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Sept. 2, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
50:54
OUR TURN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep406
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Coming up, I'll lay out an agenda for the GOP Congress post-November.
It involves a ruthless use of the power of the purse.
Debbie's going to join me. We're going to talk about the border crisis.
We're also going to recount the Biden disgrace in Afghanistan a year after the pullout.
It seems like a significant portion of evangelicals are losing their faith.
The question is, are they losing their conservatism?
And I'll begin my discussion of an important theme in the Odyssey, the idea of Zania.
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.
The left seems really excited and energized by the defeat of Sarah Palin in a congressional race in Alaska.
Sarah Palin, of course, is the former governor.
And so it might be expected that she would have a powerful sway in Alaska.
Now the problem with Sarah Palin is that she, in a sense, put that aside and stepped down as the governor of Alaska when she really didn't need to.
She seems to have done it just in order to be able to go on the speaking circuit, make some money, and so she vanished from elected political life and is now making a kind of a belated attempt at a return.
So Sarah Palin has become, she was a very popular figure in Alaska.
She's now a somewhat more ambiguous figure.
In fact, much of the Republican establishment in Alaska is not pro-Palin.
Not anymore.
They once were. But, of course, the problem in Alaska was also that Thanks to Lisa Murkowski and her acolytes, Alaska has established a very bizarre ranked voting system.
It's not one person running against another.
It's multiple people running in a single contest, and you don't just choose one candidate, you sort of rank them.
I want this person first, I want this person second, I want this person third, and it is this ranked voting system that creates a little bit of a different structure than the straightforward, this is the Republican nominee, this is the Democratic nominee.
You also had a race in which there were two prominent Republicans.
One was Sarah Palin, one was another guy, and they divided the Republican vote in a Republican state, and so the Democrat was able to sort of...
Now, the point I'm trying to make here is it's a little unfortunate.
Obviously, I was hoping that Sarah Palin or the other guy, the other Republican, would make it.
But we have a Democrat in that seat.
But it's worth noting that this is an extremely anomalous result in an anomalous voting structure.
So I don't think it tells us anything about what's going to happen in November.
At least I hope it doesn't.
Now, I saw an article just yesterday, I think it was, the Democrats are kind of, I won't say praying, because Democrats only pray, but you may say wishing, wishful thinking, that there is a kind of long but narrow road for them to hold on to the House.
I think that this is more wishful thinking than reality.
Democrats may have a better hope of retaining their 50-50 hold in the Senate.
I still think that's going to be difficult.
But nevertheless, the House, I think, is very likely, at least at this point, unless things can happen between now and the midterms, of course, likely to fall into Republican hands.
But then the question becomes, and then what?
And so what? Now, obviously, one of the things that Republicans can do is They can use the power of the House Judiciary Committee and other committees in the House to hold hearings.
In other words, there is a measure of accountability that's not occurring now.
Why? Because you have Democratic Chairman in the House, Democratic Chairman in the Senate, so all the hearings are only at their request or under their control.
And so Republicans in that sense are virtually powerless because even though these are very narrow majorities, a majority is a majority, whether it's a majority of one or a majority of 50.
Now, so Republicans will be able to use hearings and use their subpoena power.
But the other thing that they can do, which I think not enough attention is paid to, is use the power of the purse.
And what I mean here is that all bills, all spending bills, It doesn't originate in the House.
The way that a bill moves in the process of becoming a law is it moves from the House to the Senate, and then the President has to sign it.
The President, of course, has the power to veto it.
If the President vetoes it, it's going to go back to Congress.
Of course, it's unlikely today to have a veto-proof majority in which the House and the Senate can override.
That's not going to happen.
Generate a certain kind of deadlock.
Now, there are some people who go, deadlock is good.
Nothing wrong with deadlock.
And deadlock does have some of its virtues.
So, the Republicans having the House by itself produces a measure of deadlock.
Obviously, Biden's chance of passing any kind of legislation goes down close to zero, unless it's something symbolic like, you know, let's have a day honoring this guy or that guy.
Any substantive bills are likely to be stopped in their tracks.
But... I'm actually recommending and proposing that the Republican House go a lot further than this and begin to, in a fairly determined and ruthless way, use the power of the purse to squeeze the Biden administration.
So let's take as a simple example the 87,000 IRS agents.
Simply cut the funding of the IRS and don't move on that.
Don't budge. Don't be open to negotiation.
You basically say, we're not providing the funding, so if they want to hire the agents, they need to find the money some other way.
It's not coming from the Congress.
It's not coming through congressional allocation.
And if you use the power of the person this way, you can block bad energy policies, you can block inflationary spending, you can block vaccine mandates, you can block the politicization of the police agencies of the government, you can block U.S. aid flowing to the Ukraine and to Europe, you can also block gun bans and confiscation.
So there is a lot that you can do.
You know, there's the old saying that the golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules.
And the beauty of the Republicans controlling Congress is that they will have the gold and they will have a lot of say in making the rules that go with that.
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Debbie and I here for a periodic Friday roundup of important events that have occurred during the week.
Or just events with larger significance.
And the first one we want to talk about is Afghanistan.
It's approximately the one-year anniversary of this really disgraceful loss in Afghanistan.
A humiliating pullout.
I mean, people falling out of planes.
Americans left behind.
Yeah. And, you know, we...
Here's an article from Gallup, and it says, a year after withdrawal, 50% of Americans call Afghanistan a mistake.
Only 50%, which tells you that the media really did a fine job of hiding a lot of the information, including the celebration of the Taliban and the fact that they, you know, basically won, all of those things.
They didn't want Biden to look bad.
And they really went through great lengths to keep it from the public.
That's for sure. Now, I don't think that the poll actually shows that.
Because, look, let's read.
One year after the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops, 50% of Americans say the U.S. made a mistake in sending troops to the country.
While 46 say it did not.
Now see, I don't think the U.S. made a mistake in sending troops to the country originally.
So we're talking about something that occurred over a pretty long period.
The United States recognized that Afghanistan was the staging ground of 9-11.
And so the idea of sending U.S. troops to oust the Taliban, I think, was really good.
And actually was done very efficiently, very quickly.
It's something that, to be honest...
Was executed beautifully by the Bush administration at the very beginning.
Now, the problem was right after that.
And I blame people like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell because they advanced a principle that, quite frankly, I'd never heard before.
Hearts and mines? No, no.
It was the principle that if you break it, you own it.
It's kind of the store principle that when you walk into a store, if you break something, you kind of have to buy it.
So they said that if you go to a country and you displace the bad guys who are running it, you now somehow own the country.
You have the responsibility to manage it, to organize democratic governments.
The United States gets into this kind of misadventure.
For 20 years in a country that we don't understand, is very far away, is very difficult.
So what should we have done in my opinion?
Very simple. We should have pulverized the Taliban and then gone and cut a deal with all the rival tribes and said, listen, you're going to be our thugs in there.
We're not going to supervise you.
You do whatever you want.
But you're going to be our allies.
Why? Because you're not the guys who are blowing up our buildings.
You're not the Islamic radicals that we have to fear.
And so, by and large, as long as you don't harm us, we're willing to do business with you.
Well, you know, the rules of engagement in this war were horrific.
As you know, we had Karen Vaughn many months ago to talk about her son, Aaron Vaughn, who was killed.
It was the Chinook helicopter accident.
That killed 16 Navy SEALs.
And the reason that they died were the rules of engagement.
They could not fire back.
And so I think that, coupled with the fact that we really shouldn't have been there in the first place, is a little bit of a mixed bag.
But 50%, like I said, I was really surprised that it was 50%.
The reason I think that we, I say we, the American political system makes these mistakes is because the American people have short memories.
You would think after Vietnam. I mean, think about it.
Pretty much the same model.
A distant country.
Very difficult for us to conduct long-term operations over there.
Again, it's one thing to go in there with massive force.
It's a whole nother matter.
You know, the Vietnam War begins really in the early 60s.
It continues really for a decade.
Thousands of lives are lost in Vietnam.
And all for purposes that are very unclear.
And then on top of that, the rules of engagement.
The Viet Cong, the North Vietnamese, they run across the demilitarized zone.
They can't be pursued into their territory because there's a line, you know, and the U.S. military has to abide by the line.
Yeah. So the outcome becomes tragically predictable.
Yeah, and the same thing happened here.
And I'm afraid that when we try...
The reason I brought up hearts and minds is because, as you know, some of these Islamists...
The Taliban, those people, are extremely devoted to their religion.
And we cannot change their hearts or their minds.
We shouldn't try.
And I don't know that there will be a next time.
I really don't. I don't think we have a stomach for it.
The sad thing, I think, is that if you look at something like the Russian invasion of Ukraine...
It's emboldened by this.
This is actually... So Biden, in a way, although he complains, oh, Putin's this, Putin's that, Putin is basically a rational actor who saw that, hey, if the United States can't beat a bunch of tribesmen, Pashtun tribesmen who basically are living in the 13th century, you know what?
Russia's going to have a... And the Chinese are probably similarly thinking...
Think about the loss of respect for America that this buffoon Biden, this senile, corrupt old man sitting in the White House has done to America.
I mean, a country to be a superpower needs to be respected and feared.
and I think it's fair to say that currently in the world, the United States is neither.
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We want to talk in this segment about the border, and it seems like what's happening is that the people who are in charge of policy at the border, notably law enforcement authorities, are not only beginning to recognize what's going on, they know, they're there, they see it, but they're beginning to speak out about it.
Absolutely. I mean, as you know, I was brought up on the Rio Grande border, grew up there.
I mean, you used to tell me that in the old days you would just cruise over to...
Oh, yeah. We'd go to Mexico. We'd walk over to Mexico, have lunch, walk back.
You can no longer do that.
You just can't. It's too dangerous.
In fact, the valley was a very safe place.
At least I thought it was when I was a kid and into high school.
But didn't you go like roller skating all over the place?
Oh, all over the place. It was just great, you know, and you can no longer do that anymore.
So the interesting thing though is Border Patrol typically does not get involved with the administration.
They don't talk about this administration or that administration.
But, very interestingly, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz And he basically said that the Biden administration's border policies of no consequences are causing chaos at the border.
And there was a video going around of this.
Basically, he was a cartel member and he was he was being chased by two border patrols and he was actually fighting back.
He had no fear of these Border Patrol agents.
And it just gets me that these poor men, of course, they sign up to do this, to protect our borders.
But they shouldn't have to do that.
I mean, they sign up under the expectation that there will be an administration in Washington that is committed to enforcing the law and supporting them in doing their jobs.
Absolutely. But what we have is an administration that is objectively, I think it's fair to say, on the side of the cartels.
It is on the side of the cartels.
And all of these policies are horrific for not just the residents of Texas.
Now New York and D.C. are starting to see that we're bringing these buses...
I mean, it's funny, they're in favor of migrants in theory.
We like migrants, but we just don't like, you know, we just don't like Pablo and Juan.
Don't give us any actual migrants.
We like the idea of the migrants.
Yeah, so anyway, but that is to say that these policies are not just bad for us here in America, but they're really, really bad for them.
Very cruel. The migrants themselves, especially the young girls.
You know, when we had Mayra Flores on a couple of weeks ago, she talked about the rape trees where they hang their underwear when they rape these little girls.
I mean, those are all policies that Biden is responsible for.
I mean, he just is. So he cannot claim that he's for these people when, in fact, all these policies are against these people.
Here's an article, and this is from the New York Post.
Texas sheriffs take aim at Biden border policies causing, quote, tsunami of death from drug smuggling.
So this is now the sheriffs in Texas, and there's a bunch of them.
Well, all the fentanyl that has been killing our kids in America can be traced to the border crossings of the fentanyl.
Let me read this. This is Collin County Sheriff Jim Skinner.
Quote, It is quite frankly a tsunami of death that is crashing into the United States over a southern border.
It's killing Americans wholesale and it's just an epic slaughter manufactured by the cartels If you don't secure the border, it's going to continue.
Yeah, no, so it's really, it's like, you know, multiple things going on.
You have the fentanyl problem that is really bad here in America.
In fact, I was watching the news the other day and they showed these pills that are like little, you know, different colored pills like pink and orange and all that.
And our kids are ingesting these things and dying.
So this is a very, very bad problem that these cartels are causing.
But they're causing them because we're allowing them to come.
I mean, the indifference, I think, of the media is the fact that the media understands the political objective of bringing the illegals here.
And a lot of these reporters, you know, these are urban guys.
These are guys who live in Washington, D.C. They're not affected by these problems so directly.
They don't see... Entire communities ruined and decimated.
Mayorkas is literally like, who cares?
I don't see a problem.
What are you talking about?
But really, all you have to do is go down to the border so you can witness this.
Well, I think it's interesting that these Biden officials don't go to the border.
People know they don't show up.
I think the reason they don't show up is they don't want to have to deal with any of it.
If you see it, you can't unsee it.
They know it's going on, and obviously they don't intend the fentanyl to come in, but they are willing to pay the price of the fentanyl coming in and the cartels being enriched and emboldened and empowered all to achieve a crass political objective in this country.
And look at this. Sheriff Skinner said there's a 571% increase in fatal fentanyl poisonings in this country.
That's huge. That's huge.
And you know what, guys? If you're a Republican candidate and you're not running and talking about this problem, what's wrong with you?
The media is going to conceal it, so it's our job to make it front and center so that the American people...
Look, if the American people go, it's not a problem, we're fine with our country being swarmed in this way, but the American people are not fine with it.
This is why we have the media camouflage, and this is why it's the job of...
me on this podcast, but it's the job of Republican candidates to be shouting this message from the rooftops so people know what's going on.
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A friend of mine sent me an article in NPR which is talking about the fact that there are some schisms and divisions that have erupted and are erupting Among January 6 defendants.
Now, we have to be, again, a little bit skeptical here.
The article is by Tom Dreisbach.
By the way, this guy, Tom Dreisbach, is the very guy who did a, quote, fact check on 2,000 views.
And I did a refutation of his fact check on this podcast.
So this is Tom Dreisbach.
Let's just say he gets a lot of things wrong.
But what he's describing isn't entirely impossible to believe.
It's the idea that when you have people who are confined, in solitary confinement in some cases, It's easy for tempers to run short.
It's easy for patience to wear thin.
Now, many of these January 6th guys began with great unity, singing the national anthem at night, holding firm.
And I think, in general, they have shown unbelievable fortitude.
Yeah, really. But in the article, Dreisbach interviews some people, and assuming that he's quoting them correctly, they say, wait, you know, there's supposed to be all this money that has been raised for us, and we haven't gotten it.
And one guy goes, well, I thought that the money was all going to be equally shared.
I mentioned in this article, in fact, there's a picture of me in the article.
Early on, the group raised big money.
The pro-Trump writer and filmmaker donated $100,000.
And then they go on to say that apparently the Patriot Freedom Project, Cynthia Hughes, of course, has been on the podcast more than once.
They say...
That the Patriot Freedom Project was able to raise a million dollars or so, still raising money.
And they quote this one guy say that, I divided it by the amount of people and I got all excited.
And the guy goes, in a sense, I didn't get my share.
Now, it's important for us to say that when we donated the money, this was not an idea of like taking a pie and splitting it equally.
Debbie and I are not involved in a daily basis, so our idea was to inspire people to give to a cause that is really very worthy and not supported by many people.
The GOP has sort of turned its back, and we rely on Cynthia.
Now, Cynthia is actually a great person.
She is from a middle-class background, and she has a very good ear to the ground on what's happening with these families.
Yeah, so she sent us...
Yes, Cynthia.
Yeah, Cynthia sent us an email, and she wanted to kind of give us a kind of the scoop of where the money is going.
And she said, here's some examples.
Paid COBRA payment for 2022 for a family whose husband remains in pretrial detention.
And then we just sent a few thousand in back-to-school grants to some of the families.
We've given a legal grant to one of the families, I'm not gonna name, who has four family members caught up in this.
We relocated a young mother and her three daughters after her husband took a plea and received several years.
He's, you know, he's about to be sentenced.
She was living in a terrible place.
Put her in a new apartment and paid the rent for six months.
So, you know, this is something that, yes.
And the other thing is she said that they've supplemented many legal retainers, assisted many lawyers, 15 to be exact, on multiple cases.
So this money is...
Being spent in areas that were the most needed.
One person we really trust here is Julie Kelly, who's been the best reporter on this subject.
And Julie is the one who actually referred us to Cynthia originally.
And Julie stays very close to the actual needs of the January 6th defendant.
So obviously there is some discretionary judgment being used.
And this person is more needy.
This person needs the money now.
Given limited resources, this is how we're able to help.
And of course, Patriot Freedom Project is not the only organization that is helping here, but it is one of the main ones.
It's actually one of the ones that's been focused on in this article.
And the article, really, although it's supposed to be kind of a damaging hit, there's nothing damaging in it.
This one guy goes, I personally have not gotten a dime out of it.
And I don't know the reason why, because I don't know what this person's needs are.
So whenever you try to help in a project like this, you need to have some system for filtering out Which are the needs that are greatest?
The point, though, that I think remains clear is that there is a lot of need here.
I mean, we are all besieged by requests to give money here and give money there.
For us, for Debbie and me, this is a cause that is politically important, but it's also important from a human perspective.
Absolutely. I mean, I really, really, you know, I always talk about the parallels, but when this happened, I was like, what is the difference between what they're doing to these men in these jails and the Venezuelan jails?
I really saw no difference.
And so, you know, when people say, well, are we there yet?
I think we are.
I really think we are.
When you pick and choose people that you want to prosecute and persecute for political reasons, that's where we are in America.
And so this is why we stood up and we said, you know what, we need to help these people.
And we urge you to do it.
We're going to give another $100,000 this year.
We're not sure if we're going to give it all in one piece or try to give it in three or four parcels.
We'll figure all that out.
But we strongly believe in Patriot Freedom Project, and we think they're doing a really good job.
Obviously, they could do more with more resources.
So we're going to help, and we urge you to help as well.
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Go to This, for Debbie and me, is our travel segment, and it's going to refer to travel that we just did.
We just got back from a trip to, well, Nashville and Chattanooga, and we also want to talk briefly about our upcoming trip toward the end of this year to But let's begin with the trip we took.
Now, I was speaking in Chattanooga.
And I've got to say, you know, germaphobe that you are.
You accompany me on the trip, but she skips the event.
She's like, I will be going with you, but I will not be attending.
But it is fun.
It's so much more fun to travel with you than to go alone.
Exactly. So we went to Nashville first.
We rented a car. Well, here's the thing.
We couldn't fly directly to Chattanooga.
So in today, flights are still a little unreliable, so we don't like to do the connection.
So we said, let's fly to Nashville, the nearest place to fly direct, and then we'll drive, two-hour drive from Nashville to Chattanooga.
But we spent... We arrived, we stayed overnight in Nashville, and the next day we went to Chattanooga.
And you noticed some stark differences.
Oh, well, you know, when we went to Nashville, first of all...
Nashville does have beautiful things.
Nashville is great. Yeah, it's wonderful.
We literally... Well, we always go get our coffee, so we walked, you know, to get our coffee.
And we noticed that there were a lot of homeless people everywhere, scattered about, especially at a church, the Methodist church there.
They were like camped out.
I mean, it was... I mean, it was just such a repulsive sight.
Now, I'm sure there's going to be some Methodist people, today, you know, what would Jesus do?
And so, honestly, I don't think Jesus would like the idea of scaring people away from coming to a church.
In fact, This is a little bit like the money changers in the temple, where you've got these guys that are completely entitled.
They're sleeping on the front step of the church.
And so, I'm sure, deterring people from going to the church, because the church is no longer a safe place.
So anyway, so after, so when we saw this, and I also noticed that it was a bit filthy.
It wasn't really super clean.
Oh, I mean, everywhere. Everywhere, right?
And we even tried the famous barbecue, which I have to say as a Texan, sorry guys.
Are you saying that the Tennessee barbecue camp?
No, but besides that, when we went back to the hotel, I told Anish, I go...
What do you want to bet that Nashville is run by Democrats?
And he was like, what do you mean?
I go, well, think about it.
It's dirty. There's homeless people everywhere.
It's probably run by Democrats.
So I googled it. Sure enough, it is.
There's a silver lining.
There's a silver lining because they said today in Nashville, nine Republicans run We're good to go.
Three districts in which Republicans are now likely to win all three.
So good work by the Tennessee GOP. So I think that in about a year or so, when we go back to Nashville to visit, I bet it will be a lot cleaner.
And the proof of this is that we jump in the car, we drive two hours, and we're pulling into Chattanooga.
Now, basically, Chattanooga, I must say, beautiful place.
Beautiful place. There's a beautiful lake.
Not a single homeless person in sight.
Super clean. I'm like, yeah, I know why.
Yeah, you see a large overarching bridge and Debbie goes, tell me what you do not see.
And what you do not see is a single guy in a tent or with dirty clothes thrown everywhere sleeping under the bridge.
So really all this is...
Is another thing that a congressional or even senatorial candidate can talk about, a GOP candidate can talk about, and that is, if you want to stay away from social issues, all you have to say is, okay, do you want to live in filthy America, or do you want to live in clean America?
If you want to live in filthy America, vote Democrat.
If you want to live in clean America, vote Republican.
And it's not just clean.
I mean, the point about it is that when you deal with the homeless problem, it goes with vagrancy, it goes with harassment, it goes with crime.
I mean, many of these homeless guys start with petty crime.
They'll, you know, take your chicken wing off your plate when you're eating in a restaurant.
But if you let them get away with that, pretty soon they're going to be assaulting people.
And they do. And these socialist people, I mean, even in socialist countries, they take over.
So it's, you know, again, it's a really great way to win, really, an election.
Now, pivoting to our trip in Israel, we're going at the end of November.
Yeah, I'm excited about that to see.
Yeah, I just read in the Jerusalem Post, I'm now going to read the title.
A group of archaeologists believe they have found the site of the home of St.
Peter in the remains of an ancient church on the northeast shore of the Kinneret.
It might be the birthplace of three of Jesus' apostles, Peter, Andrew, and Philip.
Wow! So, you know, it's wonderful to see how modern archaeology, and by the way, some of this is archaeology by Christian archaeologists, but a lot of it is not.
You've got top-notch Israeli archaeologists, obviously Jewish, and you've got archaeologists from other parts of the world who collaborate together.
So this is not a kind of religious enterprise.
It is the discipline of archaeology coming up with information that thrillingly confirms ancient statements and descriptions and in some case prophecies in the Bible.
And so it's fun for us to be able to be going to the scene.
You're welcome to join us.
There are some seats available.
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I believe it ends on December 9th.
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We are seeing in recent decades a secularization of America that I don't think is a good thing.
But we are seeing both among Catholics and among evangelical Protestants a decline of church membership.
A decline of church attendance, and also some increase in the number of people who have, you may say, rejected Christianity altogether.
In fact, they declare themselves to be skeptics, so they declare themselves to be atheists.
That number is still relatively small, but the number of the As they say, unchurched.
The people who do not go, and certainly do not go regularly.
They may go once a year on Easter or on Christmas, but the people who go to church is down.
It's down, as I say, in Catholicism, and it's down in Evangelicalism.
It's even going down in the so-called Bible Belt.
Now, the secularization of the Catholics, particularly the Catholics in the American Northeast...
has fortified liberal politics because those were Catholics who were very kind of group-oriented, community-oriented, and so when they lose their faith, in a sense you could say they lose their pro-life beliefs, but they don't lose their collectivism.
They're still devoted to the state, and so what you now have are these radical leftists And the moralizing energy that maybe previously was accommodated within the church is now driven to expanding abortion access, is driven to promoting gay marriage and gay rights and trans rights.
So we've seen a kind of leftism in the American Northeast as a consequence of secularization.
So a group of scholars have looked at secularization in the Bible Belt, and we have seen in the Bible Belt Evangelicals becoming less evangelical.
They don't attend church as often, and some of them don't even really call themselves committed evangelicals anymore.
But the surprising finding on the part of these, or perhaps surprising finding on the part of these scholars, is that although these evangelicals have become less evangelical, they have not become less Republican.
They have not become less conservative.
Let's look at some of these findings as they're summarized in an article in Christianity Today They say, first, there's a fair number of them.
So in other words, we're talking about 30% of people in the Bible Belt.
That's a significant percentage.
By the way, if those people were becoming leftists or becoming Democrats, this would begin to cause a problem for the Republican hold on the South.
But it turns out that's not happening.
They're not Democrats.
In fact, the secular Protestants, if you want to call them that, voted for Trump over Hillary by more than 2 to 1.
They're deeply committed to colorblind conservatism.
They're deeply committed to the idea of law and order.
They oppose preferential hiring for blacks or other minorities.
They think that hiring should be done based on merit.
65% they have, quote, hardly any confidence in the press.
Very good. They do have confidence in the military.
62% oppose the legalization of elective abortion.
This is markedly greater than the American population as a whole.
And so what you're seeing here is that in the South and in the Bible Belt, even as people become less religious, they don't, for example, give up their pro-life beliefs.
In fact, interestingly, 89% of these people who are not going to church or going to church very rarely still say the Bible is the inspired word of God.
And about a third of them say that the Bible is literally true.
It can be taken as true word for word.
So I think what's interesting here...
Is that you have a phenomenon, although it's sometimes described as secularism, it's not secularism in the European sense.
And it's not even that these are people who are somehow abandoning Christianity for some generic spirituality.
Oh, I'm going to go sit on top of a rock and contemplate my navel.
Or, you know, do just sort of hours and hours of meditation, or I'll become a Buddhist, or I'll go hike in the Himalayas, or I'll start following the works of the Dalai Lama.
No, that's not what's going on here.
What's really going on here is that people are turning against organized churches and organized religion.
And I think this is really, well, it should be a wake-up call to the churches, that they're doing a poor job.
And now, there are some of the evangelical practices Preachers who think, listen, the solution for me is to stay away from politics.
I need to avoid politics altogether because, you know, there are 10 guys in the pews who might take offense and might actually leave the church.
What these guys don't realize is that the people in the pews are far more committed to their conservative politics than they are to you.
So, one way that you can actually keep them is relate Christian principles to the world that they live in.
Show them how the moral principles of Christianity.
Yes, the pro-life principle, but not only the pro-life principle.
A lot of our politics today is driven by a basic conflict between right and wrong.
It's a spiritual battle being fought on an earthly plane.
And while the left has these huge megaphones, Hollywood and the media, and they use their megaphones, we have a megaphone, it's called the church, but it's often largely unused.
So it seems to me, I'm urging that not just for the sake of the country, but for the sake of the church itself, that the church wake up and recognize that a healthy fusion of spiritual and moral principles on the one hand, and an application to the world in which we live, is going to help not empty, but fill up the pews.
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We're still in the opening section of the Odyssey, but I want to introduce a critical theme that runs throughout the Odyssey.
Just as in the Iliad, where the critical themes were kleos, meaning glory, and timei, meaning honor, and those themes were central to the Iliad.
In the Odyssey, we have a central theme that goes by the name of Zenia.
This is X-E-N-I-A, Zenia.
And Zenia is related to the Greek word called Xenos, X-E-N-O-S. Now, Xenos is the Greek root of the word that we use today, xenophobia.
And so it would seem that Xenos refers to an outsider or to a foreigner.
But it turns out that in Greek, Xenos has multiple meanings.
Xenos can mean a stranger, but it can also mean a friend.
It can mean somebody who is a foreigner, but it can also mean somebody with whom you have a long-standing bond or relationship.
You can be a Xenos and be a host.
You can be a Xenos and be a guest.
And so, Xenos has this complexity which depends on the context.
Now, how can a single word have these different and perhaps even contradictory meanings?
Well, to understand that, we need to figure out what Xenia means.
Now, zaniya is normally translated, and if you look at various translations of the Odyssey, it's translated as hospitality.
And it does mean hospitality, but it actually means more than that.
Hospitality normally is that somebody comes to your house, And you know who they are.
You welcome them in.
You'd love to have them.
You have them sit down for a meal.
But hospitality here is a completely voluntary thing.
You're choosing to entertain them.
Obviously, if someone showed up at your house and you didn't know them, you wouldn't let them in.
Now, of course, there are other cultures where hospitality has a kind of wider, more expanded meaning.
Cultures like the culture of the Bedouins, for example, or even today, the culture of India.
I remember when I was growing up, people would show up at our house, you know, a distant relative, and they'd be like, they'd say to my dad, you know...
We came by last week and you weren't here.
And they're kind of shocked.
And my dad would be like, well, I didn't know you were coming.
But their point is, we kind of expect you to be here because hospitality is just such a central sort of virtue of a lot of traditional and I would say a lot of so-called developing cultures.
You'll find it today in Africa.
You'll find it today in many other parts of the world.
But in ancient Greece, zania means more than this.
It doesn't even refer to this kind of extended hospitality, which is a cultural tradition.
Zania is sanctioned by the gods, and zania is not merely the choice, but rather the obligation that you have to To people who show up at your door.
So let's think about people living in ancient Greece in the 5th century BC or earlier.
And the Odyssey is dated 200 or 300 years before that.
There were no hotels.
There were no motels.
There were no lodges. So frankly, if you're traveling from place to place, Who puts you up for the night?
Where do you stay? Well, presumably you can't always stay outdoors.
So what do you do? You show up at somebody's house who is at your same socioeconomic level.
If you're a poor man, you show up at a poor man's house.
If you are royalty or a king, you try to find the house of a king.
And you knock on their door and you basically say, I'm here and put me up for the night.
Now, to us, this seems kind of crazy.
This is not certainly something that I would recommend you try at home, showing up at the homes of random strangers and asking them to put you up.
But in the culture of ancient Greece, and you can think here about how there are presumed tight bonds between people in these communities, the idea is that even if you are unknown, even if you come from a different town, even if you are a stranger,
and you knock on someone's door, their job is to let you in, To give you a meal, to give you a bath or allow you to take a bath, to put you up for the night, and very often the meal and the bath is before they even sit you down and ask you who you are.
In fact, it's considered rather...
It's against the protocol or the code of Zania to ask someone at the door, who are you?
Why? Because the assumption is that if you ask them that, then your treatment of them is going to depend on whether you know them or whether you don't, whether you think they're a good guy or whether you think they're a bad guy, whether you think they're from a reputable family or not.
The operating principle of zaniya is it shouldn't matter.
It doesn't matter if you are known or unknown.
It doesn't matter if you are from a good family or not.
It is the job of the person who is the host.
To bring you in, to give you food, to give you lodging, and only then to sit you down and ask questions about who are you, what's your family, why are you here, where are you going, and of course the key question of Zenia, which is how can I be a friend to you, how can I be hospitable to you on your journey.
We'll see that this theme is It's absolutely central to the Odyssey.
Now, it's there in the Iliad as well, but it's central to the Odyssey, and a lot of the events in the Odyssey revolve around either the affirmation and proper execution of Zania, or the betrayal of Zania and its consequences.
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