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Dec. 12, 2023 - Dinesh D'Souza
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ISLAM AND THE WEST Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep725
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Coming up, I'll discuss the compatibility of Islam and the West by tracing the rise and development of Islam and its modern political expression in nations around the world, including the U.S. Author and radio host Alex McFarlane joins me.
He's going to make the case that Islam is a threat to the principles of the American Constitution.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
I want to focus today on the theme of Islam and the West, Islam and America.
And I have an interesting guest who makes the case that Islam is incompatible with the US Constitution.
I'm not saying it is.
I'm not saying it isn't. I'm actually not so sure.
And so what I'm going to do in the interview is just try to spring some devil's advocate objections and questions to sort of test this idea of whether or not, let's say, one can be a devout and orthodox Muslim who believes the Quran from beginning to end.
Is such a person able to sort of fit in or assimilate or be part of the American experiment?
That's what we're going to be talking about.
But I want to Before I get there, I want to talk about Kevin McCarthy and his resignation from Congress at the end of this year.
Now, why?
I realize that Kevin McCarthy is...
I realize that he feels displaced and sort of booted out because he was booted out.
He was booted out by the fact that he had agreed to a set of rules which allowed a relatively small number of conservatives in the House to pull their support and McCarthy could no longer get a majority.
So he needed to sort of hold the whole Republican camp together, or he needed to get Democrats to defect over to his side and vote to keep him as Speaker.
The Democrats decided, we're not going to be helping him.
You Republicans sort this one out.
Matt Gaetz and others pulled out the rug and down went McCarthy.
So I don't think McCarthy wants to stay in Congress because he's like, you know, I used to be the Speaker, now I'm just a run-of-the-mill Democrat.
But wait a minute. I mean, Nancy Pelosi used to be the speaker.
Now she's a run-of-the-mill.
But she's still in Congress.
And more importantly, McCarthy should surely recognize that the Republicans have a razor-thin majority.
So it would have been pretty easy for McCarthy to say, alright, I'm going to stick it out through the next election.
I'm not going to get out midstream, because if you get out midstream, there's going to be a special election in his district.
So you have all that... Not only the inconvenience of having a special election, but the uncertain outcome of it.
And what is McCarthy doing?
The last I saw him, he was criticizing the Republican Party.
In fact, he was saying the Democrats, after all, look like America, but the Republican Party looks like some restrictive country club.
Now, why would you say that? First of all, you've been the leader for quite a long time, and you had every effort to try to diversify the Republican Party in a good way, not through affirmative action or some sort of quotas, but through trying to maybe attract younger people, people from different backgrounds.
I do think we need to be.
I don't disagree with the idea that a multiracial Republican Party is a good thing and more effective politically, more likely to be able to win power in this country.
So I think my question for McCarthy is, why don't you put your party first?
Why don't you put your country first?
Why don't you recognize that, first of all, the GOP gets together and boots George Santos.
Down goes your majority.
Now we have McCarthy.
So I think this brings the Republican majority after December down to two or maybe even one.
So, how do you expect to impeach Joe Biden?
Even if the facts all point, as I think they will, unequivocally to Biden, even if you find checks written by the Chinese government to Biden, the truth of it is to proceed with impeachment.
Let's leave aside whether impeachment could even succeed, because it can't succeed in the Senate.
You can't get the super majority of votes you need.
But you can have impeachment in the House and then Joe Biden will be impeached and there will be a trial.
All of that would be politically very valuable for Republicans, but I predict it's not gonna happen.
It's not gonna happen regardless of the evidence.
Why?
Because the Republicans who already had a thin majority have narrowed it so much by their own actions, by the actions of the majority of Republicans who vote to boot George Santos.
Huge mistake. No reason to boot George Santos at all.
Well, George Santos is a liar.
Oh yeah, really? Well, guess how many liars there are in Congress?
Menendez is a liar, and he's sitting fat and pretty in the Senate.
Democrats aren't stupid. They're not going to kick their own guy out to the curb.
So they've taken him off a committee, sure, but he's still in the Senate.
He's still voting with the Democrats.
So, these are self-inflicted wounds.
One inflicted, I would say, by the majority of the GOP on itself, and now one inflicted on the GOP and the country by its former House leader and House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy.
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I am going to interview in this podcast a fellow that I've known for some years.
His name is Alex McFarland.
And he's a Christian apologist.
He is head of Christian worldview at a Bible college called Karis Bible College.
And apparently in recent years, he has been focusing on the question of the compatibility Of Islam and the American Constitution.
A very kind of interesting idea.
Now, Alex has been studying Islam ever since his own college days when he studied comparative religion and different types of worldviews.
But he's going to make in this discussion the provocative argument that you can't reconcile Islam with the Constitution.
Or to put it differently, if somebody is, let's say, a devout Muslim.
And devout in the full sense of the term.
By the way, we're not talking here about a terrorist or something.
We're talking about somebody, for example, who believes the Quran from start to finish, accepts concepts like Sharia law.
Can such a guy live in America?
Yeah. Live according to Islam and yet according to the Constitution, or is there some kind of contradiction in terms?
Now, I confess that when Alex sort of proposed this topic to me and Debbie, Debbie's like, do you want to do this?
I was like, you know, I actually don't even know the answer to that question.
Obviously, I've written about Islam myself.
Some years ago, I published a book called The Enemy at Home, focused on not so much theological Islam, but political Islam.
And I learned a lot of things about Islam in the course of that book.
But not only that, I've obviously grown up with Muslims.
I grew up in a country that is predominantly Hindu, India, about 80-85% Hindus, but then almost 15% of Muslims with a small smattering of Christians and others.
But the Hindus and the Muslims are the most.
I've had a pretty direct exposure to people practicing Islam and practicing Islam in the sort of full sense of the term.
Right down my street, for example, was a guy, a Muslim guy, and I knew his son.
We would actually play cricket and other sports together, and this guy actually had two wives.
So this is apparently allowed under Indian law.
In other words, Indian law is that you can only have one wife.
But if you're a Muslim, you kind of fall under Islamic law, which is, of course, enforced not by the normal Indian courts, but by Islamic courts.
And this guy evidently was permitted to have a Muslim wife and a Christian wife, oddly enough.
Who lived in a separate residence.
And in fact, I never saw or met the other wife.
But I often heard about it.
And so this is kind of a strange...
I thought even as a kid this was really weird.
But on the other hand, you've had...
Hindus and Muslims existing not, by the way, always peacefully for a long time in India.
But what about America? What about American exceptionalism?
What about the principles of the American founding?
Well, I begin with the starting point that these principles are today in America very frayed.
And by that I mean we don't live by those principles in terms of our current set of laws.
If our constitution is based on a Judeo-Christian foundation, if it's based on objective morality, do we have objective morality behind our laws?
Do we have natural law governing, for example, our practices of marriage?
No. Ever since the Supreme Court blatantly declared gay marriage is okay, gay marriage is allowed in the Constitution, and suddenly you discover that we're living in a kind of a new America.
So, for me, it's not just a question of whether Islam is compatible with the original America, with the Constitution the way it was originally understood, with the objective morality that used to be the kind of agreed-upon basis of our society and our laws, but with America today, which seems to be an America that's moved away from all that, that's in flux, that is under assault from a left that would totally change the country. And the question
for me is, in that situation, in this very fluid environment, is Islam an ally?
Is it an enemy?
Should we as conservatives be open to conservative Muslims who may not agree with us on theology?
I mean, they would reject, for example, that Jesus is the Messiah, but guess what?
Jews do too. Jews don't only just reject that Jesus is the Messiah.
Jews think that Jesus, in a sense, was a fraud.
Jesus was pretending to be the Messiah, but some other guy who hasn't shown up yet is the real Messiah.
So, which is closer to Christianity, Islam or Judaism?
The guys who say that Jesus was a prophet but not the Messiah?
Or the guys who say that Jesus was not a prophet and not the Messiah and a complete fraud?
So I wrestle with these kinds of questions and my thought with having Alex on is, all right, Alex, you're going to make your case and I'm going to sort of fraud it and probe it and question you, not because we all have clear views on the subject, but we want some clarity to emerge out of our current confusion.
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Get 35% off your first preferred order by using discount code AMERICA. Guys, I'm really happy to welcome to the podcast my friend Alex McFarland.
He runs Alex McFarland Ministries.
He's a youth religion and culture expert.
He's author of more than 20 books.
He's heard live daily on the 200 plus stations of the American Family Radio Network.
He's also director of Worldview for Karis Bible College in Colorado and co-hosts the Truth and Liberty TV broadcast.
Alex, welcome. Good to see you.
Gosh, you and I met now, it seems like a decade ago or so, when we were both, well, I was doing apologetics.
You invited me to speak in North Carolina.
I think that was the first time we got acquainted, was it not?
It probably was.
And let me say, my respect for you was strong then, over the years it's only grown.
And I really, no flattery here, my friend, but you are one of those intellects and voices that I'm so profoundly grateful for.
It's always a privilege to visit with you, Dinesh.
Alex, that means a lot.
Thank you for saying that.
By the way, Alex's website is alexmcfarland.com.
Alex, I thought I'd like to focus on a topic that you've been thinking and writing about, which is the compatibility of Islam with the West, and perhaps specifically with the US Constitution. So let me begin by asking, as a guy who's been talking about Christian worldview, Christian apologetics, how did you develop this interest in Islam?
Well, it is very interesting, Dinesh.
My interest in Islam predates 9-11, let me just say that.
I think so much of Americans and the West became familiar with Islam in the aftermath of 9-11.
And I, you know, as a minister and going to seminary and graduate school, I'm learning world religions, and I did, really in the late 90s, kind of a deep dive into what Islam is and Islam's origins.
And a lot of people don't realize that Islam, in the early years of the life of Muhammad, he had a lot of animus and really anger against what he perceived to be Christianity.
He had some He was in an orphanage, in fact, an orphanage and part of his young life, and he may have actually had epilepsy.
Even some Muslim historians say that.
Subisic said Muhammad was a labor-intensive orphan, and he was put out.
And interestingly, this is worth laying some groundwork.
Early in Christianity, there was a group called Nestorians.
They were under a guy named Nestorius.
And Nestorius denied the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
So the young Muhammad, after he left an orphanage at about age 15, went to live with an uncle.
I'm probably, with my southern accent, probably going to butcher the pronunciation of this, but Muhammad went to live with a man named Waraka ibn Nufal.
And again, my apologies if I mispronounce that, but Waraka ibn Nosal was a Nestorian, a vehement denier of the Trinity and the deity of Christ.
And so my point is, one of the core doctrines of Islamic theology is the oneness of God and the denial of the fact of Jesus Christ being deity.
Now I studied this in depth, Dinesh, because I wanted to know, as I traveled the world, how to dialogue with Muslims.
When 9-11 happened, there was a book that really I recommended many people read by Samuel Huntington called the clash of civilizations a Do you recall that book?
Yeah, of course. I remember it well.
I think the two books that most influenced me around that time were Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong, which is built on a whole lifetime of his work with Islam, and the other was Huntington's Clash of Civilizations, a widely discussed book, which did talk about the fact that there were many civilizations coming into conflict, but the highlight, the focus, was on Islam and the West.
It really was. And Huntington, who was a 50-year professor at Harvard and was participating in the Carter administration, brilliant academic.
And I think he's worth citing for a couple of reasons.
One, his work was, in my opinion, meticulous.
The other thing is, I mean, he's not some right-wing evangelical.
He couldn't be accused of being an ideologue, really.
And Huntington said that Westerners are very naive to believe that devout Muslims will really assimilate into Western culture.
And I know during the Obama years, we were constantly told, and unsuspecting Americans probably did not realize they were being misled, but Obama constantly talked about How Islam had been a part of America from the beginning and that so much of the great things about tolerance and diversity and accomplishment were due to Islam.
And that is just simply not the case.
And Dinesh, just as a caveat, let me say what I'm saying is not of any ill will or attitude.
I'm just trying to help people understand that our Judeo-Christian representative republic...
It's not compatible with Sharia, which is what the hard-shell, devout Muslims want for the world, not just for Europe and America, but the world.
Now, can Muslims migrate here?
Of course. Can they be citizens?
Do they make good neighbors?
Very often. Yes, and yes.
But those of us that value our freedom and our nation, we must not ever allow the U.S. Constitution or local laws to be abrogated by Islamic doctrine or Islamic judicial protocols.
And I'm saying this, and I realize some might think that I'm some hateful white guy, but Fundamental, devout Islam is not compatible with our representative republic, and we cannot let it creep further and further into a force of influence.
I'll be right back with Alex McFarlane, the website alexmcfarlane.com.
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I'm back with Alex McFarland.
Alex, we were talking about the compatibility of Islam and the West.
You mentioned Samuel Huntington, but I think what Huntington was really focusing on was the political aspirations of radical Islam, its strategic objectives.
And of course, radical Islam defines itself against the West, right?
We think of a country like Iran as now largely allied with Russia, allied with China, so it's forming a rival axis to the West.
So we can totally understand that in those terms, there is not only an incompatibility, there's an outright adversary relationship between Islam as a political force and perhaps the political goals of the West.
But I want to focus on something which I think is different that you said, which is that somehow Islam itself in the West poses a problem for our constitutional system of government.
And I want to probe as to why you think that is the case.
I mean, let me give an example maybe to drive the discussion.
We have, for example, in the West the idea of, you know, heterosexual marriage.
That's been a part of our law.
This goes all the way back, you know, in its roots to the Reformation, marriage laws made by the state.
Now, on the one hand, you may have some Muslims who go, we want Sharia law, we want polygamy, you know, but guess what?
We've got leftists in this country and we've got gay activists who would be very happy to throw out the marriage laws, establish polygamy for their own reasons.
So what I'm getting at is what makes the Islamic pursuit of this goal somehow different from, let's say, a secular guy who goes, I don't like the white male patriarchy and I want to get rid of these exact same marriage laws.
That's a great question.
And this does really make a little bit for something rather delicate and sticky wicket in that, you know, while I am very leery of CARE, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and those activist groups that want to further and further impose Islam and Sharia into American culture.
I'm very leery of that. But at the same time, Islam and those that advocate for Quranic teachings, sometimes they do have moral positions that I would agree with.
You know, that homosexuality is immoral.
We would agree on that.
But nevertheless, and this is where Dinesh voters and citizens have to really do the work of thought and researching things.
America. I love America.
My goodness. Dinesh, you know me.
You know me very well, and you know that I believe the Bible is the Word of God.
But I also believe that the U.S. Constitution, the Declaration, Bill of Rights, Constitution, were, at least on some level, superintended over by God.
I really believe that, that it was so unlikely that That in the 1700s, that America could, you know, birth itself, and that our governing documents are so brilliant that they must be preserved.
Now, let me illustrate why The radical Islam would be incompatible with this because, alright, one of our bedrock presuppositions, as Lincoln said, at Gettysburg, government of the people and by the people and for the people.
In other words, the right to self-governance based on natural law.
You know, the imams and the worldwide caliphate that so many Muslims desire, the idea of self-governance and that there is the consent of the governed, oh my goodness.
Muslims would not tolerate that for a moment.
I mean, that alone, the idea of a representative republic and the vox populi, the voice of the people be heard, and that there is governance only by the consent of the governed, that stops the conversation about the compatibility of Islam and America right there.
Would you agree? No, I would not agree.
And here's why.
Let's consider a hypothetical.
Let's consider a country like Jordan or Egypt for a moment.
And let's say that you have a Muslim majority, which you do in those Muslim countries, and the Muslim majority democratically and by consent of the governed and by majority rule decides that they want to live under Sharia law.
Okay. Where a Muslim majority decides that we choose collectively and democratically through a majority rule and maybe with some exemptions for minority rights.
If you don't want to live under Sharia, you can go to a normal court.
But we also have these Sharia courts and we as a majority of Muslims want those.
How would that be incompatible with a representative republic?
Well, in a way, and this is a great point, and I appreciate your very thorough analysis of what I'm saying, but it's using freedom to curtail, if not ultimately eliminate freedom.
That's, in a way, what I believe the morally rudderless Democrats are doing right now.
They're using the tools of liberty to ultimately chip away and eliminate liberty, because ultimately, you know, Sharia really means the straight path.
And Islam, yes, there are scenarios where non-Muslims in radically Muslim countries have the option to not participate in Islam.
But they have like demi-status.
And I mean the rights of Christians and Jews...
Or non-Muslims within radical Muslim cultures is pretty bleak indeed.
And I mean, all you need to do is study the demistatus of non-Muslims.
And clearly, people have the right to opt out and not be Muslim, but the price for having done so is rather severe.
And what I say about America is this, that you don't have to be Christian, you don't have to even believe in God or be theistic.
You don't have to be a straight heterosexual.
But here's what we really can't let people do, is tear down the foundation that allows people to be a non-Christian, non-hetero, non-binary person.
In other words, here's what I'm saying.
If you want what we've had, And what we've had has been stability, liberty, and prosperity in just immeasurable terms.
Liberty, stability, prosperity.
If you want that, what gave us that should be preserved, and what gave us that, and it's been well documented past and present, has been a Judeo-Christian representative republic Capitalism.
And I know people say, oh, capitalism has potential for abuse.
I agree. Okay, let's call it principled capitalism.
But I believe that anybody can come here and anybody can believe whatever they want to believe.
But in terms of the preservation of our governing principles and even the documents themselves, We all have a vested interest in promoting the philosophical foundations of our constitutional republic and that has been objective morality and, to be specific, a Judeo-Christian worldview and that's just incompatible with an Islamic worldview.
I'll be right back with Alex McFarland.
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I'm back with author and radio host and apologetics director, Alex McFarland.
His website, alexmcfarland.com.
Alex, you know, if the United States were anchored in the principles you describe, which I agree would be the best, but it seems to me, aren't you describing almost an America of old?
And aren't you describing a set of principles that is now embattled not because of Muslims, But really because of a radical secular left that is far more dangerous to this Christian worldview than anything that Islam has to offer.
In fact, you even said earlier that it could be that we have common cause with Muslims on a number of the socially conservative issues.
And you mentioned only one, gay rights, but I could think of others, including abortion.
So let me ask you this.
If you're faced with a choice...
I've got a conservative Muslim over here.
And I'm not talking about a terrorist or somebody who wants to blow up a building.
I'm just talking about a conservative Muslim over here.
And let's even say that that guy would like in his own dream world to have America under Sharia, but my majority rule.
So in other words, he doesn't want to force it on you and me, but he wants to establish it democratically.
And then over here, you've got a radical secular guy who...
Doesn't accept this moral code at all, whether Muslim or Christian, is actually far more concerned and more effective in propagandizing our young people, corrupting the values of our children, taking down monuments.
I mean, basically destroying Western civilization as it has been known to exist for 2000 years.
Which would you rather ally with?
Well, that's a great point, because while I'm not a Muslim, I'm a Christian, and I don't believe in the salvific promises of Islam, but at the same time, I think your point is very well made, that honestly, there are scenarios in which a patriotic American Let me say this.
A principled, conservative, constitutionalist patriot probably has more in combat with a Muslim than many on the left.
And this is the irony of what the Democrat Party has become.
And before we talk about specifics, let's talk about some presuppositions.
Because, you know, conservatism would say, look, there's an objective right and wrong, and people have a capacity to do things that are objectively evil.
Now, liberals will say, and you can call it woke, liberal, the left, whatever you want, but liberals generally believe that people are inherently good, and there is not an objective moral code.
Liberals would also presuppose that if one has food on their table, conversely, on the other side of the world, someone else is going ugly.
It's very much a finite pie mentality.
And so part of what's wrong is that we've allowed a lot of the baseless presuppositions of the left to almost become axiomatic truth in daily life.
Now, here's the thing, they say, well, because America is not perfect, let's pull down all these statues, because on day one, July, you know, 1776 or 1789, when the constitution got ratified, we didn't have a global utopia on day one, therefore let's burn down the house. And honestly, I believe that the
left, because look, it's you give an inch, they want a mile.
There's never enough.
There are never enough entitlements.
We've never done enough.
Reparations are never enough.
Dinesh, I was debating a black...
I'm a Democrat leader.
And I said, well, put a figure on the reparations.
I said, I disagree with reparations for slavery on a lot of levels.
But I said, so let's say whatever the check is, a trillion dollars dispersed as you wish.
Will that be enough?
Can we move on?
Can we stop accusing, you know, hardworking Caucasian conservatives of being, you know, racist?
He said, no, it will never be over.
And I said, well, then why would I write that check?
If reparations will not solve the problem, why write the check?
Now, here's my point. For liberalism, wokeism, call it what you will.
Without an objective moral compass, and without the idea that people have accountability and responsibility for their actions, and without, as Washington would say, the laws of nature and nature of God written on every heart, The left will always cannibalize America.
And so in that regard, and I think we could think of examples, that really I do think the woke, ideologically driven left is a greater threat to our constitutional republic than most Muslim citizens.
Because, as I would sincerely say, most Muslim citizens are not jihadists.
Now, there are jihadists, there are radical Muslims, but the vast majority, and I've met hundreds, they're wanting to love their families, put food on the table, as we all are.
But we're in a battle of worldviews, and it's a battle that every citizen should take seriously, and I would say especially those in positions of influence.
We need to understand our nation and get out of our comfort zone and try to preserve it because I really do think our constitutional republic is more at risk than it's ever been.
We'll be right back with Alex McFarland.
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I'm back with Alex McFarland.
We're talking about Islam and the American Constitution.
Alex, you said at the end of the last segment something I thought was very important and that is that you made a distinction between sort of jihadi Muslims and we're interpreting jihadi here in the sort of militaristic or violent sense and let's call them traditional Muslims.
So traditional Muslims would be Millions of Muslims in India or the majority of the population of Indonesia, which is Muslim but hasn't had the same kind of turbulence as a country like Iran or even Iraq.
Now, you've got those Muslims and some of those guys come to America.
And what if they were to say to us as conservatives, listen, the American founders understood that Americans are going to disagree about theology.
Now, admittedly, the American founders were talking about Christian theology.
They were thinking about differences not only between Catholic and Protestant, but different denominations of Protestantism.
And so the American founders basically said, we can disagree about theology, but agree on morality.
And so, you could have laws that are based on morality, even if you disagree about the sacraments or you disagree about the Trinity.
Those are in the domain of revelation, but objective morality is in the domain of reason.
And what if this Muslim I'm talking about goes on to say that on the moral issues...
We largely agree with you.
And even in most Muslim countries today, Muslims have, you know, one husband, one wife.
So even though polygamy is permitted in theory under Islam, in reality most Muslims have a normal wife or husband the same as we do.
And Muslims certainly don't deny that there are such things as a man and a woman.
They don't think men can become women and vice versa.
So this Muslim goes, we really belong...
Not only in America, but we belong in the Republican Party.
And if the Republican Party would only recognize that we ally with you on all the kind of moral and social issues that you care about, why are you trying to distance yourself from us?
Isn't that only hurting you politically and socially?
Yeah, that is a great question.
And one of the questions of any social contract or certainly casting a vote for a candidate would be the comfort level that we're both acting in good faith.
And let me say this, and I'm only speaking for myself, but when it comes to voting for a candidate, I personally would have no problem voting for a Muslim candidate for an office.
Now, let me say, not the presidency or not perhaps sitting on a judicial bench.
But you're right, and this is my favorite subject next to the gospel itself, is natural law.
Because throughout human history, it's been well documented that different groups of people with different cultural norms and maybe different theological beliefs, human beings have this moral awareness, and it comports with Exodus 21-17,
the Ten Commandments. By the way, in 1950, then-President Harry Truman was giving a speech to attorney generals across America, and he said, it was very interesting, Harry Truman said that the basis of our government is drawn from...
Exodus, Isaiah, the Sermon on the Mount, and St.
Paul. Now, what he meant by that, the Ten Commandments are found in Exodus, and the three branches of government very likely were drawn from Isaiah 43-22 that speaks of God as prophet, priest, and king.
And we've got our executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and the Sermon on the Mount The law of general benevolence and charity to one's neighbor.
Romans 13, 1-7, civil government is sanctioned and ordained by God.
Now, here's the thing.
This natural law constitutional republic that we enjoy, a Christian can support that, a Muslim can support that, because theological distinctives aside, we all agree on basic morality.
So, on that regard, I do think the Republican Party should embrace those Muslims that want to be politically active, but there has to be a very sincere commitment on both parties that what we're about is the preservation of the U.S. Constitution and our form of government.
For instance, let me just say this, you know, First Amendment, freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, you know, free speech, the right to freedom of religious expression, that must not be curtailed.
And I've got to say this, Dinesh, and you and I have both spoken at, you know, many college campuses, the left is more about selective tolerance and censorship and I mean, my goodness, if there's a group that is more Sharia than Sharia itself, it's the cancel culture wokeness.
And I think they pose a bigger threat to our liberties than any Muslim in the United States.
I think on that we emphatically agree.
Alex McFarlane, thank you very much for joining me.
Very interesting conversation.
Blessings to you, my dear friend.
I'm now moving into a new chapter of Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago.
It's called the Supreme Measure.
Now, what's the Supreme Measure?
Capital punishment, execution, ending your life.
And Solzhenitsyn begins this chapter with a little bit of a tour of the history of capital punishment in Russia.
He wants to show that capital punishment was used by the czars Whether or not it was allowed and to what degree or whether it was temporarily suspended depended on the particular czar.
But nevertheless, the use of capital punishment was not all that frequent.
It was often reserved for particular cases like people who tried to overthrow the government.
Even when it was used more broadly for multiple offenses, the number of people executed under capital punishment wasn't that great.
And Solzhenitsyn is contrasting the practice of capital punishment in the past with the widespread systematic use of capital punishment by the Soviet regime.
What he's trying to say is that while Soviet propaganda basically makes the czarist period seem really oppressive, the czarist period was very moderate, very mild, benign compared to the atrocities of the police state under the Soviet regime.
under Stalin. So let's look at some of the details.
Capital punishment, he writes, has had an up and down history in Russia.
And that's a good way to put it.
He says, under the czar named Alexei Mikhailovich, there were 50, 5-0 crimes that merited capital punishment.
He goes under Peter the Great, there were 200, so it expanded.
More ways that you can get your head chopped off.
And then he goes, yet the Empress Elizabeth, while she didn't repeal those laws, never once resorted to it.
Not a single person executed under the regime of Elizabeth Petrovna.
And then he goes on to say...
He goes on to say that, yeah, some people criticize Elizabeth.
They say, well, she didn't do capital punishment, but guess what?
She did flogging, or she did this, or she did that.
She used eternal exile in Siberia.
But Solzhenitsyn goes, well, that's better than capital punishment.
if you give a guy a choice, you want to be exiled to Siberia or have your head chopped off.
Probably a bunch of people will choose Siberia and that shows that even though no one is saying that these czars didn't have stern punishments, they were kind of sparing, she was, in the use of capital punishment. He goes on to Empress Catherine the Great and he says, well, she had capital punishment but it was only for people who tried to overthrow the regime. If you tried to displace her government, get rid of her, then yeah, she thought capital punishment is a form
of self-defense, meaning defense of her authority against people trying to overthrow the throne and But she goes, but if you're a normal criminal or if you're a non-political offender, nah, you're not going to get capital punishment.
He talks about the long reign of Alexander I, and he says capital punishment was used only really for war crimes.
And then he comes down to what I think is his critical point, which is that despite the ups and downs of this czar versus that czar, he goes, let's take a period of 30 years.
He chooses the period between 1876 and 1904, because revolutionary fervor in Russia began around 1904.
So he goes, let's look at the preceding 30 years.
How many people in 30 years were executed by capital punishment?
He counts 486.
and then he does very Solzhenitsyn type math.
He goes, in other words, about 17 people a year.
It may seem like a large number, but he goes, we are now dealing with not just thousands, not just tens of thousands, but hundreds of thousands of people executed.
Not every decade, not even every year, but sometimes every month.
every month. So the scale of capital punishment is completely different. So he goes, it wasn't that capital punishment was restored under the Bolsheviks, he goes instead, a new era of executions was inaugurated. And he gives a single example. He says a group of farmers were sentenced to be executed for the following crime. And that is, quote, after they finished
mowing the collective farm with their own hands, they went back and mowed a second time to get a little hay for their own cows. And he goes for that, they got the death penalty.
And they didn't just get it, it was carried out. And then in a absolutely unusual explosion of rage, Solzhenitsyn writes, even if Stalin had killed no others, and let's remember Stalin killed more people than Hitler.
He goes, even if Stalin had killed no others, only these six people, I believe he deserves to be drawn and quartered just for the lives of those six peasants.
And then he says, I know there are going to be communists who tell me, oh, how dare you say to Solzhenitsyn?
How dare you disturb the great Stalin?
And so on. Stalin is a leader of the world communist movement.
And he goes, no, Stalin is not the leader of anything.
He's a criminal.
And he's a criminal on a grand scale.
The peoples of the world remember him as a friend.
That's a communist talking to Solzhenitsyn.
Here's Solzhenitsyn's reply.
He rode. So Solzhenitsyn very rarely refers specifically to Stalin in the Gulag.
I've counted maybe four or five times that he does that.
At one point, he talks later in the book about the death of Stalin.
He calls him the autocrat.
The autocrat was dead.
So this is a rare time where he names Stalin and goes further and basically says, this guy needs to be cut into small pieces.
For his willingness to take a bunch of farmers who are trying to do nothing more than not even feed themselves, feed their own cows.
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