All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 25, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
49:44
THE LAWFARE STRATEGY Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep651
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Coming up, I'll reveal how the Democrats on the left have perfected lawfare as a strategy of political warfare, and I want to argue the right should follow suit.
A basketball star, Orlando Magic forward Jonathan Isaac, joins me.
we're going to talk about his Christian faith and also about how he's created a new company to sell products that affirm faith, family, and country.
And I'll also offer a brief history of gender, which shows our downward trajectory as part of a conscious strategy of half-truths and deception. Hey, if you're listening on Apple, Google, or Spotify, please subscribe.
Also, if you're watching on Rumble, and there's a little red button to the top left, if you click on that, you can check out my local channel.
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.
I want to talk about the left strategy of lawfare.
Now, that's a term you may or may not be familiar with, but it's using the law as a political or ideological weapon.
Using the law as...
Almost a form of terrorism against people to destroy them, to impose exorbitant costs on them, to get them fired from their jobs or torpedoed in their career, in some cases even to get them locked up.
Now it's been known for a long time that the law can be used or abused in this way.
I mean think for example if you have A guy who has a lot of money, and he decides to sue you over some petty infraction.
The infraction itself is not important, but by suing you, he's able to deploy tremendous resources, which you don't have, and yet you can't go show up and just represent yourself in court.
So now it's a financial burden on you, and people are like, well, listen, I'm going to have to put a mortgage on my house.
So suddenly, the The resources that you've accumulated over a lifetime become jeopardized because you're involved in this kind of catastrophic litigation.
Many people in divorce cases find them to be financially crippling in this way.
But here I'm talking about the deployment of lawfare in politics.
Now, it's being used against Trump.
and leaving aside the idea that they don't want Trump to run again.
Think of the exorbitant costs that are being imposed on Trump, having to defend not one, not two, but four highly targeted indictments.
They're indictments in which the other side has near infinite resources.
Think of all the lawyers, for example, in New York, plus the lawyers in Georgia, plus the whole Jack Smith team, plus the resources available to him from the Biden DOJ, all going after one man who has to then defend himself.
He requires almost an army of lawyers just to be able to stay on top of all the different filing requirements and so on.
And then I'm thinking also about the other people in the Georgia case who have been indicted.
I believe some 18 of them.
I've had Jenna Ellis on the podcast.
I've also been in communication with David Schaefer, who's the former GOP chair in Georgia.
Yesterday I put out, I shared ways in which, on my social media, ways to contribute to David Schaefer's legal defense.
And I feel the same about all these defendants, that they need good representation, they need to be able to strike back, and Republicans in general need to be striking back against this lawfare.
Because, think about it, they're going after attorneys, right?
For providing advice to their client, in this case Trump or the Trump campaign.
And these attorneys themselves are having difficulty finding lawyers to represent them.
Now Jenna, I'm happy to say, has a good lawyer.
I think some of the others do also.
But Rudy Giuliani, for example, has had difficulty finding lawyers to represent him in efforts to get him disbarred, in efforts to go after him.
And he's facing multiple lawsuits, lawsuits quite apart from the Georgia indictment.
Now, this is a little unprecedented because historically in America, it's been widely understood that defendants in criminal cases need good counsel.
And many times we've had very prominent lawyers, F. Lee Bailey and many others, representing clients who are reprehensible, clients who are serial killers, clients who are accused of doing horrific things.
But the idea is, guess what?
It doesn't matter if you're Charles Manson, you deserve a defense.
So think, for example, about the lawyers who went south to take on the Jim Crow laws.
Think about the lawyers who supported, this is the ACLU supporting the rights of the Nazis to march in Skokie.
The ACLU's position was, listen, we're not Nazis.
In fact, we couldn't be more opposed to who these Nazis are.
But Nazis, too, have First Amendment rights.
And so we will defend them on that principle.
And the ACLU was successful in doing that.
Think about the lawyers who represented communists in the 1950s and 40s who were accused of stealing atomic secrets, selling them to the Soviet Union, being communist spies inside the U.S. government.
Nevertheless, groups like the ACL and others were like, listen, it doesn't matter because these people have the rights of citizens.
They have the same rights under the Constitution that you and I do.
And so due process requires a competent defense.
Think, for example, about Timothy McVeigh.
He had a lawyer.
Think about the sheikh, the blind sheikh, who did the original Twin Towers bombing.
Think about the terrorists at Guantanamo Bay.
Many of them have top-ranked law firms in the United States who are representing them.
And this may be one of the reasons why some of these guys, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others, have not been executed.
They've been shielded.
Various procedural defenses, multiple appeals have been launched on their behalf.
And all of this is now missing.
From, let's say, the Trump defendants.
It's as if all these same people who are really happy to defend the communist spies and the people at Gitmo and the accused serial killers now say no, almost as if these Trump lawyers are even worse than that.
So it's like, no, you've now reached our limit.
We can't defend you. So this is a terrible thing that's happening in our society.
It's being driven by the left.
I think if Republicans don't strike back here, it's going to get worse.
Lawfare is going to become almost an ideological, a common ideological weapon used not just against Trump, not just against the Trump campaign people in Georgia, but also against you and also against me.
Guys, Mike Lindell has a passion to help you get the best sleep of your life.
He didn't stop at the pillow.
He also created the Geezer Dream bedsheets.
These sheets look and feel great, which means an even better night's sleep, which is crucial for our overall health.
Mike found the world's best cotton called Geezer.
It's ultra soft and breathable, but also extremely durable.
Mike's latest deal is the sale of the year.
For a limited time, you get 50% off the Geezer Dream sheets, marking prices down as low as $29.98, depending on the size.
Go to MyPillow.com and enter promo code Dinesh.
There you will find not only this amazing offer, but deep discounts on all the MyPillow products.
The robes, the mattress topper, the slippers, the MyPillow kitchen towel sets, and so on.
Go to MyPillow.com, use promo code Dinesh, or call the number 800-876-0227.
The number again, 800-876-0227, or just go to MyPillow.com.
Make sure to use the promo code D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
I want to discuss something that I've mentioned on the podcast but haven't gone into it.
A school of thought on the left that is now trying very hard to press the argument that Trump is already disqualified from running for president in 2024.
What? So this is a school that seems sort of radical in its claim.
It's claiming that you don't have to wait for these trials to proceed.
You don't have to wait for Trump to be convicted.
You don't have to wait for judicial rulings that Trump is to be jailed where he either cannot or finds it very difficult to run or is somehow barred from running.
None of that. Trump is disqualified from running now.
He's ineligible to run in 2024 already, based upon something that's in the Constitution.
So who is making this argument?
Well, probably its two most prominent advocates are the Harvard Law professor, Lawrence Tribe, and a Republican or maybe former Republican judge.
This is a longtime judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals.
His name is J. Michael Luttig.
They did a recent article, these two, in The Atlantic together.
And they drew on some scholarship by two professors, William Bowdy and Michael Stokes Paulson, essentially making the same argument.
So, what I want to do is focus in on the argument.
And to do that, I'm turning to an interview with J. Michael Luttig in The New Yorker, in which he discloses what is the basis of his thinking.
Now, what is he trying to parse or to explain or to interpret?
Well, answer, he's trying to interpret Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in the Constitution.
And Section 3 basically says this, if there's any official who has taken an oath to support the Constitution, And if that same official, quote,"...shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof, then you're not eligible to hold office." And essentially, what Michael Luttig is saying in this interview is,"...there you go." Trump did in fact take an oath to support the Constitution.
Trump did in fact engage in insurrection or rebellion against the same.
And Trump did give aid and comfort to the enemies of the Constitution.
This is presumably the people who went into the Capitol on January 6th.
Now, Luttig is asked in the New Yorker...
The question, okay, this is what the Constitution says.
The Constitution, however, was based upon at least this amendment, the 14th Amendment, came after the Civil War.
So when they were talking about an insurrection or a rebellion, they were talking about an armed effort to overthrow the U.S. government and break the country into two.
In what sense is what Trump did?
Trump did.
Comparable to that.
And Michael Luttig here has to back off a little bit and he says, well, he says, you know, it depends on how you interpret these terms.
He agrees that these terms are not self-interpreting.
There has to be a factual finding that Trump engaged in insurrection and that Trump engaged in rebellion and that Trump gave aid and comfort to the enemies thereof.
But what he says is, look, You don't need legislation or laws to block Trump from running again.
Basically, the Constitution has spoken pretty clearly.
So you need a clear determination of what Trump did, but that will be sufficient.
And he gives the example. He says, well, for example, the Constitution says that you need to be 35 years old to run for president.
Well, you don't need a law to support that.
The Constitution is clear enough.
Now, he admits that engaging in insurrection or rebellion is not as clear as being 35 years old.
And so, he says, but nevertheless, he says, election officials around the country have the right to interpret the Constitution and say, yeah, in my opinion, this official, Trump, who took an oath to support the Constitution, did in fact engage in insurrection or rebellion.
Now, you can see right away the problem with this, which is that, what?
Are you going to have election officials determine for themselves, hey, guess what?
I'm going to keep Trump. I'm the Secretary of State of Georgia or Pennsylvania.
I'm going to keep Trump off the ballot.
He's an insurrectionist. I'm not going to allow him to run.
This would be crazy.
Think of the implications of that.
In fact, Republican officials could do exactly the same.
They could pull Joe Biden off the ballot for the same reason and say, listen, he sold out the country to foreign enemies.
That's a form of insurrection.
He's violated the 14th Amendment.
I'm not going to put him on the ballot in Texas.
So a prominent judge and a professor at Stanford, Michael McConnell, has said, listen, this is nonsense.
He said that there's a statute that Congress enacted.
It's 18 U.S.C. 2383.
And it is pretty clear in defining a little more clearly that if someone has participated in a rebellion or insurrection, then those found guilty, quote, shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
So this is a whole different matter.
You have to be found guilty of rebellion or insurrection.
Now, it's very important to note that Trump is not charged with rebellion or insurrection.
He's charged with other things.
And so this is the problem, I think, that people like J. Michael Luttig, this guy's a never-Trump or he hates Trump.
And he realizes that even if Trump is found guilty, all right, Trump is going to appeal.
And so he can still run.
He might even be jailed and be running from jail.
But there's nothing to stop him, it seems, in the law.
And so this is why Latik is saying, we don't need the law.
We can just turn to the Constitution.
And think of the anti-democratic implications of this.
Because it essentially gives state officials a veto power over who's on the national ticket.
And yet, Luttig goes on to argue, and I find this whole interview completely unconvincing.
For example, here, quote,"...the calls to Raffensperger," we're talking about one call, but somehow it's become calls,"...were part and parcel of the rebellion against the United States government." What?!
Again, look at the call.
Look at the context of the call.
Trump is merely saying, I won the state.
The votes are there. When he says, go find them, he means, go find the legal votes.
And yet, here's Luttig, the plan was to overturn the validly held election.
Well, nobody claims the election was invalidly held.
We're talking about the counting of the election.
We're talking about the existence of systematic fraud.
We're talking about Trump's belief that there was fraud and his desire to prove it.
And then giving aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States, please.
Debbie and I are on a really great health journey, but we still struggle to eat enough fruits, veggies, and fiber.
Those are all absolutely necessary for all of us.
And lucky for us, we discovered balance of nature.
And what better way to get all your fruits and veggies plus fiber than with balance of nature?
Now here's Balance of Nature's Fruits and Veggies.
They're made from fresh, whole produce.
The produce is powdered after an advanced vacuum-cold process, which stabilizes the maximum nutrient content.
And this is Balance of Nature's Fiber and Spice, a proprietary blend of fiber and 12 spices for overall and digestive health.
So join Debbie and me. Start your journey to better health right now.
Call 1-800-246-8751 or go to balanceofnature.com.
You'll get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA. Again, balanceofnature.com.
That's the website. Or call 800-246-8751.
you'll get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA.
Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast Jonathan Isaac, forward with the Orlando magic.
He is, he started a successful apparel company called Unitas, which celebrates values like faith, freedom, and family. I wanted to have him on to talk about all this. Jonathan, welcome, really appreciate you. Thanks for joining me. You tell a remarkable story about your being raised in a Christian family, but maybe losing over time side of it, and then being kind of
jolted back into a recognition about your Christian faith.
Talk a little bit about that journey.
First off, thank you so much for having me, Dinesh.
I really appreciate you and just everything that you do.
You hit it on the head.
I grew up very Christian in a Pentecostal Baptist household.
We were in church, it seemed like, every single day.
But for me, it was more so just about tradition and just about, okay, this is what we practice, this is what we do, but I didn't have a A real understanding of what did it mean to be a follower of Jesus Christ?
What did it mean to have a relationship with God?
And so as I began to, one, excel in basketball and my parents split up, I just started to gravitate, just like most kids do, gravitate away from that foundation and that traditional thing, especially once my parents split up because I was not with my dad anymore.
So my dad was that spiritual leader of the family.
So once we went with our mom, She was much more lenient and we just got away from things.
I found basketball. I started to put a lot into it and basketball just took over.
I wanted to emulate and be like the men that I saw.
When I saw basketball players and I saw what the world had to offer, you get to the NBA, you make money, the girls love you, you fit this image of what a man is and this modern society view of it.
And once I got it, I was able to quickly realize that it wasn't all that it was chucked up to be.
Even though I was living that life, I had moments of feeling empty and feeling like I was pursuing something that was superficial and not something that was grounding, foundational in my life.
And one day, I talk about it so much in the book, I give this story of childhood up until now, but I met a man on an elevator.
And he said to me, I can tell you how to be great.
And I said, how? This was my rookie year of being in the NBA. And I said, how?
And he said, you have to know Jesus.
And from that point on, from that moment, my life completely flipped upside down in a turn of Kind of crazy circumstances.
And it really is a long story, so I can't detail it all right now.
But if you check out the book, you will understand truly what I mean.
After that moment, I was able to come into understanding of what our true relationship with Christ is and how he loves us unconditionally.
And one of the things with basketball was that I was so used to working for love.
And finding my identity in the game where it was like, if I had a good game, I was up.
If I had a bad game, I was down.
It caused great anxiety.
It caused great self-insecurity.
But I was just pursuing something, you know, to no end.
Basketball being that. And so once I was able to find my identity in Christ, understand that God loves me for me, my life completely changed.
Guys, the book that we're talking about is called Why I Stand, Jonathan Isaac's book, which outlines his own story.
You said something really interesting a moment ago, which is that very often you go to church and people tell you, you know, don't pursue success, don't pursue money, they're not all they're cracked up to be.
But it's very easy for people to say that who actually haven't tasted success.
You know, in other words, people sitting in the pew going, well, yeah, but I'd kind of like to find out what it's all about.
And I think what you're saying is you did find out.
I mean, here you are, professional basketball player.
You had all the success. You had the big contracts.
You had the cheering crowd and so on.
And yet you're saying that the kind of deep fulfillment that we all seek in life ultimately, that sense of profound self-satisfaction, that was missing, right?
1,000%. 1,000%.
You hit it on the head. It's like...
It's like, I was actually, I gave a message this past weekend at church, and one of the things that I said to the congregation was that you can have more with less.
And that's what a lot of the people in my congregation have.
And the people that I see, they have so much more than the people that are put on a pedestal or what we chase in this world from a grand scheme of most people.
But you have more.
You have true peace.
You have true understanding of who you are, what you're doing, your purpose.
And real fulfillment that comes not from superficial things like money or fleeting happiness from things, but you have an internal joy that a lot of people don't have.
A lot of people need things to be happy.
They need moments in their lives and they chase these moments in order to feel fulfilled.
But when you can sit with yourself and have the peace of God, have the strength of God, have the joy that's found in Christ, it truly is a transformative thing that happens in your life.
And I was able to experience that after experiencing what this world has to offer, and being able to say, you know what, it's futile, it's superficial, and at the end of the day, it's not foundational.
Let's take a pause when we come back more with Jonathan Isaac. The book is called Why We Stand Out.
I also want to talk to Jonathan about his company.
It's called Unitas. The website is whereunitas.com.
If aches and pains are your problem, Relief Factor is your remedy.
Debbie and I started taking Relief Factor, gosh, a couple of years ago now.
And what a difference we've seen in our joints.
Nothing short of amazing. 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.
I've seen a whole bunch of testimonies of people talking about Relief Factor.
They love it. People order more because it works for them.
Debbie's a true believer. She can now do exercises, push-ups, planks, and so on that for a long time she wasn't able to do.
So a relief factor has been a big 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 three-week quick start for the discounted price of just $19.95.
Go to relieffactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF to find out more about this offer.
The number again to call 800-4-RELIEF or go to relieffactor.com.
Feel the difference. I'm back with Jonathan Isaac, forward for the Orlando Magic.
And I'm sort of chuckling because when I was talking about the website, it is actually weareunitus.com.
So we, W-E-A-R-E-R, Unitus, U-N-I-T-U-S dot com.
Jonathan, let's talk about that because...
A lot of guys are like, okay, I've got a relationship with Christ, but guess what?
I'm in the NBA. The NBA seems to be taking, at least occasionally, a political stance.
Maybe some of my fellow players.
Let's take a knee.
Black Lives Matter, this and that.
And you have a set of values that is a little out of sync with all of that.
And yet a lot of people would just sort of keep quiet about it.
You've decided, I'm not going to do that.
I'm going to write a book. Here I stand.
I'm going to start a company.
Talk a little bit about why you decided to do that and then tell us about the company.
Yeah, I decided to start it primarily because I wanted to see my values represented in the marketplace.
Just kind of cut and dry, very simple.
When you look out, especially in the sports and leisure where companies are making conscious decisions to move away from godly values and principles and constitutional values and principles.
And I simply just don't agree.
And I think that because we live in the great country of America, where you can do whatever you want to do, companies can move in whatever direction they want to.
We don't have to co-sign them by giving them our money.
And so what I wanted to do was instead of just complaining about the direction that these companies are heading in and our society is heading it in, I wanted to kind of move in action and say, you know what?
I have the means.
I have the wherewithal to create an alternative and give freedom-loving Americans and faith-loving Americans the freedom to buy with their values.
And that's where Unitas came from.
I don't know if you want to speculate about this, but why do you think, Jonathan, that these companies, and even the NBA, are taking these stances?
I say that because if I were running a basketball franchise, I would think, listen, I know, I'm going to have people who are going to be in the pews and the stands, who have all kinds of views on all kinds of things.
I don't want to get in the middle of all that.
We're playing basketball over here, so I would try not to push away a third or a half of the audience by taking it.
So why do you think they're doing it?
I think primarily it's the mainstream media.
I think that what's happened, especially when you're framing this conversation around a lot of these divisive topics that people are talking about today, or they're talked about in a way that are made to be divisive and polarizing, they have one side that is acceptable in the mainstream media.
Agree with this, that, and the third, then you're good.
You have these set of values and the mainstream media pushes that and everyone needs to jump on board and represent these values.
But if you stand for something else, not even against the values that they're standing for, but if you simply hold to different beliefs, you're not just seen as someone who holds to different beliefs.
You're seen as someone who is hateful.
You're seen as someone who rejects and doesn't want to be tolerant of somebody else's beliefs.
And I think because of that, It's easy to champion one side.
It's easy to, again, for these companies to say, you know what, this is what the mainstream media is pushing, so we need to jump on this bandwagon and go in this direction where a more nuanced and, I believe, level-headed approach would be the people who hold to these different values, they're not hateful.
They're not trying to go against anybody.
They just believe different things, and we can cater to both, or we can just stay and Stay out of it and allow people, whatever it is that they believe, to move in whatever direction they want to.
I believe that that time is gone.
We used to live in a society where companies, it was just about making great product.
It wasn't about what these companies believed.
But as the direction that we're going in, it matters what the people, what these companies believe that you're giving your money into.
Because in turn, they can undermine the fabric of our society.
They can sway public opinion on certain things.
So I think it is important to have alternative voices and alternative companies out there.
I mean, I've argued on the podcast and others have as well that, you know, as Christians and perhaps as constitutionalists or perhaps conservatives, it's not a good idea for us to subsidize values that are undercutting what we believe.
And this is just as true in schools as it is in the marketplace.
Do you think it is a wise idea for Christians in our society to say, hey, listen, if there's a company that's actively working against the values I believe in, I should try to put my business someplace else.
I think that's wisdom.
I think that's the right thing to do.
At the end of the day, you're talking about the marketplace.
It matters. It matters what companies are out there in the forefront.
It matters what your children see on a day-to-day basis.
It matters. It all goes into how we operate as human beings.
And so I think the wise thing to do is to be prudent and be thoughtful as to where I am putting my money on a day-to-day basis.
And let's close out by talking about Unitas.
Talk about some of the products.
Is it mainly athletic wear?
Is it clothing more generally?
Is it other stuff? Is it shoes?
What's the range of products at Unitas?
Yeah, thank you. It is leisure wear and sportswear.
So leisure wear, I mean, it's our first capsule is a hoodie, sweatpants, T-shirt, sweatshirt, things like that.
And this fall, we're going to be dropping our first sportswear package, which is like your sports bra, your leggings and things like that.
Pretty much I want to be, and then also there's the sports side of things, like we're going to be basketball specific, football specific, things like that.
I'm going to be wearing my own sneaker that Unitas is producing this upcoming season that'll be for sale closer to the season time.
And so I just want to fill as many lanes as I can in the sportswear space and give people, again, that freedom to bow with their values.
And they can leave one of these companies that are moving that direction and completely move over to Unitas and be able to get all of their sports and leisure wear needs from it.
Guys, check out the book, Why I Stand by Jonathan Isaac.
The website is weareunitas.com.
I think this time, Jonathan, I may have gotten it right.
Thanks for joining me. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much, Dinesh. Thank you.
As central banks in countries like China, India and Australia begin transitioning to a digital currency, the Federal Reserve here in the United States has been contemplating the same for us.
Now with a digital currency, the government could track every single purchase you make.
Officials could even prohibit you from purchasing certain products or easily freeze or seize part or all your money. These are some of the reasons concerned Americans reach out to Birch Gold Group. They want to have a physical asset that's independent from the US dollar. That's gold held tax-sheltered in a retirement account. Debbie and I buy gold from Birch Gold to make sure we're protected and also diversified. Now learn if gold is right for you too. Text Dinesh to 989898. They'll send you a free information kit
on gold so you can make up your own mind. With an A-plus rating with a better business bureau, thousands of happy customers, countless five-star reviews, Birch Gold can help you protect yourself and diversify into gold.
Text Dinesh to 989898. Claim your free information kit on gold because if a central bank digital currency becomes reality, it's going to be really nice to have some gold to depend on.
I want to talk about a very interesting article on the history of gender. Now
Now, we find that in our society, almost suddenly, I won't say almost overnight, but almost out of nowhere, we're suddenly exposed to this sort of discussion about who is a man and who is a woman and how do you know the difference and isn't biology a continuum from male to female and there's no bright line?
Between the two. And we hear, well, gee, you know, you've got people who may be biologically male, but they act in feminine ways, and so sex is different than gender.
You can have a man, for example, who wears an earring.
You can have a woman, for example, who decides to wear pants instead of a skirt and stops putting on makeup.
Now, we have to step back for a moment and say, wait a minute.
Let's think back to the 1980s and 1990s.
Were there men who wore earrings?
Sure. Were there men who wore ponytails?
Sure. Were there women who were tomboyish or kind of masculine, young girls who liked to climb trees, women who liked to dress in a kind of boyish fashion?
Sure. And yet, did those women who dressed in pants think, I'm not a woman.
I actually don't even know what I am.
I'm non-binary.
Or, I'm really a male in a female body.
No one thought like this.
This was out of bounds.
This was like crazy talk.
And if someone had engaged in it, people would look at you as if you are at the least eccentric, if not downright nuts.
And so there has to be a way in which we got from here to there.
What is the sort of transmission belt that has taken us to this kind of strange spot in our culture where suddenly the distinction between male and female appears to be called into question?
Well, the writer of this article, her name is Courtney Conover.
She has a Substack, courtneylconover.substack.com.
And I'm going to be leaning on some of her research because it's pretty interesting, and I want to go into it in some depth.
So she thinks that there are four or five clear pioneers that Let's call it modern sexology or modern genderology.
And the first of them was this guy, John Money.
Kind of a weird name, John Money.
He was a sociologist.
And he's the guy who came up with the idea of the gender role.
So this guy, Money, was himself a strange bird, but he wanted to dissolve the sexual distinction, the sexual binary, the M and the F, the male and the female.
And so he came up with the idea of a sexual orientation.
So for example, the idea was that people could have multiple sexual orientations.
Somebody is homosexual or bisexual.
That's your sexual orientation.
And that was distinct from your biology.
That's kind of the way that you are, quote, leaning, if you will.
And this guy, Money, was also very fascinated by people who were sort of Intersex.
In other words, people who are born with ambiguous sexual genitalia.
At that time, it was called your hermaphrodite or hermaphroditism.
And so, Money began to do research into this sort of thing.
He apparently convinced the parents of a patient named David Reimer...
Who was at that time only 22 months old, that he had an experimental procedure.
Apparently this Reimer fellow had undergone a botched circumcision.
And so Mani goes, listen, we have a botched circumcision.
We can't really put it back.
And so what we need to do is reassign this Bruce guy, this little kid, to being a girl.
And apparently the parents agreed and entrusted their child to this John Money guy for 12 years.
And now the parents said, listen, we don't want you to try to make a vagina for him or something, but you can remove the rest of his penis and testicles and so on.
In any event, as you might imagine, this had horrible consequences.
This... This fellow named Bruce, who was then called Brenda because he was raised as a girl, had a massive psychological breakdown at the age of 14.
And the parents basically said, look, this is all horrible.
We have to try to get him back, get Bruce back, if you will.
So they began to have this kid who was, as I say, a teenager at this point, testosterone injections and so on.
And in May of 2004, Bruce...
Put a gun to his head and that was the end of that.
So, Money was a sexual radical.
He was doing this research because he wanted to sort of blast open the sexual distinction.
And he was also a champion of pedophilia.
He made the argument that sexual attraction, adults and children, is not abnormal.
It's not inappropriate.
It might be rare.
But it is nevertheless natural.
Things, for example, can be rare.
Someone who's, let's say, left-handed, that's a rarity, but it's not abnormal.
There's nothing unnatural about it.
And John Money was trying to make the argument that pedophilia is like that.
We think of it as abominable or wicked, but he goes, no, it's merely rare.
Hey guys, I'd like to invite you to check out my Locals channel.
I got a big film coming out this year, and if you're an annual subscriber, that film is going to be available to you for free, included in your Locals subscription.
Now, I post lots of exclusive content on Locals, including content that's censored on other social media platforms.
On Locals, you get Dinesh Unchained, Dinesh Uncensored.
You also interact with me directly.
I do a live weekly Q&A every Tuesday talking about issues of the day.
No topic is off limits.
I've also uploaded some very cool films to my Locals page, both documentaries and feature films.
My films, also films by other independent producers.
And there's a little box on my page that just goes to Dinesh's movie list.
As I mentioned, I'm doing a new film this year.
I'll be giving you the inside scoop on Locals.
Check out my channel. It's dinesh.locals.com.
If you watch the podcast on Rumble, there's a little join button at the top of the page.
It's red. Just click on it.
It'll take you to my local channel.
I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
Again, dinesh.locals.com.
I'm continuing my discussion of the history of gender, and I now turn to the second figure that is outlined in this article by Courtney Conover, and this is Alfred Kinsey.
We know about the Kinsey Report.
Kinsey was a guy who was supposedly doing objective studies of sexual behavior, but his studies weren't really objective because he talked about, I'm looking at a sample of people, but this wasn't a random sample.
He would get his sample from, like, prisons.
And so, no surprise, he would say, well, you know, I think that at least 10% of these people are homosexual.
Well, that's because the prison population is not representative of the population of society in general.
But this is the kind of manipulation that Kinsey engaged in.
And this is a guy who created the so-called sexual spectrum.
In other words, Kinsey said that nobody is entirely male.
Nobody is entirely female.
There's a kind of a range.
And Kinsey studied cross-dressers, transvestites, transsexuals.
So very rare cases.
But Kinsey's point was not that these are people of ambiguous sex.
Kinsey agreed. These are biological males who are dressing like women.
Or these are biological males who have ambiguous genitalia.
Or these are biological males who have a particular sexual orientation.
But Kinsey was in the same camp as money.
John Money, in that he basically said that nothing is perverted, nothing is wicked, things may be rare or strange, but there was a kind of relativism to Kinsey, because it's strange for you, but it's not strange for them.
To them, it's completely normal.
Now, I mean, I concede that to a pedophile, pedophilic behavior may be completely normal, but that's true of all people who are mentally disturbed.
The guy who thinks he's Napoleon really does think he's Napoleon.
The guy who's a serial killer really doesn't feel anything when he does those things.
Now, again, I'm not making a direct analogy between serial killing and, let's say, being transgender or being transsexual or anything like that.
But the point I'm trying to make is that the relativism doesn't really work because just because somebody feels a certain way doesn't mean that is the way that it is.
And this is especially true when you're talking about kids.
A kid basically says, listen, I'm a man on the moon.
That doesn't mean the kid is, in fact, a man on the moon.
But here goes Kinsey attempting to normalize all kinds of sexual behavior that was previously considered abominable.
In fact, he went on to say things like even babies have sexual feelings.
Babies can reach sexual climax.
And he says there's no medical reason.
There might be social reasons, but there's no medical reason to prohibit incest or even sex between children and adults.
And then we turn to the next figure in this sort of unholy pantheon, and this is the feminist writer Judith Butler.
This is the woman who, remember, Kinsey is now doing his work in the 40s and 50s.
His work is then popularized in the 50s and 60s.
Judith Butler is more a creation of the 1980s and the 1990s, And she is the kind of architect of the idea that gender is a social construct.
Gender is a social construct.
Now The only way to make this work, it's very difficult to say that sex is a social construct because sexual differences are clearly built in.
They're clearly biological.
They're inherent. They're in nature, so to speak, as the Greeks like to say.
So, where do you get to a social construct?
Well, what you do is you make a distinction between sex on the one hand and gender on the other.
Well, what's the difference between sex and gender?
Well, apparently sex is in the body and gender is in the mind.
So, sex, in other words, is given and gender is sort of what you make of it.
And Judith Butler spent a lot of time talking about people who identify with a sex different than the one that they're born in.
And she says, well, what they're really doing is they're living out a different gender role.
If you look at Judith Butler, I've seen pictures of her and so on.
She's female looking, although she says I'm non-binary.
She apparently goes by the pronoun they, them.
So you can't call her her.
You've got to call her they.
And this is going to be awkward in talking about Judith Butler, so I'm just going to use her name.
She says that gender is what she calls performative.
In other words, your sex is what's given to you, but how you live it out, that's your gender.
That's how you see yourself.
It has to do with how you feel, and it has to do with, say, how you present yourself in a public space.
But again, coming back to what I began with, you have lots of people who choose all kinds of ways to present themselves.
You may have a guy who decides to present himself sort of in a bohemian way.
You have some guys who dress in an ultra masculine fashion.
They have tattoos and there's a kind of exaggerated masculinity.
You have other people who kind of go with the more, you almost call it beta male approach.
And so none of this, in a way, is saying anything other than you got males and females who choose a variety of ways in which to present themselves.
This doesn't make them a different gender.
They're still the same gender.
They simply have a different cosmetic style or a different social style.
But Judith Butler's political agenda was to say basically that biology doesn't really matter.
Yeah, sure, we have a certain kind of given, but then what we do with it, what we make of it in our mind is really what is critical.
Somehow she was implying that one can dismiss biological reality, which makes absolutely no sense, but this is part of the root of how we got to many of the fallacies that we deal with today.
I'm continuing in a final segment my discussion of the history of gender.
This is an interesting article on Substack by Courtney Conover.
And we've talked about John Money.
We've talked about Sigmund Freud.
Well, no, sorry.
We haven't talked about Sigmund Freud.
We've talked about Kinsey.
And we've also talked about Judith Butler.
And the fourth figure that Courtney Conover discusses is the philosopher Michel Foucault.
Now, I gotta say that Foucault is somebody that I, well, I won't say that I knew Foucault, but I spent some time with him.
When I was a student at Dartmouth, he came to Dartmouth to give a series of lectures.
And I was assigned by the college, believe it or not.
I worked for the college kind of press office at the time.
And they said, why don't you spend some time with Foucault and write some press releases for us that the college can put out about Foucault's ideas and some of the things that he wants to talk about and what his upcoming lectures are going to be about.
So I got to sort of, I would say, hang out with Foucault, one of the most peculiar, brooding, unsocial or maybe antisocial guys given to making odd and weird remarks that We're good to go.
So this is Foucault.
And I think part of it is that these philosophers like to do this because it gives them a false air of profundity.
Like, oh man, my thoughts are so complex and so deep that no one can figure them out.
And what they really mean is I'm just speaking in a kind of muddle.
I'm using words, in a sense, detached from their ordinary meaning.
Now, none of this is to say that Foucault wasn't saying anything.
I'm about to say what he really was getting at.
But even though Foucault talked about medicine, he wrote about medicine, medicine in the present, but also medical procedures in the past.
He would talk about the way that people were treated, for example, in lunatic asylums.
He talked about the diagnoses that they were subjected to.
And you might think, well, Surely, Michel Foucault was some kind of a medical doctor, the way that, say, Chekhov was.
Chekhov writes short stories, but Chekhov's a medical doctor, so when he talks about different types of medical treatment, at least medical treatment in the 19th century, he knows what he's talking about.
Foucault Foucault has absolutely no idea.
And so you've got a sociologist and a philosopher, basically a kind of theoretical bloviator, addressing topics that are really not his area of knowledge.
And it shows. But it's impressive to other people who are not in medicine themselves because they go, wow, this stuff is mind-blowingly profound.
So what is Foucault getting at?
Well, basically what Foucault is saying is that the mind controls the body.
And he applies this idea to sexuality.
So his point is that we may have a body, and the body is a certain way, but he goes, that doesn't really matter.
Because after all, we are a combination of our body and our mind.
And if our body are the wild horses, the mind is the charioteer.
The mind is the one that directs the body as to where the body ought to go.
And so he basically says that we are mentally in charge of our own sexuality.
Now, you might expect Foucault to stop there and go, okay, this is really a gospel or this is a doctrine of self-assertion, of saying that the individual is in charge, our mind controls our body, each person decides for himself or herself.
But that's actually not what Foucault is getting at.
Interestingly, just as he's established that the mind is in charge of the body, he goes on to say the mind is not in charge of itself.
Well, who's in charge of the mind?
It turns out, society.
So, Foucault is making the argument that society is constructed based upon power.
Powerful people set up regimes.
This is one of his favorite words, regimes of control.
And he doesn't just mean political regimes.
He means medical regimes, prison regimes, educational regimes.
So these regimes of control are set up by society and people are indoctrinated in a sense.
...into these regimes.
And so, as a result, they develop a certain type of conformity.
Like, hey, listen, I was born a male, and I'm in an education system, and so I've got to think of myself as a male.
I've got to act in masculine ways.
I've got to marry a woman.
We've got to have children.
And Foucault goes, no, no, no, no, no.
You don't have to do any of those things.
You just think that you do because you're a victim of a power structure that has implanted those ideas in you.
So for Rousseau, it was, I'm sorry, for Foucault, it was all about breaking free or attempting to break free if you can.
Foucault was a little fatalistic and at times he seemed to say, well, you really can't, but at least you can be aware that these power structures are kind of operating on you.
So, Where are we going with all this?
Where we're going is we're trying to show that through the milestones of these philosophers, and quite frankly, one more twisted and crazy than the other, these are the milestones to how we got the rhetoric.
The rhetoric that you see spouted in the media, spouted in the educational system, spouted in the public commentary that we hear, this is not rhetoric that these people have come up with themselves.
They've picked it up from these This is where it came from.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
▲
Export Selection