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Sept. 8, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
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AMERICAN PRAVDA Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep409
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Coming up, I'm going to expose the dishonesty of National Public Radio, aka American Pravda, by focusing on the work of one of their hitmen, Tom Dreisbach.
This guy's obsessed with debunking my book and movie.
Brandon Gill will join me.
We're going to talk about what happens if the dollar is no longer the world's reserve currency.
Why the Southern District of New York is determined to put Steve Manning behind bars.
And actor and producer Kirk Cameron is here.
We're going to talk about his new film, Life Mark.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
♪♪ America needs this voice.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
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There is a hit piece coming on me and also on my publisher, Regnery, and it's coming from NPR. Now, NPR, when National Public Radio, really better titled these days National, you know, Propaganda Radio.
It's really strange because NPR is a largely government-funded entity.
It's funded by taxpayer dollars.
Now, they also get some private money, but the fact that they're funded by the government, you would think that NPR would be under a clear directive or at least an unstated mission.
To reflect the diversity of points of view in the country.
They don't do that. They are aggressively partisan, one-sided, left-wing.
And I gotta say, it's a measure of the sheer stupidity of the Republicans that they allow an entity like this.
They've had multiple opportunities to cut NPR's funding, to put pressure on NPR, even to name the directors of the whole public broadcasting system that includes NPR, and yet no fundamental changes have been made.
And I think this is...
This is a failure on the part of the GOP. We should be hashtagging defund NPR. We should be, look, NPR can function as a private entity, raise its own money, then it can do whatever it wants.
But as long as it's getting taxpayer dollars, there's no reason for Republicans to allow it to have become what it is, which is essentially a savage attack dog against Republicans.
Republican and, in these days, particularly MAGA or Trumpian principles.
Now, one of NPR's attack dogs is this guy, Tom Dreisbach.
I didn't actually know about him until he did a big attack on 2,000 mules.
And I'll come back to the attack on the movie that he published.
Because I think we get a very good idea of his sort of MO, his modus operandi, his way of operating.
In any case, he sent a note to Catherine Engelbrecht, and he says, I'm writing because we've obtained a copy of Dinesh D'Souza's 2000 Mules book, which was recently recalled.
We are planning a news story based on its contents and claims.
So this is the hit job that they want to do.
But let's pause for a moment and think of how strange this is, because...
Because my 2000 Mules book was supposed to have come out at the end of September.
Regnery issued a statement, and I'm paraphrasing because I'm doing it from memory, but they essentially said, due to a publishing error, which is to say an error...
On their part, not mine.
They were recalling the book, which is to say they were delaying its publication to October.
There were some early copies that were printed.
They recalled those copies.
Some of them had gone out. They got them back.
And they are reprinting the first edition for release in October.
Now, this doesn't happen very often, but it does happen in the publishing world.
Why? Because publishing is a complicated, kind of a sausage-making process, and sometimes things go a little awry.
You know, I've written almost 20 books, so I'm very familiar with the process.
I'm familiar with other books that have been recalled from time to time.
So this is something regrettable, but it does happen.
And so I told Regnery, fine.
Whether the book comes out in September or whether it comes out in October is not a radical difference.
The book is powerful.
It is powerful. But what's happened is instead of waiting for the actual book to come out...
This Dreisbach guy got a hold of one of the stray copies of the recalled book.
And so he's planning the hit job not on 2000 Meals, the book, but on the early copy that has now been recalled.
So he's... He's trying to lure me, and he's trying to lure Regnery and True the Vote into chasing a phantom.
In other words, he wants to put us on the defense in addressing the claims of the earlier version of the book that is no longer in circulation.
So this is how these people operate.
I want to, I obviously haven't seen the article yet.
It hasn't been published. I will deal with specific claims from it later.
But I want to go into the Tom Dreisbach mode because you get an idea of how these snakes operate.
In his earlier attack on the movie, 2,000 Mules, what Dreisbach did is he created a series of straw men.
This is his technique. He says, the film says X, and then he goes on to refute X, even though, for anyone paying attention, the film does not say X. And then he goes, the film says Y, and he goes on to refute it, although for anyone paying attention, the film does not say Y. And the film says Z. And then he debunks it with quotes from people.
And again, if you pay careful attention, the film never said Z. So in every case, the Dreisbach technique is to falsely summarize something from the film.
Proceed to debunk the straw man and then act as though he's debunked the film.
This is like classic propaganda technique.
You said this.
Turns out that's not...
I never said it. Yeah, I know.
So this is what he's doing time and time again.
And in the next segment, I'm going to look at three specific examples of how Driesbach cunningly sets up a straw man.
And if you haven't seen the movie, you're like, well, I guess the movie does say that.
But the movie doesn't say it, so his debunking is ultimately useless.
But again, if you're an ignoramus, you don't know what the movie said, you haven't seen it, you're reading the article, you're like, oh, this is pretty convincing, because if the movie said that, yeah, if the movie said that, Driesbach's critique would hold, but since the movie doesn't say that, the guy is basically a straight-out liar.
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You need to use promo code DINESHDINESH. I'm doing a quick refresher debunking of NPR hitman Tom Dreisbach's article on 2000 Mules, the film.
A pro-Trump film suggests its data are so accurate it solved a murder.
That's false. First of all, for anyone who saw the film...
There's a scene with—we're talking about a murder that occurred in Atlanta, the murder of a young black woman named Sequoia Turner, and we see Greg Phillips drawing a circle.
They have geo-tracking data from the date and time of the shooting.
And drawing a circle, Greg Phillips goes, inside this circle is the small population of potential shooters.
So in other words, these are the cell phone ID devices where the angle of the bullet seems to have come from.
Now again, that doesn't solve a murder.
What it does is it tells the cops that these are guys you might want to look more closely at.
Because all you have, all Truth or Vote has is their cell phone IDs.
They don't even have the identities of those individuals, but law enforcement can get them.
So again, Tom Dreisbach is setting up the straw man.
They solved the murder. And then he goes on to quote the authorities, basically saying that the data put together by True the Vote came after the arrests of these two gang members who are accused of having committed the murder.
Well, whether the data came in before or after doesn't really matter because even after you indict people, you do have to prove your case.
And very commonly these days, in fact, this is probably one of the most powerful types of evidence before a jury today, is to show the jury that that cell phone geolocation places the suspect right at the scene of the crime at the time that the crime occurred.
Now, Driesbach wants to undercut this, and so he says that he talked to the GBI, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, and he quotes someone from the GBI saying, we never received any data from True the Vote.
But it turns out if you go back and watch the movie and watch it carefully, it is very clearly stated in the movie that this cell phone geolocation data related to this murder was never given to the GBI. It was given to the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
So if the data is given to the FBI... Why would the GBI—the GBI is a sister organization.
Now, the FBI may have given it to the GBI, but True the Vote never said it gave the data to the GBI. So what Tram Dreisbach does, very slyly, is he quotes the GBI guy going, we never got this data.
And again, to the naive reader that doesn't realize that nobody said the data was given to the GBI, they go, this is a decisive refutation.
No, it's not. Because it's setting up a straw man.
Straw man is true, the vote gave the data to the GBI. And then he goes, see, that never happened.
Well, that never happened because no one said it happened.
He's not refuting an actual claim.
And then to give you an idea of just sort of kind of how even on small things you have deception by this Dreisbach fellow, he says he's talking about the fact that Greg Phillips claims, and this is not directly in the movie, but it's in other interviews that Greg Phillips has done.
Greg Phillips says, we did our work, we did our research at Mississippi State University.
This is Mississippi State in Starkville, Mississippi.
So, Dreisbach goes running over to Mississippi State.
He finds a leftist. It turns out to be the Sid Salter, Chief Communications Officer, Director of Public Affairs.
So, all of this is, you know, there's these massive titles that give a kind of sense of pomposity.
Oh, this is a guy who really knows what he's talking about.
Quote, Mississippi State University, to our knowledge, has done zero analysis or computing on behalf of True the Vote.
Classic straw man nonsense.
Why? Because first of all, Greg Phillips never said that Mississippi State did any work for True the Vote.
Greg Phillips simply said, I use the facilities and the supercomputing capacity of Mississippi State to do my own research and my team's research.
This is kind of like me going to the Princeton University Library and reading books in there And then writing my book, citing sources, and then Princeton saying, to our knowledge, Princeton University has not done any research for Dinesh D'Souza's book.
I never said they did.
I merely said I used their facilities.
But this is the Dreisbachian technique.
The Dreisbachian technique is since he can't refute what's there.
He has to create a phantom.
He has to create a straw man.
Then he masterfully debunks the straw man and declares victory.
It's the height of deceit.
And notice he's doing exactly the same thing here with this unpublished book.
He doesn't have the actual book.
He doesn't have the book to debunk.
I'd like to see him debunk it.
He doesn't have the IQ to be able to debunk the actual book.
So what he does is he goes looking for an early copy.
An early copy that's not in circulation.
A stray copy that he somehow got a hold of.
Maybe some worker at Walmart pulled out one of the books and was like, here you go.
This guy was like, yeah, I got it, I got it.
So he's attacking a non-existent book and he's going to Regnery.
Regnery happily said to him, listen, we can't comment on a book.
This is a book that's been recalled.
The actual book we'll be happy to discuss comes out at the end of October.
But you can see how scared they are of 2,000 Mules.
They're scared of the movie. They're scared of the book.
And the book, of course, does what a movie can't do.
It lays out the argument in a very clear, systematic fashion.
A movie is a kind of narrative, whereas a book is more like a legal brief.
It spells it all out.
It's a little difficult to read through it and not say, wow, there's something really big going on here.
Whatever you think of it in the end, it's difficult to ignore.
What Dreisbach is trying to do is get people to sort of dismiss it.
This is what he's after, and this is why he's doing the hit piece that is going to come out, I think, either today or tomorrow.
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Guys, I'm really happy to welcome back to the podcast my son-in-law, Brandon Gill, graduate of Dartmouth, a veteran of Wall Street hedge funds, now runs his own social media company, is also the editor-in-chief of the DC Inquirer.
And we're going to talk about money and we're going to talk about the dollar as the world's currency reserve.
Brandon, hey, great to have you back on the podcast.
You know, I've been reading these articles.
They're all separate, but they seem to be pointing in the same direction.
So here's one. It says China to use rubles and yen to pay for Russian gas as opposed to U.S. dollars.
And then there's the president here of the BRICS. The BRICS refers to a kind of a coalition of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, a BRICS coalition.
And he's basically saying, we don't have a need to pay internationally in dollars anymore.
So... Kind of what I want to begin by asking you is, it seems like the United States has had the world's reserve currency for almost 100 years.
Before that, it was the British pound.
I guess before that, it was maybe the French franc.
And it seems to be an advantage to have everybody kind of want to keep dollars, everybody want to pay in dollars.
But what is that advantage?
Why is it good to have people all around the world Trusting the dollar and holding dollars as their way of conserving their own wealth.
Right. First, thanks for having me on, Dinesh.
But, you know, there's a ton of benefits to having the status as world reserve currency.
And the U.S. has had that since roughly World War II. And to your point before that, it was the British pound.
There are really three big benefits.
The first one is that it helps finance the US standard of living that we've really enjoyed since World War II. So because the US dollar is the sort of preeminent currency around the world, other countries, other central banks, other investors, other businesses around the world want US dollars.
So what does that mean? That means that the dollar is worth more than other currencies, which makes it cheaper for us to import goods.
That reduces prices in the US, which raises the standard of living in the US. The second thing that it does is it makes it cheaper and easier for us to borrow.
For most of my life, the United States government has spent far more money than they've actually taken in in tax revenues.
And one of the reasons they're able to finance that is they're able to go out in international capital markets and borrow incredibly cheaply because foreign investors want to own American debt.
They believe it's stable.
They believe America is going to pay them back eventually.
And they think that, or historically, they've thought that the United States wasn't going to just inflate our currency into oblivion.
The third thing that that really does is it allows America to have a sort of power on the international stage that no other country has.
So because all kinds of transactions, to your point, oil markets are conducted in U.S. dollars, if the U.S. government decides that we don't want, we want to sanction another country, call it Iran, Russia, one of our enemies, we can basically just turn the taps off and say, No bank around the world can transact business with this country.
Otherwise, we're going to fine you.
We're going to just kind of turn the monetary tabs off.
You can't use U.S. dollars to do business.
So it gives us kind of a power on the international stage that no other country has.
And this is something we're losing quite quickly.
I mean, it seems, Brandon, that China has had for some time, well, of course, they recognize the benefit of having a global reserve.
They would like the Chinese currency, the yen, the renminbi, to be that global reserve.
Now, people don't trust the Chinese because it's an authoritarian system.
It's run by a cabal of 70, 80 year olds.
And so there is, the Chinese have had difficulty convincing other countries basically do business in Chinese currency.
But it seems to me that what's happened here with the sanctions on Ukraine is that Russia, a large country that was doing a lot of business in dollars, is now moving to doing business in Chinese currencies.
And a lot of other countries are ambivalent about the United States, including, for example, a country like India, which should be a US ally, but seems to be finding its place in this kind of BRICS alternative.
Do you think that if these countries set up an alternative currency backed perhaps not by gold, we of course used to have the gold standard here, but backed by kind of a basket of commodities, they will be able to convince the world that their currency, the alternative currency, whatever it's called, is more stable and reliable long term than the US dollar?
Right.
Well there's no secret that China would...
Hugely loved usurp America's position as having sort of the global dominant currency.
And it's also obvious that a lot of our enemies, think of Russia, to your point, are trying to find alternatives to the US dollar because they don't want to be tied to America anymore.
Now, whether they can do that, there are all kinds of problems China has, for example.
Most international investors don't trust China.
They know that it's an authoritarian government, that they have capital controls right now, which is a pretty big hindrance to really owning the global currency that's used in international trade.
And you know, the idea that maybe they can come up with some alternative backed by commodities, maybe they can.
I think they're a long ways from that.
Right now, the U.S. dollar, roughly just under 60% of global reserve currency is still in U.S. dollars, about 2-3% as in Chinese renminbi.
Maybe they can do that, but there are a long ways from it.
But the point, though, that we need to remember is that we cannot give up ground here.
We cannot let the left continue to spin, to print money like crazy, and do everything that they can to push this in sort of that alternative currency direction.
I mean, I think what you're saying, Brandon, is a very wise kind of counsel, is that we've had this advantage, and we don't want to throw it away or give it up.
We seem to be losing ground, and maybe the best thing going for us right now is just that there isn't a good alternative, and that's a little bit of a precarious position to be.
Anyway, great analysis.
Thank you very much for joining me, as always, and look forward to having you back soon.
Thanks for having me, Dinesh.
Well, the Dems just went on a big spending spree, $500 billion to fund their student loan forgiveness bailout.
Well, how are they going to pay for it?
Well, oh yeah, they're hiring 87,000 new IRS agents whose goal is to do an additional 1.2 million audits a year, aka squeeze the taxpayers.
That means you. The Fed chair is a little freaked out about inflation.
The leftist government is clearly ignoring him.
So where does this leave us?
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Steve Bannon has been arrested and is apparently being indicted again.
Now... The left is really after this guy.
In fact, he's... You could almost call him a sort of a little Trump in that they are desperate to nail Bannon on something.
And they have tried...
You know, he ignored a subpoena.
And they tried earlier with federal charges.
And the federal charges were...
That Bannon was part of this.
It was called the We Build the Wall project.
Bannon didn't set it up himself.
He had some other guys, mostly veterans, who were part of this project.
They raised some money, apparently $25 million total.
And this was actually to do private funding to start building the wall.
I don't know a whole lot about the details of this.
As far as I know, they didn't build any wall.
But a federal prosecutor said that Bannon was siphoning money from this organization.
They accused him of taking up to a million dollars.
They claimed that he bought some plastic surgery, some jewelry, and a golf cart.
He's under federal indictment for buying a golf cart with this money.
And that case didn't really go anywhere because as Trump exited the presidency, he pardoned Bannon.
Bannon was one of the guys who got a presidential pardon.
I guess he joins the pardon list, on which, of course, I am also on that list.
And so the state of New York was furious.
The state of New York, by the way, dominated by left-wingers, the political apparatus, but also the Southern District of New York, the SDNY. By the way, this is the same office that prosecuted me on the campaign finance violations.
Now, this has become a kind of a judicial arm of the Democratic Party.
And if you do any business in New York, you can feel sure, if you're on the right side of the aisle, that you're now a target.
So New York has literally become, judicially speaking, hostile territory.
And I think it's a message that if you're in New York, you're going to be in their sights.
And Bannon most certainly is.
So essentially what New York is doing, and it's a little bit risky, is they're saying, we're going to re-indict Bannon for the exact same things that he was pardoned for, but we will do it by claiming that he violated state laws.
So, a pardon is a federal act.
Obviously, it's the federal government.
It's the chief of the federal government, the president, who's giving the pardon.
And the president can pardon people who are accused of having committed, or who are convicted of having committed, some sort of federal offense.
But there are, of course, there's a parallel state system.
So there are the laws of the federal government, but there are the laws of Texas.
There are the laws of California.
There are laws of New York.
And so what's going on here is that the Southern District of New York, prodded by the...
Debbie's like, yeah, those guys again.
We know all about them.
And... I'm really not sure that's going to fly.
Because it's kind of like a guy who's charged with murder, let's say he crossed state lines, he's a federal charge, and then he's pardoned, and then he's charged with murder by the state for doing the same thing.
I'm not sure that actually works.
So Bannon is going to have some avenues to be able to fight this quite apart from the substance of whether he even did it.
But I do think that, so Pannon I saw on social media this morning, he sort of turned himself in.
There was a little scene outside of the SDNY. I'm a little surprised they didn't try raiding him.
By the way, he was subject to a federal raid the last time.
If I remember correctly, honey, remind me if you're wrong, I think Pannon was on a boat.
He was apparently on a boat with some billionaire, and they had helicopters, and they intercepted the boat, and they made a big...
Yeah, they love this kind of theatrics because what they want to do is they want the media is in on all this.
And the media is basically, you could almost call them the photographic division of the SDNY. And so the SDNY, the Southern District of New York, is like, you know, let's bring in the photographers, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post.
Let's get pictures of Bannon in handcuffs.
And so this time Bannon was turning himself in.
It was a little bit of a scene out there.
And Bannon, of course, was his usual kind of You know, combative self.
He's a, I am never going to stop fighting.
I've not yet begun to fight.
They will have to kill me first.
So Mannon is sort of taking an aggressive line, as I think he should, because there's no doubt in my mind.
Again, you know, if this was an impartial judicial system, we could say, well, let's look at the merits.
Well, you know, is there any truth to this?
But when you have a, you know, you know that if Bannon was a Democrat, if Bannon was on the left, let's just say that there was the same set of circumstances that Steve Bannon, and he wasn't trying to build a wall.
Let's say he was trying to raise money for, you know, the trans.
Would he be under indictment?
Would he be turning himself into the SDNY? Absolutely not.
So when you have a polluted system of justice like this, my view is the charges don't really matter.
When the system is corrupt, we basically need to focus on fixing the system.
We don't really care about, we don't really need to focus on the defendants because it doesn't matter what they did.
They're being judged by a corrupt regime.
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Guys, I'm delighted to welcome back to the podcast our friend, Kirk Cameron.
You know him, of course, from Growing Pains, but you also know him for terrific films that he's made as a producer.
Fireproof, Monumental...
The new one which he's made with the Kendrick Brothers is called Life Mark.
It's in theaters September 9th.
This is a terrific movie and I want to talk to Kirk about it.
Kirk, you told me just now that you're at the Museum of the Bible.
Debbie recently toured the Museum of the Bible.
I confess I haven't seen it yet.
I'm actually excited to see the Museum of the Bible.
But you had a screening of the film there.
How was that received?
Well, first of all, the Museum of the Bible puts on spectacular display the impact of the Bible, the history of the Bible, little-known facts about the Bible.
And I'm staying in some of the secret guest suites where they host some of the scholars.
I'm no scholar, but I'm enjoying the suites.
Nice! That's terrific!
And we had our movie premiere here last night, and it was electrifying.
It was life-giving.
And it was to celebrate the accomplishment of finishing a movie that is rushing into theaters celebrating the value of life and the beauty of adoption.
And this is happening right on the heels of the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe vs.
Wade. I mean, this is almost providential, Kirk, because when you started the movie, obviously Roe was the law of the land, and you might say, well, I'd like to change hearts and minds, but at some level, what good does it do when you have a legal regime in place that has abortion on demand all over the country?
But now we are in a different environment.
Essentially, the court has handed this off to the American people, so nothing could be more timely now than a movie, That makes the case for life, but does it, it seems, in a very kind of interesting way.
This is actually not an abortion movie per se.
Talk a little bit about the storyline of the movie and the way in which it makes the broader point so effectively.
Well, Dinesh, we know as movie makers that often the inspiration to make a documentary or a movie is some sort of monumental event that takes place in the culture.
But this was not the case with Life Mark, because we started this in 2019, and it was a movie that was delayed due to the pandemic shutdowns, due to the COVID crunch that shut everything down in the theaters.
But providentially, God has it come out just weeks after the Dobbs decision.
So this is a movie that I'm particularly...
I'm excited about because not only do we need something that helps us as a nation view this issue, this tender topic of life, of a woman's rights, of bodily autonomy, Of Roe vs.
Wade, we need to look at it through the lens of love and compassion, not only considering the rights of the mother, but everyone included, including the perspective of the innocent human baby and the life ahead of him or her, and including the birth father, which is often neglected in the conversation, as well as the thousands of couples who are longing to start families and have children but are unable to.
And Life Mark is a true story about an 18-year-old girl who chooses adoption over abortion.
That child is adopted into a loving family.
He's raised until he's 19 years old and he then has a chance to meet his biological mother.
She thinks that he probably hates her.
And in their meeting, he wraps her up in a loving embrace and says, I love you.
Thank you, thank you, thank you.
And I love my family.
And now, Dinesh, in real life, These two people, the biological mother and the son, are traveling around the country and he's an adoption lawyer helping other families to adopt children into their homes.
So this is a beautiful story.
So it sounds like I didn't actually know this, that this is not a fictional manuscript that you came up with.
You're essentially taking a true life story and you're making a feature film based upon actual people and their actual experience.
Yes, that's right.
And their story was held in heaven until this providential moment.
Where people are wondering, how will we ever come together?
Will we come together? How do we spark a spirit of revival?
Well, here's something that takes it out of the realm of philosophical argument and brings it right down to a place where we can feel the agony of a mother making that difficult choice.
We can feel the longing of a couple who wants to have children but cannot.
And we can feel the journey of this young man as he discovers the startling beginnings to his life.
And we see how God works it all together for good.
And so we believe that adoption is the loving choice in the midst of an unplanned pregnancy and as an adoptive father with four adopted children and a wife who is also an adopted child, I am forever grateful for those young moms and dads who chose life for their babies.
I mean, Kirk, whenever I talk to you, you're such a positive, affirming guy, and I think that also comes through in your films.
Lincoln used the phrase, the better angels of our nature, and it seems to me that there's a thread running through your films in which you're always trying to show and bring out the best in people so that some of these divisive and difficult social issues can be overcome really through...
Us finding our best selves.
Am I right in summarizing the broader perspective that you bring to films?
I ask God in my morning prayers, God, what lane do you want me in?
There's so much work that needs to be done, but there's others who shine the light to expose the cockroaches better than I do.
There's technicians with the x-ray machinery that can show us what we can't see on the surface.
Laura, stop. You've basically summarized my podcast.
It's a cockroach-exposing project.
I love it. That's what I do.
I'm good at that.
I call out the cockroaches and swat them down right here on the podcast.
Yes, yes. And I'm seeing the posters of these projects behind you and I love them and they educate us.
I think what I'm trying to do is something I remember Charles Spurgeon, I believe, saying, if you want to understand how crooked a stick really is, all you have to do is hold it up next to a straight one.
Once you see them side by side, it becomes obvious and you don't even really need to explain it.
And so, for me, I say, once I understand the problem, how do we get to the cure?
What should things look like in our culture?
And rather than me trying to argue with people, I am much better at saying, what is God's prescription for this wicked disease of abortion, of devaluing life to where we think we can just throw away a class of people because of their stage of development and use that as an excuse to dismiss their personhood?
I mean, that's the kind of stuff that was the basis for eugenics, for the Holocaust, for all sorts of evil things, and yet we're normalizing and celebrating it with tricky language like healthcare and bodily autonomy, which is insanity.
So, this is a story that simply tells what really happened when a woman chose love in the midst of a difficult situation with an unplanned pregnancy, and we didn't make any of it up.
I mean, the story happened on the screen just as it did in real life, and if you're looking for a good movie to see this weekend, please, see Life Mark.
It's got heart and humor.
There's lots of action in it for the guys.
There's cliff jumping, skydiving, knife throwing, ATV racing, along with hilarious comedy that'll have you laughing and then crying right next to it as it grabs your heart.
It's really a movie that will leave your heart full and you'll feel inspired to defend and preserve the value of life.
Folks, it's really important.
It's actually beneficial to a film to see it right as it comes out.
So this weekend, the movie is Life Marked.
Check it out from Kirk Cameron.
Kirk, thanks very much for joining me.
Thank you, Dinesh. God bless you.
Looking for a movie that celebrates the gift of life?
Well, get ready for Life Mark, the new movie from the Kendrick brothers and our friend Kirk Cameron, opening in theaters everywhere September 9th.
In Life Mark, David's comfortable world is turned upside down when his birth mother unexpectedly reaches out to him, longing to meet the 18-year-old son she's only held once.
With the encouragement of his adopted parents, David embarks on a life-altering journey of discovery that leads to a staggering truth from his past.
Inspired by a true story, Life Mark is a powerful reminder that one decision, one choice can impact so much more than one life.
Life Mark is pro-family, pro-love, pro-forgiveness, pro-reconciliation, and pro-new beginnings.
So if you are too, make your plans to see Life Marks.
See LifeMark in theaters nationwide beginning tomorrow, September 9th.
Learn more about LifeMark.
Get your tickets today at LifeMarkMovie.com.
That's LifeMarkMovie.com.
In the Odyssey, when we last left off, Athena advised Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, you should go and confront these suitors, denounce them, call a council of the important figures in Ithaca, and tell them that the suitors are violating Telemachus.
Zania. Athena doesn't put it that way, but that's what she's getting at.
Tell them that they are violating your hospitality, that they are wasting away your substance.
They are, in a sense, we would say today, bankrupting you.
And Odysseus, I'm sorry, Telemachus does this.
But because he's a young man in his early 20s, the suitors basically are contemptuous.
They dismiss him. But then an old man, a prophet, a man named Halathurce, steps forward.
And Halathurce says that he points to an omen.
Now, an omen is a kind of divine symbol.
Zeus apparently sent down these two eagles from a mountain peak.
The eagles sort of flew together, flapped their wings, and then began to sort of tear each other apart.
and omens are signs that can be read by sort of gifted seers as to what they mean.
And Halithoros says this means, he tells the suitors who are there, that Telemachus' warning should be heeded, that Odysseus, if he comes back, is going to really teach the suitors a lesson.
Massacre them, destroy them, wipe them out, get them out of there.
and the suitors had better immediately sort of reform their behavior, change their ways.
Now, the leader of the suitors is a guy named Eurymachus.
And this is his response to Halithraces, which I'm going to read a few sentences of.
It's a little bit long, but I'm just going to read a couple sentences, because it gives you a really good idea of how we're supposed to think about these suitors, how Homer portrays them. Here's Eurymachus.
Bye.
Speaking to Halathurses, Old man, be off.
Go home and spout your portents to your children.
I can read these omens better than you can.
Many birds go flying in sunlight and not all are meaningful.
Odysseus is dead, away from home.
I wish you died with him to stop your silly forecasts.
And then Goans goes on, we are not afraid of anyone, much less this boy with his long speeches, nor your pointless portents.
Now, Here is Eurymachus, I have to say, violating, disrespecting, desecrating pretty much all the core principles of his own society, particularly the principle of Zenia.
Because let's look at what Eurymachus is doing.
First of all, he's insulting an old man.
And of course, in Homeric society, old people, although not always right, are deserving of respect.
Number two. He is insulting the idea that this seer, this prophet, is actually telling something that should be heeded.
So, in other words, Euromachus is disrespecting the gods, and particularly the god in charge of portents and the god in charge of Zania, namely Zeus.
Number three, you can see there's a contempt for Odysseus.
Not only is Eurimachus saying Odysseus is dead, but it's obvious that he's happy he's dead.
And let's remember, Odysseus is the legitimate king of Ithaca.
Let's say Odysseus is dead.
Well, who's the king of Ithaca now?
Well, it would be Telemachus because it's a hereditary monarchy.
And so, by and large, Eurymachus goes from insulting Odysseus to now insulting Telemachus and saying, this guy's a fool.
He doesn't really know anything.
We're not going to pay any attention to him any more than we are to you.
So, you can see here, I mean, we're creating a situation, Homer is, in which these suitors, in the end, are going to be attacked and And really killed, one by one, all of them, by Odysseus and Telemachus.
And I think Homer is trying to convey, starting here, that this is actually a good thing.
That these young men, if you will, of Ithaca are out of control.
And they are...
They are abusing hospitality in what we would today call a sacrilegious way.
Sacrilegious, obviously not in the Christian sense, but sacrilegious against the kind of sacred precepts of ancient society.
And so they need to be taught a lesson in very harsh terms.
In fact, this is exactly what Halithyrs is predicting.
The suitors are dismissive.
And Homer is essentially setting it up so that they are going to get their comeuppance.
And with this, we come to the end of Book 2 of the Odyssey.
In Books 3 and 4, we have Telemachus now undertaking two journeys.
The first journey is to Pylos to see this old man named Nestor.
Nestor was there at the Trojan War to get advice from Nestor, and then he's going to go on to Sparta.
And meet with Menelaus and actually Helen.
Helen of Troy makes a kind of a brief, I would say, cameo appearance, but a very interesting one.
And we see also what good Xenia looks like, because both Nestor and Menelaus treat Telemachus.
Remember in books 1 and 2, Telemachus is sort of the host, right?
He's welcoming Athena and He is not welcoming the suitors, but he is in the host position.
Now we'll see in books three and four, Telemachus in the guest position, and the hosts are respectively Nestor and Menelaus.
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Arriving in the Greek city of Pylos, the young Telemachus.
He meets with Nestor, the old Greek warrior and very wise man, the wisest of the Greeks, Homer would lead us to believe.
And he receives a kind of marvelous and warm welcome, very good zinnia.
Nestor sits him down, serves him a meal, has his son, Pisistratus, attend to and look after And Telemachus, at the end of Book 3, something that strikes us as surprising but would not strike the ancient Greeks as surprising at all, Nestor has his daughter give Telemachus a bath.
And today we'd be like, wait a minute, this is a little bit strange.
But no, in Homeric society, women, by and large, bathe men.
And so this is actually just a part of hospitality.
Interestingly, Nestor says to Telemachus, my dear boy, I have no news about what happened.
Nestor was one of the first people to leave Troy.
He essentially came straight home.
He's one of the few Greeks not to have been sent on a journey of wandering and difficulty, and in many cases, death.
But Nestor does say this.
He talks about Agamemnon, the leader of the Greek expedition, and He says, Now, this is a very important passage in the Odyssey because here is Nestor telling a young man,
Telemachus, About another Greek warrior.
Not his father, Odysseus, about whom Nestor doesn't know what happened to him after the Trojan War.
But he does know what happened to Agamemnon.
And he knows that Agamemnon came home.
His wife, Clytemnestra, had taken up with another man, Aegisthus.
The two of them murdered Agamemnon.
And then later, the murder was avenged by Agamemnon's own son, Agamemnon.
By the way, this sequence of the death of Agamemnon, the murder of Agamemnon, the revenge of Orestes is all part of the Greek tragedian Aeschylus' great trilogy called the Oresteia.
Maybe one day I'll do a magnificent, deep, and maybe the greatest of all the Greek tragedies, although some would argue for Sophocles.
But nevertheless, the significance of the passage here is this.
Nestor is saying to Telemachus, you know what?
There was a great old man, Agamemnon, murdered because his wife was unfaithful.
Right here we see the importance of fidelity because think of Odysseus' position.
Had Penelope been, well, as Debbie says, a hooch, if Penelope had been sleeping with the suitors, had been essentially betraying her husband, what happened in Agamemnon's case is the man of the house was killed, was murdered. But that's not Nestor's message here.
That warning is in the background.
It emphasizes the importance of the fidelity of Penelope to this story.
But where Nestor is going with this is, what did Agamemnon's son do?
He took action.
He dispersed the bad guys.
He took care of it.
And essentially what Nestor is saying to Telemachus is, you need to be like Orestes.
You need to recognize, true, the situation is somewhat different.
No, your father hasn't been murdered.
But yes, there are some potential murderers of your father in your own house.
Whose job is it to get rid of them?
Well, your father's if he came back.
But I don't know where he is.
And in his absence, you are the legitimate king.
It is going to be your mission to take action.
And so Nestor is trying, as Athena did earlier, to sort of shore up To help Telemachus reach maturity so that he can do what is demanded and needed of him to restore harmony to Ithaca, even in the absence of Odysseus.
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