All Episodes
Previous Next
April 17, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
48:27
HIDDEN TRUTHS Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep559
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
This episode is brought to you by my friend Rebecca Walzer, 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, I'm going to talk about the content of the leaks from the Pentagon leaker.
It's not so important who he is.
What's more important is what the leaks show.
General Michael Flynn joins me.
We're going to talk about current events in his new children's book, The Night the Snow Monster Attacked.
And I'm going to raise a toast to Bud Light for its highly successful campaign to destroy its own brand.
Hey, if you're listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, or watching on Rumble, please make sure to hit the subscribe button.
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.
There's been a good deal of media coverage of the 21-year-old kid working in Boston.
His name is Jack Texera.
He is the guy accused of leaking these Pentagon documents.
And there's a lot of fury directed against him.
Oh, he's a traitor. He needs to be punished and so on.
And the way the law goes, this is a guy who did break the law.
You're not supposed to release these documents.
I'm sure that he will face accountability.
And he probably also knew that.
The documents, weirdly enough, have been circulating in these kind of gaming channels for a while now.
It's kind of amazing the Pentagon didn't figure this out.
But the focus, as I say, has been on the leaker.
But what's interesting, since no one denies the documents are authentic and a large number of these documents are now out there for people to see, it's the content of the documents that's really important.
So I am grateful to the leaker, if only for that, we can actually learn new things that not only were not known before, but were being kept from us.
So let's look at some of the key revelations of the leaks.
Here's revelation number one.
The Ukraine war is not going all that well.
It's not going all that well for Russia, to be sure.
Heavy casualties. But it's not going that well for Ukraine either.
A heavy and certainly proportionately much heavier casualties.
So let's look at this. The Russians have suffered apparently 189,500 casualties.
Somewhere between that and 223,000.
Ukraine has suffered between 124,000 and 131,000.
But Ukraine is a tiny country compared to Russia.
So the effect on Ukraine is far more cataclysmic.
Number two, connected with this, the leaks show that these new offensives, remember, we're always assured the next offensive will throw the Russians back.
We're doing really well in the war.
Bad news about the Ukraine war is not typically reported in the Western media.
So we're getting cheerleading from the Biden administration and cheerleading from the media.
But these top secret documents show that Ukraine is hurting badly, that Ukraine is not all that viable militarily, and that even if Ukraine does get another heavily Western-backed initiative with Western weapons, Western training, They can be expected to produce, quote, only modest gains.
So the idea that we're beating Russia and Russia is going to run with its tail between its heels, this objective is as distant as ever, and I would argue it is not something that is going to be achieved.
Let's remember that going back to the Vietnam War, continuing with the Gulf War, we have gotten a lot of lies out of the U.S. government.
Remember all the LBJ assurances to the American people that I'm not going to be sending American boys?
Yes, he did. The war is going really well.
That was General Westmoreland.
No, it wasn't. And then on to the Gulf War, weapons of mass destruction.
So the government is, and governments are known to put out propaganda, but it's also important in a democratic society for people to have an idea about how this war that they are funding and they're being asked to back politically.
We need some realistic assessment of what is happening on the ground.
And as it turns out, the leaks provide a better window into a not-going-so-well war than all the bloviation of the Biden administration.
Second revelation from the leaks, very interesting.
China has agreed to secretly arm Russia, to disguise the weapons it's sending to Russia as being, they're providing civilian supplies and materiel, but in fact, it's military supplies.
Evidently, the Chinese view...
Now, China's been saying publicly, we're not providing arms to either side.
But it turns out this is actually not true.
We know from the leaked documents that U.S. intelligence has figured out that the Chinese believe that, hey, listen, if the West is going to supply Ukraine, we're going to be supplying Russia.
We're just going to do it kind of under the table.
And so that's a very interesting development.
A third revelation, this one is a little bit startling, that Egypt, which is supposed to be a US ally, one of, in fact, the US's closest Middle East partners, and, by the way, a partner that we give a ton, billions and billions of dollars in military aid to.
Well, it turns out that Egypt...
Is interested in supplying Russia with armaments.
I can't tell from the documents if the arms have been supplied or if they're going to be supplied, but evidently Egyptian President El-Sisi had ordered subordinates to quote, produce up to 40,000 rockets to be secretly shipped to Russia.
So think about this. Egypt is ostensibly a US ally, but again, behind the scenes, just like China, they're supplying weapons to Russia.
All of these are indications that the world, or large parts of it, are not on board with this, oh, it's the free world against the authoritarians.
Egypt is a democratic society.
I mean, it's a flawed democratic society.
It's got sort of a quasi-military rule with the sort of apparatus of democracy, but that's true of so many other countries.
So when we come back, more revelations from the Pentagon leak documents.
Debbie and I started eating better this year and on the road to losing some weight.
But one of the foods we can't seem to get enough of, and it's a requirement, are veggies and fiber.
Now, there's no better way to get all your fruits and veggies plus fiber than with Balance of Nature.
Balance of Nature Fiber and Spice is a proprietary blend of 12 spices for digestive health.
The intense flavors and deep colors of spices are the most condensed whole food source of phytonutrition available. It's recommended to be paired with their star product right here, fruits and veggies in a capsule. Select the Whole Health System for the best price. Start your journey to better health right now. Take advantage of Balance of Nature's great offer. Get $25 off plus free fiber and spice with your first preferred order of fruits and veggies when you use discount code AMERICA. The offer can end at any
time so act now. Call 800-246-8751.
That's 800-246-8751.
Or go to balanceofnature.com.
Use discount code America.
I'm continuing my discussion of the content of the leaked Pentagon documents and what they reveal.
As I mentioned in the last segment, They show that the Ukraine war is not going as well as expected.
They do show that the United States evidently has a fairly deep intelligence penetration into the Russian military.
They're able to make very precise assessments about Russian Special Forces, that this group of Russian Special Forces had 900 fighters.
It's now down to 125 fighters.
So this, I think, shows the competence of U.S. intelligence gathering.
But think about it. It also shows the incompetence at a different level, because how did all this stuff get out?
Evidently, this classified information is viewed not just by tens, but by hundreds, maybe even thousands of people.
And if a 21-year-old working in the Navy in Boston is able to get a hold of it, put it on websites, it's not even detected for weeks and weeks.
It shows you that the intelligence gathering may be sophisticated, but the intelligence protection is evidently very clumsy.
Now, we see from these documents that there are Western Special Forces operating inside of Ukraine.
And I'm talking about troops.
These are forces that are coming from the United States and from NATO. They're inside Ukraine.
And they are working with these Ukrainian brigades, evidently training them for an offensive that is supposedly some weeks from now.
Now obviously one of the problems with the leak is that the Russians now know about this and they know about this offensive that's supposedly coming and they're obviously going to take some countermeasures against it.
So this is the cost of these kinds of leaks.
Here's another odd and interesting revelation.
We find in the documents that the Israeli intelligence agency called Mossad has apparently been plotting in some ways against the Prime Minister Netanyahu.
In fact, they supported these citizen protests against Netanyahu as he was pushing for major judicial reforms around the country.
The Washington Post is reporting on the documents.
They say Mossad leaders, quote, advocated for Mossad officials and Israeli citizens to protest the new Israeli government's proposed judicial reform.
So this is something that Netanyahu may want to take up.
Which is you've got this security service called Mossad.
It's, I guess, very similar to the CIA. And the idea that those guys are political, they're intervening against the Netanyahu regime in favor of the opposition party, helping to advocate and organize these protests seems quite disturbing in a democratic society.
Obviously, it's not our problem per se.
One of the questions I have is that in the wake of these leaks, remember that for the way that the left works is whenever you have these sorts of leaks, they may be embarrassing, they may be damaging, they may hurt national security, but the left goes, where's the political opportunity here?
And the political opportunity is Why don't we increase governmental supervision of social media so that when leaks like this occur in the future, we can be aware of them, we can clamp down on them, we can identify the leaker.
So what I'm concerned about, we haven't seen anything specific yet, but is that any kind of leak like this increases the appetite of the Biden administration to have more government surveillance, more government monitoring, more social media platform cooperation with the government, and ultimately more regulation of social media ostensibly to protect national security.
Let's remember the problem here is not with social media, it's that these buffoons in the government We're so careless with this valuable information that they created an easy way, a relatively easy way for some guy to put it out there, and that's what he did.
So the solution, of course, is to tighten up government control over its own information, not to try to increase surveillance or regulation of public, well, social media.
Hey, have you heard? Mike Lindell and MyPillow have launched My Mattress Topper 2.0.
The new 3-inch MyPillow mattress topper is made up of three unique layers.
Layer 1, MyPillow patented foam, which provides superior support and durability.
Layer 2, which is transitional foam, which provides optimal comfort, evenly distributes body weight, and helps relieve pressure points.
And Layer 3, the cover made from a special material to keep your body temperature regulated through the night.
This MyPillow mattress topper is washable and dryable.
It's made in the USA. Comes with a 10-year warranty and a 60-day money-back guarantee.
This incredible 3-inch mattress topper is as low as $219.59 with promo code Dinesh.
The number to call, 800-876-0227.
Again, that number is 800-876-0227 or just go to MyPillow.com but don't forget to use the promo code D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
I'd like to talk about the Bud Light controversy and let's begin by asking, who are the kind of people who drink a lot of beer?
Well, first of all, it's, well, it's bikers.
Bike Week and Sturgis, they all show up, you know, it's like a big party, they drink a lot of beer.
People who watch sports, football, time to drink some beer, eat some chips.
Frat boys drink a lot of beer.
So this is the beer drinking audience.
And these are the people who consume beer in, well, let's just say extraordinary quantities.
I happened to go, by the way, to one of those drinking schools, Dartmouth, which was famous for—well, Dartmouth was apparently the venue of the movie Animal House, if you can remember that far back.
But here's Bud Light coming out with a new kind of promotional campaign.
And leading it is one of these transgender guys, Dylan Mulvaney.
And apparently Bud Light created a unique Dylan Mulvaney beer can.
In other words, this guy, or whatever it is, is on the beer can.
So think of it.
Is this something that the beer-drinking audience is going to warm to?
It's almost like, what were these Bud Light guys, the promotional team?
Did they drink like 85 beers before they came up with this campaign?
It turns out that there was an apparent strategy behind it.
And there was the Vice President of Marketing for Bud, a woman named Alyssa Hienerscheid.
And she goes, oh yeah, the old Bud Light was out of touch and it needed a new makeover.
And so she decided to give it a woke makeover.
She goes, yeah.
She goes, like, we need to evolve and elevate this incredibly iconic brand.
She goes on to say, it means inclusivity.
It means shifting the tone.
It means having a campaign that's truly inclusive and feels lighter and brighter and appeals to women and to men.
So she evidently thought that...
The transgender chic is the way to go.
It's almost like a company driving away all its kind of base of customers to find some fictitious new customers that it hasn't been able to acquire yet.
It's not clear it will acquire at all.
Now, there was tremendous backlash to all this.
And in fact, a lot of conservatives, notably Matt Walsh, saying, you know, let's organize a boycott of these guys.
Let's just stop drinking Bud Light.
Now, I don't know if it was the conservative campaign or if it was simply the fact that there is something really off-putting about getting transgender propaganda even on your beer can.
And anyway, Bud Light sales basically just plummeted across the Midwest, across the South.
Americans, just the Bud...
In fact, I saw a video of a guy.
He's a Bud sort of distributor.
He doesn't work for Bud Light, but he makes money by bringing Bud Light into the stores.
He's kind of the middleman between Bud Light and the Walmarts of the world.
And he goes, man, at this rate, I'm going to be put out of business because all the Bud Lights I brought to Walmart are still there.
No one's buying them. Sales have essentially stopped.
And apparently Bud Light knows this.
How do I know that?
Because the market value of Bud Light has plummeted like $6 billion.
So they've taken a huge hit.
I mean, the value of all the shares was something like $130 billion.
And now it's dropped to like $122 billion.
Here we go. I have the numbers here.
From $132 billion to $125 billion.
That's a pretty big hit to take in a relatively short amount of time.
So the shareholders are angry.
The company is not doing all that well.
And so Bud Light is now, well, they're kind of backtracking.
It's like some guy who had too much beer now trying to stand up.
And they've released evidently a new patriotic ad.
First of all, they tried to deny the Dylan Mulvaney thing.
They're like, well, no, no, no. We weren't planning on selling beer with this guy's face on it.
We just made it because he's like one of the many influencers we thought can help us to promote the product.
But now they've decided to re-evaluate that, put all that on hold, and they released a patriotic ad.
What is it? Well, remember the old Bud ads of the Clydesdale horses traveling?
They typically release the ad around Christmas time.
Well, they've now released it in which the horses are traveling from New York City all the way to the Grand Canyon, and they go across seams of the heartland.
They pass the Lincoln Memorial, small towns, farmland.
At one point, you see two people raising an American flag.
And the voiceover goes, this is a story bigger than beer.
This is a story of the American spirit.
So you can see that Bud Light is, I won't say trying to do penance.
In fact, the CEO released a rather weird statement in which he said, Didn't really apologize for what he did.
He was just one of those non-committal statements.
But in his actions here with the new ad, you can see that Bud Light is trying to make sure that they don't antagonize even more of their customer base.
Remember all those great boxing fights?
Joe Frazier vs.
Foreman? Ali vs.
George Foreman? I certainly do.
And this is why I'm really excited about a new film from Affirm Films.
The film is called Big George Foreman, The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World.
It's based on a true story, the story of one of the greatest comebacks of all time, and the transformational power of Second Chances.
This inspirational film, Big George Foreman, it stars Chris Davis and Academy Award winner Forrest Whitaker.
It's rated PG-13, maybe inappropriate for children under 13, only in theaters beginning April 28th.
So for tickets and showtimes, go to biggeorgeforeman.movie.
Guys, I'm thrilled to welcome to the podcast none other than General Michael Flynn, retired Lieutenant General, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, served as President Trump's National Security Advisor.
He's also been leading a tour in a bunch of parts of the country, the Reawakened Tour.
And we're going to talk, we're going to do a couple of segments with him, but in the second one, we're going to talk about his new book.
It's a children's book.
It's called The Night the Snow Monster Attacked.
By the way, you can follow General Flynn on Truth Social at TrueGenFlynn, F-L-Y-N-N. General Flynn, welcome to the podcast.
Great to have you.
There's so much going on in the country.
I don't quite know where to start, but maybe I'll just start by having you give your assessment of where we are.
Many of us came of age in an America that was...
Certainly, you know, fraught with controversy and there were debates between the parties, but it seems like we're now in a new place.
Do you agree with that assessment?
And how would you take stock of where we are now as a country?
Yeah, so first of all, Dinesh, I just want to say thank you for everything that you do for the country.
Your voice is amazing.
And for those that haven't seen it yet, I'm sure most of your audience has seen 2,000 Mules.
That was an extraordinary piece of honesty about our election systems in this country.
And I do appreciate your patience having me on, and I'm blessed to be able to be on your show.
I would say that...
So let's just talk globally for a minute, if you don't mind, and then I'll come back to the domestic picture, the domestic landscape, and we can talk any level of detail that you want.
But globally, there is a new alliance forming globally, and that alliance is principally between China and Russia, but there are new members of that alliance that were...
At least century-old allies and partners of the United States of America.
And one of those allies is France.
Another ally would be Saudi Arabia.
Other partners that existed around the world are other nations that are now starting to, particularly in the case of Brazil, are now starting to really align themselves with this new I would just call it a communist socialist shift in the world.
For those that are not paying very close attention, although I know you cover a lot of this, China is the leader in a peace deal between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Iran.
And nobody's been paying any attention to Yemen, but the war in Yemen, which was being fueled by Iran, has subsided almost to the point where they've gone to, I would call it a ceasefire in some regards.
And that's been negotiated and affected by the Chinese.
And now the Chinese have the Saudis, who have been at least a century old partner of the United States of America, They are now in basically a peace deal with the Iranians.
So that's number one. The second thing is that President Xi went to visit with Putin about a month ago, and you probably talked about this.
In fact, I believe that you did.
They essentially signed one of the largest economic and military partnerships that literally in the history of their two countries and probably in the history of the world, given the size of those countries.
And Xi has already communicated with Zelensky in Ukraine.
And my belief, because we're not winning the war in Ukraine, we're losing the war in Ukraine, I sense that the Chinese are going to give an ultimatum to the Ukrainians and not even care two-wits about what the Biden administration says or doesn't say.
And we will likely see some type of shift here in the coming months toward some type of negotiated settlement.
If we do not, then the likelihood of moving toward the potential for a nuclear war, which I hate to even say, I hate to even use that word nuclear, but there's been more talk about nuclear arms and nuclear strikes than I've ever heard in my life since, really, as a young person, as a young kid, since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
So that's on the global landscape.
And I'll just jump to Taiwan briefly because the Chinese continue to encircle and continue to take over the sea and air lines of communication around Taiwan, as well as the economic...
The economic conditions and elements that are promulgated by Taiwan, as well as Japan, too, to a degree.
And then, of course, we all, for anybody that's paying real close attention to the South China Sea, some of the things that the Chinese have been doing, not just for the last few years, but for the last probably 20 to 30 years.
So there's a very, very dangerous geopolitical landscape that we face right now.
And the United States, the weakness of And I will say the pathetic weakness coming out of the White House is part of that problem.
When we show weakness, which we have done, particularly in the war in Europe, And we allow for lies and deceit and deception to cross the airwaves instead of the honest truth, then we have the real potential that we are going to find ourselves at war.
So I won't go into...
There's other details about Africa, about China's One Belt Road Initiative, and all the things that the Chinese are doing.
But it's a very, very dangerous foreign landscape, geopolitical, geostrategic landscape.
But let me jump to the domestic landscape, if you don't mind.
Well, let's take a pause.
When we come back, we'll do just that.
Back with General Michael Flynn.
Great. Debbie and I started taking Relief Factor a couple of years ago and we've seen a huge difference in our joints.
Aches and pains are totally gone thanks to this 100% drug-free solution called Relief Factor.
Now how does it work? Relief Factor supports your body's fight against inflammation that's the source of aches and pains.
The vast majority of people who try Relief Factor order more because it works for them.
Debbie's a true believer she can now do exercises that for several years she wasn't able to do.
do. Relief Factor has been a real game changer for her, her aunt, other members of our family, Mike here in the studio, and for many other people. You too can benefit. Try it for yourself.
Order the 3-week quick start for the discounted price of only $19.95. Go to relieffactor.com or call the new number 800-4-RELIEF to find out more about this offer.
The number again, 800-4-RELIEF or go to relieffactor.com.
Feel the difference. I'm back with General Michael Flynn.
He was President Trump's National Security Advisor.
He's also a former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
And we talked a little bit about the ominous foreign policy landscape.
We want to pivot to domestic.
But before we do, I wanted to ask you one question about what you said.
You're talking about long-time American allies like Saudi Arabia, and even to a lesser degree, countries like India, South Africa, Brazil, you even mentioned France.
Do you agree that the Biden administration has been quite reckless in not managing these relationships?
And in some cases, the Saudi case being the most prominent, literally pushing the Saudis away and then they've kind of fled into the arms of the Chinese.
Do we, by we I mean the Biden regime, do they have a role in repudiating our allies and helping to create this new alliance?
Yeah, I mean, I would even use a stronger word, Dinesh.
I think it's intentional.
I actually think it's an intentional direction that this administration is taking the United States of America.
And I used to say this a bit tongue in cheek.
But the phrase, build back better, which was Biden's bumper sticker for his campaign, I don't say this tongue-in-cheek anymore.
When you hear that term, that phrase, build back better, the hidden meaning is destroy everything first and then build it back better in their image.
And again, I'm not a guy who jokes about our beautiful country.
This is a very, very dangerous time.
And a lot of what we're seeing, I believe, is intentional.
I mean, you know, it's not just the Saudis and other allies, you know, Brazil, India, you mentioned, but it's also...
Israel, you know, there's a huge element inside of our government that wants to see the rise of Palestine and these organizations who were always designated as terrorist organizations, never mind Iran.
So, yeah, I think that this is an attempt to literally change the direction, the fabric, the soul of the United States of America and do it in their image.
And their image is this Frankly, it's a Marxist-Communist image, and I can't say it any differently.
I feel bad that I have to say it like that, Dinesh, but that's what I see, and that's what I understand.
I know not only world history and U.S. history, but also warfare and the idea about strategy.
I'm looking at things and I'm saying, this is not happenstance.
It's not coincidental. It is what it is, and it's very intentional.
Let's pivot to the domestic front and have your assessment of where we are domestically.
Yeah, so very briefly, you know, we have all of the different problems like the invasion of the southern border and, you know, drugs on our streets, the drug cartels running our cities, the rise of fentanyl and all that.
I think there's actually going to be two domestic issues, and we're already starting to see that, we're already starting to deal with them this year.
And I believe they're going to play out this year.
And the first is, Is a complete shift in the economic conditions, global economic conditions, and it's going to affect us here.
And the first place for people to look and to read is Executive Order 14067, Executive Order 14067, and that is signed on the 8th of March of 2020.
I'm sorry, 2022, last year.
So I'm getting my years right.
Executive Order 14067.
That's about central banking digital currencies.
And that was signed and it was put into effect this past December, 13 December.
And the government, along with some corporations and banks, are already starting to beta test that.
And so we're going to see a complete shift, a global shift, but it's going to affect us domestically here in the United States with this digital currency, this movement away from the dollar as the currency of choice for basically global trading and global currency around the world.
That is going to have a huge, huge impact on the domestic landscape.
The second condition is going to be a health condition, and that's going to be another health crisis that we are likely to see.
That's going to be a little bit more nuanced.
And I think that because of everything that we've learned and gone through with, you know, COVID and all of the vaccinations and all that sort of stuff over the past couple of years, it's going to have to be much more nuanced, but I can already see it coming.
And whether it's a new strain coming out of, you know, the bird flu coming out of Southeast Asia or something coming out of West Africa, I pay very close attention to the biological warfare conditions around the planet and how they are affecting us here in this country.
Now, those two conditions, economic and health, are hugely important for everybody to There's a couple of bills ongoing in some states.
The legislature of Missouri is out there fighting tooth and nail for some of this stuff.
So again, these are things that your audience can go look at and pay attention to.
I do think that I always have to mention the World Economic Forum and the people there, that they have a different view of the globe and how the UN is operating.
So let me just pause for a second, because I want to describe something that's ongoing right now that people need to understand.
It does have to do with illegal immigration.
There are troves and troves of young Chinese military-age males crossing what's called the Darien Gap in Panama.
And they are coming up, I mean, thousands a day, thousands a day.
Nobody's reporting on it.
I think we did have some government officials down there the other day.
I know a couple of very exceptional investigative journalists who are down there now doing some great work and reporting on it.
But of course, it's in substacks and elsewhere.
So thousands and thousands of Chinese military-age men.
There are some women, but mostly men.
And so to what end, right?
To what end? Are they coming into the United States?
And so there's two things that are happening there.
Not only do we already have 5, 6, 7 million, we really don't even know, and all the drugs and all the other problems that come with the illegal immigration into our domestic landscape, but the Panama Canal is a very, very strategic line of communication.
And the Chinese know that.
And we built it.
The United States of America built it under the Obama administration.
They turned it over to the Panamanian government.
Locked stock and barrel, right?
And locked, that's not tongue in cheek.
So the Chinese have started to buy and really just purchase these locks, the Gatun locks on the Gulf side and the Panamanian locks on the Pacific side.
That's very important because the distance between, if you are able to transit the Panama Canal from China to Europe, It cuts it in half by almost two-thirds.
So if you had to go around the Arctic Circle, around into Europe, you're talking about 15,000 kilometers versus transiting from Dalian, China, or the ports of the East Coast of China into the Mediterranean, you're talking about 8,000 kilometers.
That's a big, big deal. Let's just say it's half, but it's probably two-thirds.
What that does is that encircles the United States of America because Russia, most people don't know, Russia owns...
Well, first, the United States of America, we probably own four giant icebreakers.
This is very important because we're talking about surrounding the...
How do you take over this beautiful country of ours and strategically isolate it?
Okay, so you get the alliances, you get the Brazils, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and many other nations.
And right now, the many other nations represent about 75% of the world's population.
you then start to control and isolate around the United States of America, all while you are destroying and taking over institutions of the United States. That means our governmental institutions, our educational institutions, our healthcare institutions. I mean, hell, Dinesh, let's not kid ourselves. The amount of real estate that the Chinese government has purchased in the United States is just that it's outrageous that... So let me take 30 seconds, if you don't mind, and I want to just talk about a solution.
Because I think that, you know, it's kind of, those are huge, huge problems that I just outlined.
We must have governors.
We must have governors because the federal government, the Biden administration is not going to do the trick.
We must have governors in this country, and I don't care what side of the aisle they're on, but we have something called states' rights given to us by our great founders in the Constitution.
And governors, and particularly Republican governors, if they have any sense of what I just laid out, which they should, We're in danger.
And governors have the authority, actually the constitutional authority, responsibility and duty to leverage their own state's rights and push back and push back.
And you know this. I mean, you have spoken about this kind of stuff for a long time, and I appreciate that.
That's a big solution.
I mean, never mind, you know, just getting involved in all of us getting involved in precincts and counties and school boards and such.
That's important. Very important.
But governors are going to have to step up.
Otherwise, we're going to find ourselves further and further down this path of socialism, Marxism and communism.
And that's just that's the history of the world as it plays out.
Let's take a pause when we come back more with General Michael Flynn.
Hey, I'd like to invite you to check out my Locals channel.
It's a completely different format than I use here on the podcast.
In the podcast, as you know, I'm just talking to you.
But in Locals, it's more interactive.
I do a weekly Q&A. You can weigh in.
I respond to you personally.
And I also put exclusive content there, sometimes content that would be censored if I were to put it on the podcast.
So Locals is cool.
It's a subscription-based platform, but you can kind of join and check it out and then decide if you want to become a subscriber.
The place to go is dinesh.locals.com.
By the way, I also have some interesting movies up there, including 2,000 Mules.
And if you're an annual subscriber, you get those for free.
So I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
Again, go to dinesh.locals.com.
I'm back with General Michael Flynn.
You can follow him at Truth Social, at True Jen Flynn, F-L-Y-N-N.
General Flynn, you've done something a little bit off the beaten track.
You have written a children's book.
It's out from Brave Books.
By the way, bravebooks.us.
The book is called The Night the Snow Monster Attacked, and I want you to say a word about the book, but before we do that, why a children's book?
How did you learn?
How did you take up this venture?
Yeah, well, I tell you, bravebooks.us is a terrific organization there.
They have just great leadership, and they have a great, fun team.
Here's where I'm at. I mean, I have children, Dinesh.
I have grandchildren, and particularly my grandchildren.
And when I had this opportunity to write a children's book, and honestly, everything that I do, why I do what I do, I do it for my grandchildren, right?
Not just the next generation, but the generation after.
And so I was so honored to be part of the BraveBooks.us team and to be having an opportunity to participate in crafting a children's book.
The Night the Snow Monster Attacked is about leadership and it's written with a child's mind in mind and it has beautiful artwork and it's about decision making.
Particularly in the story that is told there.
And it has little characters in it that take a child through all of the kinds of journeys that a child will go through with difficult decisions when they're young people making.
Because the hero...
It allows each of his team, because it's a lot about team building, allows each of his team to make decisions.
And sometimes the hero knows that it's probably not going to work out, but he's going to help them learn as they go down the path.
One of the things, and I'll just show it to you because I'm I'm going to be selfish about my time here a little bit.
But you get these beautiful...
I mean, if you join and subscribe to the entire organization of Brave Books, they have these just...
And this is all amazing books.
You get this set.
It has a wonderful, wonderful storyboard game that you can sit and you have all these pieces of game that you can play.
And it's just a wonderful time for a mom...
A family to sit there with a child and go through and read.
I think if there's one thing that I remember as a child, and I love to do with my own grandchildren, I love to just sit there and read with them.
And it's generally the most quiet time that I have with them.
And And I'm one of these people that read not only the words, but I'll point out the actions on the beautiful artwork is done in these things.
I mean, they're just extraordinary.
So why I did it was because I love children.
I love our future, and our future is about children.
I have grandchildren, and I want them to live in a world that...
Life is not fair, but I want them to learn about decision making and team building and leadership and all the things that come with that.
And Brave Books gave me a terrific opportunity to be able to do that.
So thanks for giving me a few minutes to promote bravebooks.us and this wonderful book, The Night the Snow Monster Attack.
It's a great book. Well, we really like those guys.
Actually, Debbie and I, was it last year, honey?
We did our own treatment of socialism with Brave Books.
And just as you say, you can buy the books individually, but you can also buy a subscription and then you get books on a regular basis.
And look, we're living at a time.
The reason we did it is you're living at a time where you go into the bookstore and you look in the children's section.
It's almost unnerving.
You know, it's how Adam became Eve.
I mean, all this propaganda that's being shoved down the throats of our children so that the values that once were automatically reflected in children's books have now disappeared.
And so it's up to guys like you and us.
To fill in that gap.
So this is a very noble venture.
The book is called The Night the Snow Monster Attacked.
Thank you so much, General Flynn.
A delight to have you on the podcast.
Thank you, Dinesh. And thank you for all you're doing for our country.
I really appreciate it. And I know your audience does.
Thank you. God bless.
I'm continuing my discussion of Pascal's Wager, the chapter in What's So Great About Christianity, a skeptic's wager, Pascal, and the reasonableness of faith.
Now, when we think about skeptics and agnostics and doubters, these are people who say, well, we don't really know, we're not sure that there is a God, and so we are We live in this kind of world of uncertainty and doubt.
And the point I want to make is that we all live in that world.
In other words, uncertainty, doubt, having questions, not being able to tell on the basis of reason alone what will undoubtedly happen.
No one lives in that world.
No one has that kind of certainty.
We can get that kind of certainty by faith, but we can't get it by reason.
This is the point I've been trying to make.
So, doubt is not an improper habit of mind for the religious believer, no less than for the skeptic.
There's a story in the Gospel of Mark, Mark 9, 17-24.
This man comes up to Christ.
He wants to be cured of an evil spirit.
And Jesus says, hey, if you believe, all things are possible.
And the man says this, Lord, I believe.
Help thou my unbelief.
So the man is sort of saying, I believe, and yet there's a part of me that doesn't believe.
I do doubt. So help me with those doubts.
And again, my point is, This is normal for Christians to have these doubts.
We see from the book of Job, for example, that the doubts are not inappropriate.
In fact, God honors the doubts and, in fact, shows up ultimately before Job to address them.
So the skeptical habit of mind is natural to Christianity, just as it is to unbelief.
There's a kind of common element between the believer and the unbeliever.
Neither of them can be absolutely sure.
So, religious faith is not in opposition to reason.
The point of faith is to discover truths that are really important but are unavailable to us through reason or even through purely natural means.
Here's a statement from the philosopher Wittgenstein in his Tractatus.
He says,"...even if all possible scientific questions are answered..." The problems of life have still not been touched at all.
So the point is that the game of science is conducted on a sort of field.
And the most important questions of life, which are, why am I here?
What should I love?
Who should I or what should I live for?
These questions are outside that field.
They're not on the table.
So faith is an attempt to reach beyond the empirical realm and illuminate those questions.
And when Kant and Wittgenstein say that we can't know the answers to those questions, what they mean is that you can't know them through reason alone.
But perhaps there is another way.
Now... Here is the philosopher Brian McGee.
He says, listen, we are like soldiers besieging a castle.
We have sought endlessly and in vain to find a way of penetrating its walls.
And our only hope, whether we realize it or not, lies in a different mode of entry, a tunnel that will bring us up inside the fortress without penetrating the walls at all.
So this is an excellent description of how faith seeks a route, a passageway, that has been closed to reason.
The goal is the same, to find the truth.
But faith journeys on when reason has given up.
And reason has given up because there's no further place to go.
Now, the agnostic may be someone who says that when reason has given up, I give up.
I quit. But the believer is like, no, I don't quit.
Reason may have been exhausted, but I'm going to take up new tools, new maps, and I'm going to continue to go upward toward the summit.
Now, the believer is hoping that Revelation will expose truths that are otherwise hidden to reason.
This is not, quote, blind faith.
Rather, this is faith with your eyes wide open.
The Christian relies on faith not to suppress his native powers, but to guide them so that he may see more clearly.
Revelation here is expected to reactivate and guide our reason.
Augustine had a memorable dictum where he said, believe and you will understand.
Notice here that believe is a substitute for faith and understand is a substitute for reason.
Believe, have faith, and this faith itself will help you to understand.
It will open the door to things that otherwise may be shut to you.
Social critic Michael Novak, an old friend of mine who's now passed away, said, Using reason is a little like using the naked eye, while putting on faith is like putting on perfectly calibrated glasses to capture otherwise invisible dimensions of reality.
Now, this brings me to Pascal.
Just a word about Pascal because I'll be beginning my discussion of Pascal's wager tomorrow.
Pascal was a world-class scientist, a world-class physicist, But he was also a world-class philosopher and theologian.
He was a Renaissance man is perhaps the right phrase because of the amplitude, the great width of his interests.
And he was a remarkable figure.
And many of his ideas about God, about faith, including the wager, are in his book called The Pensee.
If you don't have it, it's a really good resource.
You can get it from Penguin Classics.
It's like six dollars.
So, a book well worth having.
I treasure it and I've read the Pansé several times.
So, when we come back next time, we're going to pick up Pascal's famous wager, a bet.
If you're going to bet on God or against God, Pascal gives you a reason for why you should always bet on God.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
▲
Export Selection