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Oct. 24, 2022 - Dinesh D'Souza
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CHOPPING BLOCK Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep441
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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.
Book your free call with her team by going to friendofdinesh.com.
That's friendofdinesh.com.
Coming up, internal documents show Elon Musk is planning to fire 75% of Twitter employees, and my only critique is, why not 100%?
Things are going well, seemingly, leading up to the midterms, but what's Mitch McConnell up to?
I want to suggest that it doesn't seem to be good.
I'll argue that judges who are refusing to hire clerks from Yale Law School are sending an important message.
Actor and producer Kirk Cameron joins me.
We're going to talk about making the kind of films that Hollywood can't and won't make, and also about his new podcast called The American Campfire Revival.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
♪♪ America needs this voice.
The times are crazy in a time of confusion, division, and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
Quick announcement, guys.
Tomorrow, Tuesday, my new book, 2,000 Mules, is out.
It's the handbook that's sort of a complement to the film.
It has a lot of information that goes beyond the film, lays out in pretty systematic detail.
Perhaps in a more organized way, a film is a narrative, but a book can make a case.
And I have a chapter toward the end that in detail rebuts critics by name and looking specifically at what they say about the film.
So this is all stuff that you can't get from the movie, so do go for the book.
It'll be available on Amazon pretty much everywhere you can get books.
And published by Regnery and officially out tomorrow.
Now, let's talk about Twitter because the Washington Post has what was supposed to be a bombshell revelation which was causing a lot of consternation at the Washington Post and at Twitter.
Documents detail plans to gut Twitter's workforce.
And it turns out that Elon Musk, in a disclosure to investors, has said that he plans to fire and get this 75% of all Twitter employees.
Now, Twitter has thousands of employees, well, 7,500 employees, so firing 75% of them would bring Twitter's force staff down to just 2,000 employees.
Pretty much most people would be canned.
Now, you would think that the Washington Post might raise questions about things like, well, is it possible to maintain a large digital platform like Twitter with this reduced workforce?
Or are there a lot of people twiddling their thumbs at Twitter?
What is, in fact, the optimum workforce for Twitter?
But no, the Washington Post doesn't go there.
Here's how they deal with it.
A change likely to have major impact on its ability to control harmful content.
End quote. They're worried about censorship.
So here you have the paradox of media organizations that have become vociferous lobbyists for censorship.
Why? Because essentially they all have a point of view and they want to shut down the rival point of view.
Nothing could be more... Think of how disgraceful this is from the perspective of having discussions, having debate, what the First Amendment is really for.
Now... The Post goes on in its article to talk about the fact that these employees are indispensable to Twitter.
They quote a bunch of Twitter people.
Naturally, this has caused a furor over at Twitter.
And Matt Walker, who's a product designer for Twitter, goes on a rampage and he basically blames Jack Dorsey.
Quote, every decision Jack has made has gotten us to this point.
So he's blaming Jack Dorsey for making Twitter...
I don't think he thinks he can get through to Musk, but he perhaps thinks he could have gotten through to Jack Dorsey.
But of course, it's too late.
Musk's acquisition is going through.
Now, here's another guy.
This is Edward Chen, a data scientist who used to be at Twitter.
He's now somewhere else.
And he says, well, Twitter, these employees have a lot of institutional knowledge, and so firing them is going to cause, is, quote, going to create demoralization at Twitter and cause other employees to want to leave.
And this all brings me to my idea, which is my only critique of Elon Musk, and that is he's not going far enough.
Fire everybody! I mean, start certainly with the two kind of destructive Indians at Twitter, Parag Agarwal, who's the CEO. This guy has been a champion of censorship.
He says things like, the First Amendment doesn't even enter into our decisions.
We don't even think about free speech.
This is Twitter. And by the way, Twitter thought a lot about free speech and made a lot of proclamations about its fidelity to free speech when it went before Congress begging for Section 230 protection, legal protections.
So now suddenly free speech doesn't really matter.
These platforms, in a sense, are out in the open.
And by the way, Twitter today is better than YouTube, better than Facebook from the point of view of censorship.
And then the Washington Post article goes on to talk about the fact that Musk probably paid too much for Twitter and how some of the other investors who were apparently in Twitter, these are people like Larry Ellison of Oracle and others, that they might not feel that Musk is really paying careful attention to the value of Twitter.
Now, I'm sure Musk, like any entrepreneur, does care about this, but does he really care about it that much I mean, here's a guy who's worth $240 billion.
And sure, he's paying, what, $44 billion for Twitter.
But think of it, that's one-sixth of his net worth.
Elon Musk can look at this as his contribution to free speech.
To preserving a wide birth or a wide parameter of political debate, not worry too much whether or not Twitter turns in a profit.
Now, I think Musk believes that Twitter is undervalued, even though he's paying a lot for Twitter the way it is.
The way good entrepreneurs work is they think, this is what I'm buying, but I'm buying it not necessarily because I see it as being the same.
I'm buying it to turn it into something else that has actually much greater value.
Musk has talked at other times about creating a sort of X app that would include Twitter, but essentially be a one-stop shop for the whole internet.
You would do your e-commerce there.
You would engage in conversations.
So it would think of it as YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Amazon rolled into one.
What would the value of that be?
It would seem that only Elon Musk can see perhaps that far.
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I'll begin with Nancy Pelosi and Biden because actually these two characters, I gotta say, are actually helping us politically.
They're helping us because of how horrible they are and how out of it they are.
Let's start with Pelosi. She was recently interviewed on Face the Nation.
She was asked about inflation and here's her response.
We have to change the subject.
What? So instead of trying to deal with it, instead of trying to give some explanation, perhaps give people some hope that things are going to get better, she goes, let's pretend it doesn't exist.
She goes on to say inflation is a worldwide phenomenon, and that's true.
But it's a worldwide phenomenon in large part because of horrible policies that have been driven by the Biden administration in conjunction with other governments.
So the fact that other governments are also pursuing these bad policies that have driven up prices across the board, this is hardly, I think, a valid defense from Pelosi.
Now, Biden continues to dig in in the manner of a crotchety, angry old man, which is what he is.
And the good news is that Biden, Pelosi, these are the, on the left, these are the millstones that are dragging the Democratic Party to the bottom of the ocean.
And we can see this in a wide variety of polls.
Now you might jump in and say, wait a minute Dinesh, I thought you didn't trust the polls and you've done segments before about how these polls are unreliable.
Yeah, they're unreliable in this sense.
They're unreliable in that they are always biased to the Democrats.
In other words, the errors of the polls are not random.
They always understate Republican support.
They never understate Democratic support.
It's almost like the tennis ball always falls on one side of the net, and that tells you that the polls themselves are vehicles of propaganda.
But what this means for us on the right is this, and that is that we can almost safely bet that the polls are understating the margin of victory in November.
If some guy is tied in the polls, And a Republican is tied with a Democrat, that Republican is probably going to win.
We'll see if this turns out to be true on November 8th, but I think it looks like it will be.
Biden's approval rating?
Approve 39%.
By the way, down six points from September.
Disapprove 53%.
This is not...
You know, we know that midterm elections generally are bad for the party in power.
But with these kinds of numbers, I think Republicans have a lot of reasons to feel very good.
And then when we start looking at the...
At individual races.
The RCP House rating, five seats moved toward the Republicans.
Republicans now expected to have 225 seats, Democrats 175.
By the way, look at that. That's a 50-seat difference with 35 toss-ups.
And the toss-ups could go either way.
If 2020 is any indication, the Republicans won every toss-up race.
So think about that. If we get even something close to that, the Republicans will be ahead in the House by 75 seats.
It will be an absolute wipeout.
And that's actually what I'm hoping for.
Let's look at some individual results in Florida.
I'm going to combine Senate races and governor's races.
DeSantis is leading Charlie Crist by over 10 points, 51% to 40%.
The numbers vary depending on which poll you look at, but in every poll he's ahead by at least 10 points.
Interestingly, and perhaps more significantly, in Nevada, which has been a swing state, leaning blue, Joe Lombardo is now cleanly ahead of Steve Sisolak, 49 to 43 percent.
This is in the governor's race.
The Senate race, much closer.
Adam Laxalt against the incumbent, Catherine Cortez Masto.
Laxalt, 45.
Cortez Masto, 43.
So very close. But again, if you apply the sort of Dinesh doctrine here, Laxalt is actually probably five or six points ahead.
It's understated by the way these polls are constructed.
Ohio, obviously a very close state.
And J.D. Vance does not have the support of some elements in the Republican establishment, but here he is 47-43 ahead of Tim Ryan.
And let's go to Georgia.
Brian Kemp appears to be just trouncing Stacey Abrams by more than 10 points, almost the DeSantis margin in Florida.
It's very close with Herschel Walker.
He appears to be tied with Raphael Warnock.
I think that means he'll probably win.
But, of course, he's been dogged a little bit here by the attacks on his personal life.
In the governance race in Ohio, Mike DeWine, 57% against Nan Whaley, 38%.
So that race is basically over.
And I was telling Debbie this morning, we were looking at the Texas races.
They look to have tilted pretty sharply to the right.
Greg Abbott, 54.
Beto O'Rourke, 43.
That's an 11-point difference.
Let's remember, Beto O'Rourke came within a hair of defeating Ted Cruz the last time around.
I don't think it's going to happen here.
Dan Patrick is leading for Lieutenant Governor by 15 points over Mike Collier.
Ken Paxton by almost 15 points over Rochelle Garza.
And then we turn to Michigan, where Gretchen Whitmer is the incumbent.
But Tudor Dixon is giving her a run for her money.
Gretchen Whitmer at this point, 49.
Tudor Dixon, 47.
But that's within the margin of error.
It may even be that in Washington State, Tiffany Smiley, who was seen as a long shot, is also doing pretty well Against Patty Murray.
And that will be a big win if Tiffany Smiley can pull that off.
So overall, it's looking fairly sunny and rosy for Republicans.
Not a reason, by the way, to be complacent or to relax.
Stay involved, stay active, and let's win this one big so that we can put a sort of political chokehold around the Biden administration.
With the consumer price index increasing again, the stock market has been in absolute turmoil.
What's our illustrious leader doing to quell the surge of inflation that's destroying American families?
Oh yeah, spending more money and adding to the burden.
Well, don't bury your head in the sand while your savings get eroded and decimated.
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Just as Republicans appear poised to do very well in the midterm election, we have some very strange, disruptive, and in some ways destructive behavior by Mitch McConnell.
Now, let's start by talking about Lisa Murkowski in Alaska.
Lisa Murkowski is turning out to be a real snake.
First of all, she helped to orchestrate a ranked voting system that is taking a Republican state like Alaska and handing it off to the Democrats.
Why? Because when you have multiple people in the same race, the ranked voting system doesn't mean that the party that gets the most votes—in fact, Republicans got 60% of the vote— And yet, the candidate, Sarah Palin, lost to Democrat Mary Peltola.
Now, in a new development, very disturbing, Lisa Murkowski has endorsed Mary Peltola, the Democrat.
And Mary Peltola has turned around and endorsed So she's endorsed Mary Peltola for Congress, and Mary Peltola has turned around and endorsed Lisa Murkowski for the Senate.
Why? Because Kelly Shabaka, who's been on this podcast now, I think, two or three times, has been giving Murkowski a run for her money.
She is... It's quite possible that Chewbacca will pull this off and Murkowski is running scared.
So she's basically trying to corral some Democratic support to neutralize the fact that Republicans aren't going to vote for her.
Now, my point is, what is Mitch McConnell doing with all this?
Answer, he's pumping in millions of dollars to protect Murkowski.
Why would you protect Murkowski against Kelly Chewbacca?
Kelly Chewbacca is a Republican.
And she's a solid Republican.
She would be a very valuable vote on the Republican side.
Lisa Murkowski is actually much more unreliable.
But this brings me to a point that was clarified for me by Michelle Bachman this weekend.
Debbie and I were at the Focus on the family retreat, kind of a donor retreat at the beautiful Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado.
Michelle Bachman was there and she's like, you know what?
Mitch McConnell doesn't care about any of that.
He doesn't even care whether he's the majority or the minority leader, as long as he's the leader.
And what he wants in the Senate are sycophants who are loyal to him.
And even though Lisa Murkowski portrays herself as very independent, she's a McConnell sycophant.
And so McConnell would rather put all this money in and risk losing the race.
That's not what's critical to him.
What's critical to him is he wants ultimately to remain leader, and he wants people who are going to be, you can call them, McConnellites in the Senate.
We see this not just in Alaska, but we also see this in New Hampshire.
Now look at the New Hampshire Senate race.
The incumbent is Maggie Hassan, who is running against a Trumpster named Don Bolduck.
McConnell tried to back Bolduc's opponent.
Bolduc won the nomination.
And you would think McConnell would then say, OK, listen, I've got money.
I'm going to put it in. And what the McConnell people do is they're actually hurting Don Bolduc.
How do they do it? They very noisily and loudly pull money out.
They say, listen, we had committed $5.6 million to television ads in New Hampshire.
We're now subtracting that money and putting it elsewhere.
So McConnell and his malevolent staff, what they do is they go leak this information, which is obviously damaging to Don Bolduc.
Why? Because it gives the idea that even McConnell doesn't think that that's a winnable race.
So what McConnell is doing is pulling out the rug from under...
Now, it would be one thing if Don Bolduc was, you know...
30% in the polls, and Maggie Hassan was 70% nonsense.
In fact, they're two points apart.
Interactive polls, Maggie Hassan 49, Don Bolduc 47.
This is a winnable race.
Maggie Hassan has actually been a very unpopular senator since she won the race by a hair very narrowly against Kelly Ayotte the last time around.
So this is a race Republicans can win.
And what I find outrageous, bordering on criminal, is that Mitch McConnell and his goons are trying to undermine Bolduc.
Why? Because he's not a McConnellite.
Yes, he's a Republican. He's a conservative Republican.
It would be so great to win a Senate seat in New Hampshire, of all places.
This would show that we're able to win these states that have been...
New Hampshire's been a purple state leaning blue.
Now, consistently in the last several elections.
So think how good it would be to win.
By the way, in the gubernatorial race, Chris Sununu is almost 20 points ahead of his opponent, Tom Sherman.
There was some talk about Sununu entering the Senate race, but he chose not to.
Anyway, he's going to win easily for governor.
But here's McConnell, in my view, subverting somebody who could win this race and wasting this money on Lisa Murkowski when McConnell should get out of that.
Pay no attention to it.
Let Lisa Murkowski battle it out with Kelly Chewbacca because either way, there's going to be a Republican that will help us reach the majority in the Senate.
Unfortunately, it seems that in some cases we are dealing with problems not just on the other side, not just coming from the left, but as in this case, coming from our own Mitch McConnell.
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I want to talk about a very interesting development that has been kicked off by a federal circuit court judge.
This is the Fifth Circuit.
The judge's name is James Ho, H-O. And he had been following what's going on at Yale Law School.
And he realized that Yale Law School is actively working at many levels to enshrine a kind of intolerance, cancel culture, and actively subvert freedom of speech.
Harassing conservative students, making it difficult for conservatives to be hired as professors, openly celebrating an attempt to consolidate a single point of view, and And so Judge Ho basically had enough.
And he goes, listen, in this kind of atmosphere where you are coming through a law school, by the way, supposedly the premier law school in the country, these days and rankings sometimes are all over the place, but Yale is consistently in the very top tier and in some rankings, number one. James Ho goes, listen, students who are the products of this kind of intolerant environment, they haven't tested their ideas against rival opinions.
This free speech is, in a sense, the lifeblood of legal education.
So, you know what? I'm just going to stop hiring any clerks from Yale Law School.
Now, when this first was reported, some people on the left kind of poo-pooed it, and they were like, ha ha ha ha, what do we care?
This is one circuit court judge.
But they didn't notice that in this...
In the statement, Judge Ho said, I encourage others to speak out on this topic and to join me if they feel it appropriate to do so.
Well, as it turns out, 13 federal judges have now joined Ho.
They've either praised him.
In some cases, the 11th Circuit Court's Lisa Branch, he goes, listen, that's it for me.
No more clerks from Yale.
Other judges have decided to also do the same, and there are many judges who are not publicly taking Ho's side, but they have sort of made a mental decision, well, you know what?
I'm just going to pass up on any candidates who apply from Yale Law School.
Now, at the first glance, when you think about this, there could be some objections that one could raise, one of which, of course, is that, wait a minute, why are you hurting the students?
Well, the answer is that the students themselves are in many cases the very people who shrilly demand that you have this kind of intolerance, that their point of view be given a privileged position and conservative points of view or rival points of view be suppressed.
Free speech students who don't want to be part of this are often made to feel like pariahs at Yale now.
They might be better off, by the way, decamping and going to a different school.
The dean of Yale, I think a little stung by the addition of a number of judges, and by the way, I think what would really seal the deal here is if Supreme Court justices, by the way, calling Clarence Thomas here.
if a Supreme Court justice stepped in and said, you know what?
I'm not going to hire anybody from Yale Law School.
That would be a bombshell.
Well, first of all, I think that alone would take Yale Law School off the ranks of the top law school in the country for the simple reason that people go to law school.
Obviously, some of them want to go be criminal lawyers or prosecutors, but a significant number of students, and very often the smartest students, Their ultimate aspiration is to be a judge.
And the highest way to be a judge is to be on the Supreme Court.
And if the Supreme Court won't hire you as a law clerk, you're being deprived of the valuable apprenticeship that you need very often to get Academic appointments, judgeships, and so on.
So here's Dean Heather Gurken of Yale saying, Yale needs to reaffirm our enduring commitment to the free and unfettered exchange of ideas.
First of all, there's no enduring commitment.
That's just a lie. And arguably, the dean is merely doing a kind of hopscotch here and a kind of tap dance.
We value free speech.
So it could be a fraud.
But even if it's a fraud, it's interesting that this action has pushed her to announce that Yale is committed to free speech.
And coming back to Judge Ho, there are some people who say, well, it's not your job.
You're a judge. You shouldn't be interfering with what's going on at Yale Law School.
Judge Ho's point is, listen, I am merely holding Yale to its own standards.
Yale is going around telling everybody and in its catalogs that it's committed to the free exchange of ideas.
It believes in free and open debate.
And yet, clearly, that's not going on.
So there is a contradiction between Yale's own professed principles and Yale's actual practice.
Now, if it seems like judges shouldn't be doing this kind of thing, think about it historically.
Let's say that in the 1950s and 1960s some judges said, well, you know what?
There are law schools which practice active racial discrimination.
And we don't support that.
And that's inconsistent with the kind of equal rights under the law that's a bedrock of our legal system.
So we're not going to hire any clerks that come out of that kind of environment.
This would be praised by the media.
oh, this is a marvelous affirmation of progressive principles and so on.
This is exactly what Judge Ho is doing here.
And so really, credit deserves to go to Judge James Ho, because it's not often that judges have the courage to step forward and be first.
He must have known that he was putting himself in the line of fire.
And but by taking that bold step, the good thing is that he's now encouraged other judges to come on board as well.
So there's a real movement here in the judiciary to protect freedom of speech, and that can only be a good thing.
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Go to balanceofnature.com and use discount code AMERICA. Guys, I'm really thrilled to welcome back to the podcast our friend, the actor, filmmaker, and now podcast host, Kirk Cameron.
You will certainly remember him from the 1980s hit sitcom Growing Pains.
He's also a movie maker.
The latest one is called Life Mark.
It's based on a true story.
Celebrates the value of life, the beauty of adoption.
And by the way, wow!
100% Rotten Tomatoes rating 97% audience score.
Kirk has a new podcast, an audio version of the podcast.
It's called American Campfire Revival with Red Seat Ventures.
Kirk, welcome to my podcast.
Great to have you.
I see you've got kind of a well-orchestrated set behind you.
Tell us what you got there.
You know, this cost me millions and millions of dollars to create this set.
I'm actually in my backyard right now, which is one of my favorite places to be with a campfire.
I've got my appeal to heaven flag behind me.
And this is part of my inspiration for the new podcast, the American Campfire Revival.
I was stuck here for...
Oh, at least 100 days under lockdown here in California during the pandemic.
And so I made 100 consecutive campfires to coincide with Biden's first 100 days in office, where I prayed with the nation and reviewed the principles of our founding to help get us back on track so that we, the people, can make a real difference and recover this great nation that we seem to be losing.
Tell us more about the podcast.
This is something that you do.
Do you do it daily? How often do you do the podcast and how can people find it?
So you can find it wherever you like to listen to your podcasts, iHeartRadio, Google, Apple, wherever.
And this is something that I do as often as I can.
I really feel that what we need is a grassroots effort.
This is the very methodology by which our nation was formed and strengthened.
Getting back to the idea that we live under an almighty God who loves us, who created this place, and he's given us principles and values to live by.
And if we will embrace those first in our hearts and in our homes, And then in our churches, our schools, our communities, we can create a place that we all love to live in with liberty and blessing.
And so I'm going to teach these principles.
Many of these principles you emphasize, and I learned so much from you, Dinesh, and others.
And I'm going through a book that a friend of mine who recently passed away wrote.
It's called The American Covenant, The Untold Story, about these principles.
And I just, I'm thrilled.
It revives me personally to go through them.
Well, this is actually very, I think, exciting and important.
I saw an interesting comment the other day where someone said that typically what a conservative does is they conserve.
They hold on to something that's there.
But this guy went on to argue, he goes, we're in a society where many people don't know what's there.
They actually need to be taught from the beginning.
So this is not a matter of conserving.
That's right. It's more of almost a job of restoration, and it looks like that you're on board with that, and you are trying to almost teach people first principles as if they are new.
That's right. Boy, that's so well said.
I was thinking about this this morning, that there is a spirit in our culture today of this rugged individualism, which is so different from We're good to go.
But what our founders understood was that we live in a God-centered universe, and we are invited to be free under His moral laws which produce human flourishing.
And if we'll do that and be self-governed in His universe, then we can transform first ourselves and our homes, our communities, our states, and our nation.
And it's this principle of self-government.
of individuality under God which makes all the difference and that's stuff that people have never even heard about in our younger generations today and I want to continue to teach them and restore those principles as you said.
I mean, you're talking here about a word that actually has a double meaning, because when you talk about self-government, a lot of people think, well, that just means that, you know, here on November 8th, I'm going to go out and I'm going to choose my representatives and I've already completed my duty of self-government.
But you're saying that self-government also involves the government of yourself.
In other words, to impose...
To make moral choices and exercise some moral restraint in conformity with the demands of community and of God's law.
Yes. Oh, that's so beautifully said.
I wish I could talk like you, Dinesh.
But, you know, the simple way I understand it is that if I want to have freedom, I've got to be able to do the right thing without somebody telling me.
So first, I've got to know what the right thing is.
And that's where my faith comes in.
That's where God's word comes in.
That's where the history of our nation comes in.
These Judeo-Christian principles that have produced the freest, strongest, most blessed and generous nation that the world has ever known.
If I want to be free to provide for my family, to start a business, to be prosperous enough to take care of my neighbors and my elderly parents, well, I've got to be able to govern myself.
Because if I can't govern myself and my neighbors can't govern themselves, Well then, we're all going to be calling 911 looking for the police to come settle our disputes.
And once we have a state police, big bully run country, well then, now we look like China.
Now we look like North Korea.
That's where we're heading if we don't get back to this idea of, I need to do what's right without someone having to tell me.
Because that's the kind of character and virtue that liberty demands of me.
Absolutely. Let's take a short pause.
We'll be right back with actor and producer and now podcaster, Kirk Cameron.
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I'm back with actor, producer, and podcaster Kirk Cameron.
We've been talking about podcasts and we've been talking about really telling the American story and telling the story about God's influence in America.
Let's talk about movies.
Your latest film, Kirk, Life Mark, was in theaters.
It's now making its way, I understand, to digital with Pure Flix as the distributor.
Talk a little bit about, I mean, you've been making these movies one after the other, and each one of them tells a story, but these aren't just sort of good stories.
They're stories that it seems you have a point.
Yes, yes.
Dinesh, let me start by saying this last Mother's Day was unprecedented for our family.
It was so special.
You see, my wife and I have six children.
Four of them are adopted.
My oldest daughter had the opportunity to connect with her birth mother, and she, along with my wife's blessing, spent Mother's Day Meeting her birth mother for the very first time.
She spent the weekend there at her house.
And this was so special for her to complete this story.
And all of this reminds me how thankful I am for those who value and champion and defend a culture of life.
And that's what this movie Life Mark was all about.
It was the true story of an 18 year old girl who chose adoption over abortion at the last minute.
And 19 years later, she has a chance to meet with her 19-year-old son and she thinks he probably hates her.
For not keeping him.
And the opposite was true.
He wraps her up in a loving embrace and says, thank you for the choice that you made.
I love my family.
I have this beautiful life and you are my hero.
The movie Life Mark was in theaters for a few weeks and it is making the rounds around the world now and coming to digital.
And we are blown away at the response.
From people who realize this isn't about an argument between pro-choice and pro-life.
This is an adoption option, which is the answer to people's prayers, and it is the celebration of humanity.
Well, it's interesting. You could have gone a completely different direction, and you could have stepped into kind of my wheelhouse and done a documentary on the abortion debate, and is abortion right, and what does the Constitution say?
And it's very interesting you decided, look, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to approach this debate, but sort of sideways.
I'm going to do it by telling a story that people can identify with, And by affirming the value of life, people will then reflect back on what does that mean for a policy decision.
So your movies aren't about policy, but they, in a sense, policy is still on the horizon, isn't it?
Yes, yes. And I didn't have that strategy when I made this movie with my friends, the Kendrick brothers.
Those are the guys who made Fireproof, Courageous, War Room.
They're really the experts here.
But that's exactly the effect that it's been having.
We heard a story of a man who was Uber driving in order to make some extra cash.
And one of the clients that got into his car was a young lady.
She was on her way, he noticed, to the address of an abortion clinic.
And when he noticed this, he reflected on the fact that he had seen the Life Mark movie the night before.
And he asked the young lady, would you mind if I requested that you would consider watching this movie before you make such a life-altering decision?
She said that she would.
She went home.
He contacted someone to get the movie to her, put her in touch with a local leader at a church, got her back in touch with her family, and began to counsel her.
She came to faith in the Lord for the very first time, and she chose life for her baby and is connected to a community of faith to help walk her through that journey.
So we hear stories like that and we say, wow, this is a tool that's being used.
I mean, this is so awesome and so moving to hear when you take a film, which is, after all, in entertainment.
It's out there. It's a story.
People see it for a couple of hours.
It's often, you know, I'm free on a Saturday evening.
I'm going to watch a movie.
But then it plays into the way they think about the world.
And in the case that you just described, it leads to going in a completely different direction.
Right. And I don't just mean the affirmation of life, but to some degree, there's eternal salvation also involved here, isn't there?
I believe so, absolutely.
Boy, when I think back on the things that have made the biggest impact on my life, there are times when I have questions and arguments are helpful and I need them.
I want to know what really happened.
In the case of your documentaries, Dinesh, I found 2,000 Mules to be so helpful to me.
You researched and got proof and evidence.
And then there's questions of the heart.
There's questions of the soul, of the spirit.
And I know that there are stories that have impacted me and made a huge difference in my life.
And that's what I'm trying to do with these films.
So I'm excited to be on the same team as you, Dinesh, fighting for the things that really count and that lead to human flourishing.
Well, keep it up, Kirk. You're doing a great job.
By the way, kirkcameron.com is the website.
The latest film, Life Marked.
Look for it. I believe right around Thanksgiving, it's going to be widely available in digital, so definitely consider that.
And check out Kirk's podcast, The American Campfire Revival with Red Seat Ventures.
Thanks, Kirk Cameron. Always great to have you.
All right. Great to see you, Dinesh.
Take care. We're now in Book 15 of the Odyssey, the kind of final stretch of Homer's great narrative.
Athena has gone to Sparta to fetch Telemachus.
This is actually an interesting scene to me for two reasons.
One is that as Telemachus bids farewell to Menelaus, this is Menelaus, the king of Sparta, a husband of Helen of Troy.
Menelaus says, essentially, I disapprove of too much friendliness and too much standoffishness.
A balance is best.
To force a visitor to stay is just as bad as pushing him to go.
So Telemachus has basically said it's time for me to leave.
My heart yearns to get home." And Menelaus gives a kind of interesting definition here of hospitality, or Zenia.
He says, listen, from the host's point of view, you want to be hospitable.
You want to welcome a guest.
You want to, in a sense, allow the guest to stay and enjoy their stay.
But on the other hand, you don't want them to...
Stay too long, in which from the guest's point of view, they've overstayed their welcome.
And from the host's point of view, the guest now becomes a kind of a burden, perhaps even a nuisance.
But neither do you want to be, as a host, kind of excessively eager to push the guest out the door.
So Menela says, there's kind of a balance.
You want the guest to stay, but perhaps not too long.
And then Helen shows up.
And Hans gives Telemachus a gift.
It's a bowl of solid silver circled with gold.
This is actually a gift coming from Menelaus.
But then Helen adds to it a robe, a beautiful silk robe.
And she holds it in her hand and she says, when your own wedding day at last arrives, let your bride wear this.
So this is Helen really being Helen, focusing, you may say, on the romantic side of things.
Telemachus is, by the way, not betrothed, not engaged to be married.
But Helen says, when that day comes, and that day is probably not so far off, Telemachus, after all, is in his early 20s.
She goes, here is a kind of a...
Here's a gift that I'm giving you that you can give your bride on her wedding day.
And with this, Telemachus departs and returns to Ithaca.
Now the scene cuts back to Odysseus.
And Odysseus has done what Athena said, and he has sought hospitality, again, Zania, from the swineherd, the guy who looks after the pigs.
This is a loyal slave named Eumaeus.
And Eumaeus extends to Odysseus very good hospitality.
He's obviously a poor man.
He has a small hut.
He's got a bunch of pigs running around.
But he's happy to slaughter the pig and offer a meal to Odysseus.
And even though it's a simple meal, Odysseus eats it with relish.
And then Odysseus basically says to Eumaeus, I want to go to town.
I want to sort of go near the palace.
I want to look around.
Now remember, Eumaeus does not know who Odysseus is.
He doesn't know that Odysseus is going to kind of do a little bit of a reconnoitering mission to find out what he needs to know before he enters the palace to deal with the With the importunate suitors.
But Eumaeus is, again, very generous.
He says, look, I've only got one coat.
You're going to have to return it to me.
But you can have it now, and you can use it when you go to the palace.
And then Eumaeus says something kind of funny.
He goes, if you need the coat, you can sort of keep it.
And when Odysseus finally comes back, I'm sure he'll be happy to provide me and you with a proper coat and tunic.
Of course, little does Eumaeus know that he's talking to Odysseus.
And then Odysseus kind of feels out Eumaeus, and he goes, well, he goes, do you have any news about Odysseus?
Any news about his father, Laertes?
Do you know how he's doing?
And his mother?
And then Eumaeus says, oh, you know, his mother died.
Odysseus, of course, knows this.
He's been to the underworld.
He's actually met up with his mom.
So, Odysseus knows the facts of the matter.
I think what he's doing here is feeling out Eumaeus to test the honesty, the trustworthiness of this slave.
And the slave clearly is longing for Odysseus to come back.
So Odysseus knows that he, Emmaus, is loyal to Odysseus.
And he gives Odysseus, again, news about Laertes.
Laertes is alive, but he's praying to Zeus to let him pass away in his own home.
He feels such desperate grief about his son and his beloved wife.
Again, Odysseus.
This is not new information for Odysseus.
But Odysseus is testing Eumaeus.
Now it's very interesting that he wants Eumaeus to be honest.
He wants Eumaeus to disclose kind of his heart.
But Odysseus is not doing the same.
Odysseus is actually in his famous kind of excessively or very cautious mode, trying to make absolutely sure that he can trust people before he moves forward.
And then in the final section of this episode, he asks Eumaeus to tell his own story.
And Eumaeus tells a very moving story, which I'll pick up on.
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