarriage, the mother, and this was you, wants the child.
The mother is actually doing everything it can to see this child born, and you feel a sense of loss.
Yes, and so that too, they're saying that in both instances, whether you have an abortion or a miscarriage, you Right, right.
Yeah, the sense of loss is because of you, the perpetrator.
You are responsible for that.
And then whining about your own sense of loss when you've deprived somebody else of life is a bit rich.
And this last paragraph here.
Many people experience abortion, pregnancy loss, and the birth of a living child in one lifetime.
The post-Roe abortion rights narrative should embrace this reality.
I mean, these people are just nuts.
I mean, they really are.
And it's... I think that, you know, when you have Gianna next, you're going to see...
I actually listened to her talk many, many years ago.
It was probably 2009 or 2010.
This is Gianna Jessen who's coming on right after this.
You're going to talk to her. Her story was phenomenal.
Made me cry. I know that you are going to have that sense of just, you know...
I mean, she's just an incredible person.
And I'm really glad that you have her on the podcast.
Yeah. Inflation is real.
The CPI is at another 40-year high.
Biden and his team keep denying it, but inflation doesn't go away because you deny or minimize it.
The recession, too, is real.
Again, they're denying it, and again, a recession doesn't stop being a recession if you stop calling it a recession.
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Guys, I'm really pleased to welcome to the podcast someone who's a kind of a heroine of mine.
Her name is Gianna Jessen.
And she is a, well, I think the right phrase is an abortion survivor.
She has an amazing story, which I encountered on social media a couple years ago.
I've posted it more than once.
In fact, I just put it on my Locals channel for people to check out.
Really the most powerful pro-life testimony I've ever heard someone deliver in, in person.
She's now a recognized pro-life advocate, a speaker, a writer, and also, well, Gianna, I didn't know this, a singer.
You can follow her at giannajessen.com.
And she's also both on Twitter and on Truth Social.
And her tag is at Gianna Jessen.
That's two N's for Gianna and two S's for Jessen.
Hey, Gianna. And also on Facebook.
Oh, you're also on Facebook.
Gianna, what a pleasure. They haven't kicked me off yet.
Well, that may be coming.
I think your testimony is so powerful.
The clip that I posted is of you giving a speech.
Now, you appear to be in a church setting, but it's clear that there's a...
Give me an idea of where you were speaking in that talk.
It was in 2008, it was such a wild day, and it was in the Parliament, in the Australian Parliament building, and I had no idea what I was going to say because I'm a Christian and I pray and I study when I'm not traveling to grow and to learn, but when I speak, I pray and I ask the Lord what to say.
And that is what I did that day.
And I was speaking to all kinds of members of parliament and all kinds of people from all different walks of life.
And just before they came in, it didn't look like anyone was going to come.
And I was so happy because I was telling the Lord, I have no idea what I'm doing.
You haven't shown me what to say.
And this was to give context at the end of a two week trip where I was going through the parliament and through to to every all the MPs offices saying this is what the truth is this is what you need to hear and I'll never forget this man very highly educated at Oxford and he and I just walked in very much myself nothing to prove and I just said this is What I'm here to tell you,
but sir, you are born to defend women and children, not to stand idly by while they are being killed.
And he began to cry.
And he said, you know, it's been 30 years since someone has walked into my office and said something, anything like that to me at all.
And I just remember those moments.
So this was at the end.
That speech was the culmination because they were going to remove all restrictions on abortion in Victoria.
And they totally ignored everything I had to say and did what they wanted to do anyway.
But that's what it was.
And I had no idea that it would...
I didn't even post it online.
I did nothing with it.
Someone else did. And so the Lord cannot be stopped.
Well, what's remarkable is not only the content of what you said, but it was also, you can kind of see the faces and the reaction of people in the audience.
And you can also tell that this is not a church audience.
This is not an audience of people who are already, not a pro-life audience, so to speak.
And the sheer kind of astonishment on their faces is really what I think is remarkable.
So, let's get into it, Gianna.
I want people to hear from you your story because I think it is such a stunning example to people and an eye-opener on an issue that continues to roil the United States.
As you know, the important Supreme Court decision, we're in a little bit of a new environment.
People now have to take responsibility themselves for this issue.
So let them hear from you the Gianna story.
Well, I also want to say to anyone listening before they hear this that if you've had an abortion, if you've encouraged an abortion, if you've paid for an abortion, whatever you've done, I'm not here to condemn you.
I can only tell you that you can only be made free through Christ.
So I want you to know that I'm not condemning as you listen to me.
So I was born alive in an abortion clinic.
By the power of Christ, my medical records, I love what they say.
They say my name, and then it says, born during saline abortion, April the 6th, 1977, 6 a.m., 29 and a half weeks, two and a half pounds.
My favorite part.
No resuscitation required upon arrival at the hospital.
Because I was born in the abortion clinic.
6am. Now, that defies science.
It defies logic.
Why would I not need...
Resuscitation unless the Lord was with me in the fire and delivering me and carrying me as he does to the present day.
So because I was born, she went to Planned Parenthood, my biological mother, at 17 years old.
And they said, you're too young to have a baby.
You need to go have this salient abortion, which burns a baby inside and out.
And then she's to deliver a dead baby in this particular procedure within 24 hours.
Except I was born alive at 18 hours.
You can imagine 18 hours.
My skin should be completely charred and burned.
I should be blind. I should be dead.
I shouldn't be able to sing.
Nothing about me should be...
But it is. Gianna, not to interrupt you, I want you to go into this in some detail.
So let's take a pause and when we come back, the continuation of the Gianna Jessen story.
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I'm back with pro-life advocate and abortion survivor, Gianna Jessen.
You can follow her at Twitter, Truth Social, Facebook, at Gianna Jessen.
You can also go to her website, GiannaJessen.com.
Gianna, we're following your amazing story.
Your mom goes to Planned Parenthood.
You were supposed to...
Be killed off in a salient abortion, but you survive.
How did you survive?
And you didn't survive unscathed.
I mean, your skin isn't burned, but you do have disabilities that are the result of that.
So let's talk about that.
Well, the nurse called the ambulance and had me transferred to a hospital saving my life.
Thank you, Jesus. Because had the abortionist been at work, he would have ended my life with strangulation, suffocation, or leaving me there to die, throwing me in a trash can.
This is what we do to our children who survive abortions.
But he wasn't able to do that because of this nurse.
So I was taken to that hospital and every doctor said there's no way this baby girl's gonna live.
Then after several months of not dying, they concluded this baby girl has a tremendous will to live.
She doesn't want to die.
Then I was eventually placed in emergency foster care that didn't go so well.
I was placed in another foster home.
Of a wonderful woman by the name of Penny.
So when she took me in, I was 17 months old, highly traumatized.
And I was diagnosed with cerebral palsy caused directly by a lack of oxygen to my brain while I was surviving an abortion.
So I would not be disabled had I not survived an abortion.
But you can imagine how I feel when I hear the argument, if the baby is disabled, we need to terminate the pregnancy.
A few points on that.
Number one, who does that sound like, Adolf Hitler?
And who are you, healthy person, to determine for me what my quality of life is?
You hear the argument, I wouldn't want to live like that.
I just wouldn't want to live like that.
That is so evil.
Let me tell you this, sir, and everyone listening.
You have no idea the kind of quality of life that you have.
When you actually have a need for Christ to help you walk across a room.
When you slam your body so hard into the ground that the reverberation goes through your whole body and yet there is the presence of God keeping every one of your bones.
When you are still rejected because of how you were born, and yet Christ never leaves you, there is no greater quality of life than a need for Christ because His power rests on you in your weakness.
Do you know nobody wants to hear about Jesus anymore?
But they'll listen when I walk up to them and say, I have a balance issue.
Can I please have your arm?
So tell me what is so horrible about such a journey.
One day my legs will be unbound, but in the meantime, they will act as a net to be a fisher of men.
And I bless the Lord to be able to limp all the way to heaven, leaning on his strong arm and his strength alone.
And so I never died, to their great surprise.
I mean, the amazing thing, Gianna, is that it almost seems, I mean, one is, there are so many ways in which you were harmed by this attempted abortion.
It's almost like an attempted murder that didn't go all the way to fruition, so to speak.
And yet, what you have done, which is, to me, morally astonishing, is that you have You've converted your disability and pain.
I mean, right before the podcast, you told me you feel like you've been hit by a truck, right?
So you feel this every day, and yet you are triumphant in this experience because you have, in a sense, made it a cord that binds you to Christ.
Yes. I mean, how can I be ashamed of the God who went to such great lengths to save me both physically and spiritually?
There's nothing else to live for.
I could have all of the accolades.
I could be highly educated.
It doesn't matter. At the end of the day, I'm going to die.
And what I did for Christ here is the only thing that's going to matter.
And I have to say, you know, it's challenging because when you have a story, because we are very much...
Geared this way, particularly in our culture, then you have meaning.
So I've had to work through ego-wise and everything else.
Where is my identity?
I mean, because people are fickle as well.
And sometimes when people turn against you, I think that is one of the greatest gifts because you learn, ah, yes, this isn't my identity.
I am just as important whether this happened to me or not.
Either way, it's not to be about me.
So I just want to be able to have a pure heart here and speak plainly to people.
And I want to tell you, too, I've forgiven my biological mother.
I think it's important for people to know that.
And bitterness will take the life that you've been given.
So, I don't know.
Do you want to say something else?
Let's take a pause. When we come back, I'd like to talk to Gianna about the pro-life movement and about the road ahead.
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I'm back with Gianna Jessen, abortion survivor, pro-life advocate.
You can go to her website, which is Gianna, G-I-A-N-N-A Jessen, J-E-S-S-E-N.com.
And I remember, Gianna, thinking back to that presentation that you made to the Australian Parliament.
You know, just having a very complex range of emotions because I felt, you know, sadness and outrage, but I also felt pity, but I also felt that sense of triumph, and you've been giving us a hint of that here.
Talk about, as someone who's sort of, I mean, been through fire like that, how does it shape your life now?
Is it something that continues to define who you are?
Is it something you feel like you want to go beyond?
And also, talk about your life in the pro-life movement.
Can you clarify for me what you mean in terms of it?
In terms of...
I think what I mean by it is that sometimes when someone has a traumatic experience, let's say they're an orphan, or let's say, for example, they came through a war zone, right?
The rest of their life becomes defined by that.
That becomes their story, that's who they are, they're a wartime survivor, but there are other people who sometimes go, yeah, that was my background, that was my life, but I now need to move into something different, and I'm just trying to find out how you think about your life.
Yeah, it's interesting, because I do have that complex sort of battle, because there is this thing that is monumental, and there are those, even myself at times, that's sort of the easier sort of box to fit in, and it's very...
To put it simply, it works.
You know, you have a story.
Instantly, you have meaning.
But there's so much to me.
I'm incredibly creative.
I have a very gorgeous brain.
And I think so differently.
And I have been trying for years.
Okay, Lord... There's so much more in me, help me get to it.
Because it's almost like sometimes if you stay here, then you're trying to put on clothes that no longer fit.
You're just staying there out of fear of not mattering anymore.
And that goes back to ego and things like that.
So I don't want to do that.
As far as the pro-life movement, I have mixed feelings.
So I'll just ask you to be more specific so I don't go off in my own On my own tangent.
Well, I have noticed, and I don't think there's any problem in you speaking candidly about this.
What I want to get at is, I notice you've had a sort of ambivalent relationship to the pro-life movement.
You're, in some ways, obviously a pro-life speaker and advocate, and yet I don't identify you as part of the, quote, movement.
Now... I consider that a cop woman!
Yeah, but let me ask you this.
I mean, you know, in politics, you do need movements.
And you have all kinds of people in every movement, I can assure you, whether it's politics or, you know, even if you look at the...
A pastor will tell you that if I look through my pews, I've just got a wide range of people in the pews.
What I want to ask you this is that the pro-life movement's goal is, or at least should be very simple, right?
Reducing the number of abortions and moving that number toward...
Is it your view that the pro-life movement could be doing it better?
They should be doing it differently?
I just like your thoughts about how you think that this argument can be moved forward.
It's now in America up to the people of the individual states to make decisions.
And so it's going to be very important to be able to make the pro-life case as effectively as possible person to person.
So, is the pro-life movement, in your view, not doing that?
Should they be doing it better? And how?
When I say I consider it a compliment, let me clarify.
I abhor the system of the pro-life movement.
I think there's a split happening between those that understand that this is a spiritual battle, that it has to be tackled there, and then that first and everything beneath that.
Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and all of these children will be added unto you.
Kick Jesus out of everything.
Then you've got your own wisdom.
You've got all kinds of nonsense entering in.
And I think that is what you are starting to see.
So some of the most unbelievably incredible people I have ever met.
Most self-sacrificing have been in this movement.
But now I think it's becoming very much, in one way, an ego thing.
You know, who's got the better story?
Who gets the biggest speaking fees?
And then removing Jesus out of things to be more palatable to the masses.
Now I understand you have to...
Take in everything and see where you're speaking and what is appropriate.
But I think you get my point.
Now, as far as doing things better, I think it is a case...
We are dealing with people, but this has now become, in my view, very much an industry, a pro-life industry.
And that is the problem I have.
Why have we forsaken the things, in many ways, the things that really matter?
For our own gain.
That's what I have a problem with.
So many of the pregnancy centers doing all their stuff every day, people whose names you'll never know, one-on-one meeting those women and dealing with them and helping them in crises.
And then you hear this garbage argument from the left that, you know, we've never done anything.
Some lady asked the other day on Twitter, she said, you don't give a damn about the children after they're born.
I said, really? So, there was no great outcry when I was born alive, and also, no, you're not considering that I helped take care of the foster babies that came into our foster home, and that I was, you know, because I was later adopted, but in foster care, yada, yada.
There's not time to get into all of that.
Although, I will have to honor my Penny, who took me in.
She died in 2014, she's the reason I'm walking.
Every doctor said I would never lift my head and get out of a bed.
She cared for me and 56 fostered children as a single woman and did not complain and didn't have a YouTube channel.
She didn't need accolades.
So, I don't know.
I said a bunch there, but I think you get my drift.
Gianna, thank you for joining me.
This has been just moving and eye-opening and very candid and it's very you.
So thanks for being on the podcast.
Love to have you back sometime.
And you are an amazing testament and an amazing story.
Thank you so much. Thank you.
I'm talking about the scene of Patroclus' death, killed by Hector.
And Patroclus, even while dying, not only kind of taunts Hector, you're not really the one who killed me, but he goes on to say, basically, you're next.
Your death is not far off.
And in...
In the society of the Homeric epic, when someone makes a prophecy at death, it carries added credibility, added respect, and added power.
So this is not just Patroclus saying something like, I wish you were going to be the next one after me, or even, as someone might say, in a kind of exchange of taunts or insults.
It's Patroclus giving a kind of oracular prediction of Hector's death.
But look how Hector responds.
He says, Why prophecy my death, Patroclus?
Who knows? Achilles, son of Thetis, may go down first under my spear.
So Hector, and you see here Homer highlighting the humanity of Hector.
And by the humanity of Hector, what I really mean here is not that this is a very, quote, human response, but Hector doesn't know the future.
Hector's like, well, you're saying that I'm going to be killed next, but...
We're human. We don't know what's going to happen.
It could be me. It could be Achilles.
So Hector, in this sense, is operating, as are most of the Homeric characters, inside the narrative.
But notice the difference between Hector and Achilles.
Achilles is told by his mother, who happens to be a goddess, you have two fates.
You can fight. And get glory and you not may die, but you will die.
Or you can go back and you can resume life in your old country and you will live a long life but nobody will have heard of you.
And so, with Achilles, it's a matter of choosing not among the...
Hector is moving in the uncertainty of life the way you and I are.
We don't know what's going to come next.
But Achilles is not.
And so, this is one important difference between Hector and Achilles.
There's an earlier scene in Book 12 where Hector is approached by a soothsayer named Polydamus, Who essentially tells Hector, don't go out and fight right now.
The omens are not good.
And again, Hector, you want me to obey birds, Palladamus?
I don't care which way birds fly, right to the sunrise or left to the dusk.
And he goes on to say, why should you be afraid of combat?
And he goes, if I catch you telling this nonsense to anybody else, in other words, if I catch you holding back from battle or talking anybody else out of fighting, you will lose your life at the point of my spear.
So again, Hector, he doesn't know.
In fact, he's an unsuperstitious man, at least by the standards of the Homeric epic.
So this is one key difference between Hector and Achilles.
In a sense, Achilles is more than mortal.
In the sense that he knows the future.
He knows his future.
And he's in a remarkable position of choosing his fate, his destiny.
Hector, of course, is...
Now, I want to make the broader point here, and maybe I'll pick this up next time, that with Homer you have this amazing phenomenon.
Hector and Achilles are the two main characters of the Iliad.
They are the two heroes of the Iliad, and obviously Achilles on the Greek side.
Now, Homer is a Greek. And Hector is on the alien or the Trojan side, the enemy side.
And you might expect that Homer would give humanity, all the kind of noble attributes of humanity, to Achilles and make Hector kind of inhuman and cold and some kind of a savage figure.
Not at all. It's the exact opposite.
For Homer... Hector is the epitome of humanity.
And there's something about Achilles that is both simultaneously less than human and more than human.
We see that, of course, in the knowledge of the future, the factor I stress today, but you also see it in other factors.
You see it in the fact that Hector is a family man and Achilles is not.
Hector has normal human motives for fighting.
He would rather not, but he feels shame.
He wants to protect his society.
He knows the future of his country is at stake.
He has a sense of filial duty, and that's why he fights.
He has very different motives than Achilles, who is in a sense subtracted even from Greek society.
He's isolated. His motives for fighting both at the beginning Which is his own honor.
And then later, fighting for revenge, have really nothing to do with the Greeks.
He doesn't really care about whether the Greeks win or lose.
It's all about, he needs to avenge Patroclus.
He's fighting, in a sense, as an isolated individual, and not as Hector is, as a member of a flourishing human community.
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