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Jan. 17, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
47:26
PANIC ATTACK Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep749
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Coming up, the GOP primary moves from Iowa to New Hampshire.
I'll tell you what's in store.
I'll show how the left is panicking about Trump and already making provision for, quote, protecting the country from a second Trump presidency.
Chris Widener, CEO of the Red Referral Network, joins me.
We're going to talk about how a parallel economy is an effective way to survive and even prevail in the ongoing culture wars.
Hey, if you're listening on Rumble...
Watching on Rumble or listening on Apple, Google or Spotify, please subscribe to my channel.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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.
There's a very interesting and eye-opening article in NBC News, NBCNews.com.
And people are talking about it on social media.
I want to go into it in some depth here.
The article is called Fears Grow That Trump Will Use the Military in, quote, dictatorial ways if he returns to the White House.
Now, the very presence of this article and the article...
We'll go on to warn about steps that people on the left are taking because they're concerned about what Trump will do with the military in a second term.
But the very fact that this is being discussed right away suggests that the left, it's beginning to dawn on them that their major project of marginalizing Trump, making it impossible for him to get to the White House is in jeopardy.
If they didn't think it was in jeopardy, there would be no need to plan for what Trump might do with the military or might not do if you didn't think, well, this guy might get to the White House.
And I think this is important because there are even people on the right who I saw a compilation of videos put out by some of the, I think it was a DeSantis supporter, and he was saying, hey, listen, listen to all the people on the left saying, oh, we just wish we could run against Trump.
We just wish it's Trump. Please let it be Trump.
And because the implication of those videos was that the left can easily beat Trump.
They can't easily beat Nikki Haley.
They can't easily beat DeSantis.
But Trump is so divisive.
He's so radioactive. There's so many women in the suburbs who don't like him that he would be a dream candidate from the point of view of the Democrats.
And now, already I can see...
Prominent figures on the Democratic side warning their own team, don't live in this illusion.
One of those guys is Nate Silver.
You know Nate Silver from the 538 website?
Is it 538?
I think it's 538. Or is it 930?
Anyway, he has a website that is...
But this Nate Silver guy, who's a little bit of a maverick, but nevertheless, firmly on the Democratic side, he said, listen, Trump's support is way beyond the, quote, far right.
It's actually way beyond the Republican Party.
You find it in places you would never expect to find it.
So don't get this idea that sort of this is an easy opponent.
I think NBC has figured this out.
This is something to worry about.
And evidently, there are people outside of NBC, namely people in the left-wing infrastructure.
Now the article itself is so breathtaking in its arrogance.
Donald Trump is sparking fears among those who understand the inner workings of the Pentagon that he would convert the non-partisan US military into the muscular arm of his political agenda.
This is the theme of the article.
In other words, that Trump could act in a dictatorial fashion.
Supposedly, this is not going on under Biden. Supposedly, under Biden, there's no politicization of the military. They're not putting cadets in high heels.
They don't have woke propaganda.
The military is strictly bipartisan. And now they're concerned, these, you know, noble protectors of bipartisanship, that Trump might come in and guess what? Politicize the military.
So there's an element of hypocrisy, of absurdity, of even laugh out loudness with this kind of an article.
But for this reason, whenever I see something like this, I don't just stop with a chuckle.
I'm like, let's go into the psychology of the people who write this and how they think.
Now, it goes on to say that in the past when Trump, because one of the obvious objections to this, Trump becoming a dictator, was, well, Trump was president for four years.
Was he a dictator? No.
So now they have to answer that.
So then they go, well, he almost was.
He almost was, right?
And so what they say is that...
that in the past, Trump was proposing ideas and fortunately there were people, I'm gonna read, a circle of appointees independent of Trump's political operations steered him away from ideas that would have pushed the limits of presidential power in his last term.
Most were gone by the end.
So again, the article is setting itself up like, you know what, there were these brave souls.
I think they're thinking of people like Mike Esper and so on, or maybe even Mark Milley, and Trump was going to the precipice, but they steered him away, but guess what?
He figured it out, he kicked them out, they're gone.
So in the second term, we can't count on these kinds of rescue operations to be carried out from within the administration itself.
It has to come from the outside.
And then, the article says, Trump has raised fresh questions about his intentions by putting forward a legal theory that a president would be free to do nearly anything with impunity, including assassinate political rivals.
What?
No, let's back up here to see what the context is, because this is really how deeply deceitful I'm going to tell you the context, and then you decide for yourself if it's fair to say that Trump is getting ready to assassinate his political rivals.
We're talking here about the Trump case going before a court and the question is one of presidential immunity.
And Trump asserts that in the Georgia case he had every right to question the election.
He had every right to question the count in Georgia.
He had every right to demand that this be properly done.
And to do that, says Trump, is within his presidential powers.
He has immunity from being criminally prosecuted for doing that.
Now, typically, when you assert a claim, in this case, presidential immunity, it's going to be challenged by a series of hypotheticals.
So one of the Democratic judges, Judge Pan, a left-wing judge, I believe an Obama appointee, says to the Trump lawyer, Trump isn't even present, well, are you saying that Trump has immunity to do anything?
Let's say Trump decides to assassinate a political rival.
Can he be criminally prosecuted for that?
And Trump's attorney goes, well, first he would be impeached for that.
He would be impeached for that.
And after the impeachment goes through, Trump would be then removed from office and then he can be criminally prosecuted.
That was the reply from the Trump attorney.
A correct reply. Why?
Because the the original remedy, the constitutional remedy for any presidential act is impeachment.
That's the remedy specified in the Constitution.
But the left took this to mean that the Trump lawyer is somehow saying But no, he can assassinate people and you can't prosecute him.
You'd have to impeach him first.
So this is the legalistic back and forth.
And remember, it's purely hypothetical.
The judge wasn't even suggesting that Trump will do this.
They were discussing what you could call a thought experiment.
If you're saying that presidential immunity stretches all the way, let me give you a far-fetched example.
Trump decides, you know...
To put blacks into concentration camps.
Would that be allowed under this?
So that's just a way of asking how far does the stated principle go?
But here, NBC is acting as if there was a real debate about Trump assassinating political rights.
They take a hypothetical.
The optics of it, right?
Yeah. And they're acting like we need to make some plans in case Trump decides to assassinate his political rivals and what kind of measures do we have?
And then, sure enough, they bring forward Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institution for Constitutional Advocacy at Georgetown Law.
Now, let's back up.
Do you remember this name, Mary McCord?
Who's Mary McCord? Well, she's the, under Obama, the Assistant Attorney General.
She's the person who created the fake FISA applications to the judges to do spying on Carter Page.
She's the one who basically provided false information to the court.
And later, the FISA courts, the judges who were being challenged, people said to these FISA judges, you guys are frauds.
You're just authorizing wiretapping.
And they were like, listen, we were provided with false information.
False information by who?
Mary McCord.
And the same Mary McCord is now apparently putting together a coalition of groups to file various lawsuits.
One of the groups is called Democracy Forward, and they quote this guy, Sky Perryman.
and he goes, we believe this is an existential moment for American democracy.
Well, it is an existential moment for American democracy, but it's because of the reasons I set forth in police state.
The existential threat, if there is one, is coming from the left and from the Democrats.
It's not coming from anything that Trump either did or anything that Trump has said he's going to do.
Even Trump's if you look at the tone of Trump's dictator for a day, there's a.
There's obviously an element of comedy.
Who's a dictator for a day?
I mean, I used to joke when I was in college that, you know, I think that the president should have the authority to assassinate one person without giving a reason.
And I would say this only because I would only say this because leftists would get freaked out.
What do you mean, Dinesh?
And I'd be like, no, no, no. You know, there's going to be a good reason.
He just doesn't have to give the reason.
He has the arbitrary power.
He has four years in office to decide who it should be.
But he can just decide it's going to be Tom.
And Tom's going to be assassinated.
And that's within my presidential power.
Wouldn't that be a really good idea?
And obviously this was a goad to get leftists agitated.
That's why I would say it. So Trump says it for the same reason.
He dictated for a day.
And then he even says...
You're just like Trump. Then he even says to Debbie, he goes, now we know you're just like Trump.
And I do probably have a little bit of a Trumpian streak, but I think that that was implanted in me.
I have to blame my colleagues at Dartmouth.
Me too. I think they did it to me.
They did. I think you agree.
So in any event, the rest of the article goes on in a very solemn manner.
We can't take seriously articles like this.
There's, as I say, a laughable element to them.
But they reveal...
This is a pervasive way of thinking on the other side.
Biden says, I'm going to run against Trump because he's an existential threat to democracy.
And then here we have these activists with various left-wing groups.
We need to prepare all kinds of lawsuits if Trump is re-elected.
Why? He's an existential threat to democracy.
Who's talking? The people who are actually an existential threat to democracy.
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The GOP primary race now moves from Iowa to New Hampshire.
And I have a couple things to say about that.
But before I do, I have a follow-up thought about Martin Luther King Day because I meant to talk about something related to that that I didn't get a chance to yesterday.
And, uh, first of all, here's something funny.
The FBI posts, this is MLK Day and the FBI honors one of the most prominent leaders of the civil rights movement and reaffirms its commitment, blah blah blah.
To which is attached, as it turns out, a community note, which is kind of a fact check.
The FBI engaged in surveillance of King, attempted to discredit him, used manipulation tactics to influence him to stop organizing.
King's family believes the FBI was responsible for his death.
So talk about nuking the FBI on Martin Luther King Day with a correction.
Now, there's been a little bit of a debate between, in a sense, Charlie Kirk on the one side, and then...
A bunch of black conservatives on the other about Martin Luther King because Charlie Kirk made the observation that, listen, let's stop deifying King.
This guy is not so great.
And, you know, why can't we talk about the fact that he was a plagiarist?
Audien Gaye was a plagiarist.
Martin Luther King was a plagiarist.
Why can't we talk about the fact that he was a serial adulterer?
Why can't we talk about the fact that he's been accused of rape by a credible source?
David Garrow, famous historian, winner of the Pulitzer Prize.
So what's all this big, you know, hasanas and halos devoted to Martin Luther King?
Did he really usher in the colorblind society?
Or in some ways, are we now living with the exact opposite?
So that's one view.
And it is the view that King was, even though we like to quote his line about the content of our character, was really a radical.
The other view is that, listen, why are we going after Martin Luther King?
King actually did believe in the colorblind principle.
King was not a radical.
Yeah, things were usurped after King and taken not only far away from King, but in the opposite direction.
And so King is on our side in that sense.
And not to mention the fact that pragmatically, what good is gained by going after Martin Luther King?
Now, I think part of what's motivating the attack on King, if you ask me, is the fact that there are conservatives like Charlie Kirk who are really mad at the attacks that have been launched against...
Robert E. Lee, George Washington, William Penn.
It's like you're taking all these heroes of American history and you're like, look, this is their downside.
We're going to emphasize the bad things they did.
And Charlie's like, okay, well, let's apply that standard to Martin Luther King.
Why are we always talking about, oh, I have a dream.
You know, let's talk about the other stuff the guy did.
Why is that swept under the rug?
So I can see where this is coming from.
And I want to sort of answer the question about whether was King, in fact...
A colorblind guy?
Or was he some sort of a radical?
And the answer is both.
In other words, King in his life never departed from the colorblind principle.
He never advocated racial preferences.
But, it's also true that in the last years of his life, King became very embittered, he became very anti-American, he became very pro-socialist, he became a vociferous opponent of the Vietnam War, he was also a big advocate of what he called the Poor People's Campaign, which was what?
Massive economic redistribution.
Now, not economic redistribution based on race.
He wanted money to move basically from well-off people to not so well-off people, but his idea was socialism, let's sort of redistribute the wealth, let's spread it around, to quote was it Michelle Obama or Barack Obama.
And so, King was in that camp.
To that degree, politically, he was in no way one of us.
So when we defend King, we're defending the part of King that stood firm on the colorblind principle and I think accurately put forward a vision of a society where race doesn't matter, erases truly a painted face.
where race is a matter of public and social indifference.
Alright, let me turn to New Hampshire where things are going to be very exciting.
The first full-fledged primary, the first state in the country to have a primary.
Iowa, of course, was only a caucus.
And I think what we're going to see here is that the press is going to do its best to build up Nikki Haley.
Already Nikki Haley is saying it's a two-person race.
Which seems a little odd to me, a little disingenuous.
In fact, when I first saw it, I was like, who are the two?
Does she mean Trump and Biden?
Are they the two people? Does she mean her and Trump?
There are the two left.
How can you say that when you essentially tied with DeSantis, where Trump's at 50, you're at 20, DeSantis is at 20, so what rational person would look at those numbers and go, oh yeah, it's a two-person race, Nikki, you and Trump?
Or do you mean Nikki Haley and DeSantis?
I don't know. It was just downright baffling.
And yet it was said with a certain giddy confidence that tells me that Nikki Haley is in a bubble of strategists and supporters and maybe donors.
One of the things that I think makes people intoxicated politically is money.
And there is a donor class on the right.
This is a very interesting problem we're dealing with because a lot of our local Republican parties don't have a lot of money.
the donor class is kind of squeezing them.
And this is true in swing states where money is very important.
And it's almost like the donor class wants to call the shots about who is going to lead the Republican Party.
And their choice is going to be someone more like Nikki Haley.
Yet I think they've now realized, and Iowa only cements this conviction, that the base, the heart of the Republican Party is more on the Trump side.
So this creates an interesting disconnect between the donor class and the voters.
And it's going to be illuminating to see which way New Hampshire goes.
New Hampshire is not kind of naturally a good state for Trump, but it's not naturally a good state for DeSantis either.
In fact, DeSantis, I think, is not polling well in New Hampshire.
Nikki Haley is bowling, at least from what we see, reasonably well.
Debbie said this morning she saw something that said that Nikki Haley is like within striking distance of Trump. Now, again, we're going to find out what the voters have to say about all this.
This is all not very far away. And I saw that Ted Cruz just came out this morning with an endorsement of Trump. And what Ted Cruz said, in effect, was the primary is essentially over.
So I think, let's remember, Ted Cruz is a good example of somebody who sort of is somewhat in between a Trump and a Nikki Haley, because Ted Cruz has a sort of MAGA element to him, but he also reflects the GOP establishment. He represents Club for Growth.
He has very good ties with the GOP donor class as well.
So I thought it's significant that someone like Cruz comes out, someone who had been rumored to be in the DeSantis camp.
I never saw anything explicit to that effect.
But nevertheless, I'd heard Ted Cruz and some of the people around Cruz are working with the DeSantis people.
But here he comes guns blazing and endorses Donald Trump.
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Again, don't forget to use the promo code, which is AMERICA. I'm happy, guys, to welcome to the podcast our friend Chris Widener.
You know Chris Widener. He is an entrepreneur, a motivational speaker.
He's written a bunch of books, in fact, 24 books, which have been translated into 14 languages.
And he is the founder and CEO of the Red Referral Network.
Chris, welcome to the podcast.
Great to have you.
Let me start by asking you, you know, you started life in the world of entrepreneurship, motivational speaking, and now you've pivoted to projects that connect more to American politics.
What brought about that shift of focus?
Yeah, actually, I started out as a pastor for 14 years, but I was a church planter, so church planters don't have a lot of money.
So I was doing public speaking on the side, and it grew and grew and grew until 2002.
I decided to write and speak full-time.
And I'll tell you what got me into politics.
Two things. Number one, my best friend ran for governor of the state of Washington in 2004, and he got stolen the closest governor's election in U.S. history.
He won the election in He won the recount.
He lost the second recount, which is a hand recount, and he lost by 129 votes out of 3 million votes cast.
That really opened my eyes because I was his speech coach and helped him a lot and was very inside baseball there.
And so it made me realize, wow, we're in a real battle.
These people play for keeps.
And then a lot of it had to do with me being canceled.
I'm in the Motivational Speakers Hall of Fame.
I've given 2,500 speeches all around the world.
But then all of a sudden, I went from 70 engagements a year to about 10 engagements a year because apparently I vote for the wrong people.
And, of course, it didn't help for me in terms of that.
I ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010 in Washington State during the primaries.
And eventually people just decided, yeah, we don't want this conservative guy to come and speak to us.
So that really sort of, in a way, I love politics.
I love doing that. But it also was, you know, it drove me that way because of cancellation.
I mean, what you're saying, which actually resonates with me as well, I used to be in the earlier part of my career a regular speaker for groups like YPO. There's a group called WPO, which is the World Presidents Organization.
And these are presidents of generally small to medium-sized companies, but we're talking about companies with hundreds of millions of dollars.
And I realized that my politics was very much in sync with them.
Typically, in a YPO or WPO group of 100, there'd be 50-60% Republican, a few Independents, and then only a sprinkling of Democrats.
It was not the majority by any means.
How do you think that that...
Political complexion changed.
Is it the case that younger people came up who are more to the left and began to dominate these organizations?
Were the organizations intimidated politically?
What do you think brought about this change in the psychology of American business?
I think there's a little bit about that.
It grew. That philosophy certainly grew.
But I'll tell you, it's because it's the squeaky wheel syndrome.
I'll give you an example. I got a call here not too long ago, a big company in Louisiana.
And they said, hey, I just read your book, The Art of Influence.
This is great. We'd love to have you come and speak.
What's your fee? I gave them my fee.
They said, great, that's in our budget.
Are you available on this date?
Yes, I'm available on this date.
Perfect. We want you to come and speak on The Art of Influence to our people.
I said, fantastic. They said, we'll send you a contract in two or three days.
Two or three days later, I get a phone call from the guy.
He says, hey man, I got some bad news.
I said, well, what's that? He said, well, I told my board that we were bringing you in, and we got this lady on the board.
Her name is Margaret. She had never heard of you, so she decided to search you, and she found out that you're a Trump supporter, so we can't have you in.
And I said, well, you realize I'm not going to talk politics.
I'm going to talk business and influence and persuasion.
And I would never, ever disrespect your company by talking politics.
That's not what you hired me for. He said, I know, but Margaret, she's just throwing such a hissy fit.
There's no way we can do it. It's just easier to not hire you.
And I think that's what happens a lot of times.
They make it so miserable for people that we cave to them because they make it miserable.
Well, I mean, this is a really good point because what it suggests is that it wasn't even that the board was left-wing.
It was that you had a single, let's call her a political terrorist on the board, and she began to, you know, make it unpleasant for all the others.
And then in typical corporate fashion, they decide it's not worth the trouble.
In other words, let's weigh the two.
Either we invite Chris and we have to deal with Margaret for the rest of the year, You know, complaining about this, calling us sexist, calling us all kinds of names.
Or we tell Chris, sorry buddy, we can't have you do it.
And we keep Margaret happy, which apparently weighed heavier on the scale to them.
I mean, isn't that what's going on?
Yeah, Margaret being happy is far more important than Chris Widener being happy.
Because, you know, it's going to last all the way until they're booking their speaker next year.
She's going to be saying, as long as we don't hire Chris Widener again, you know, they're endless.
They're miserable people in so many ways, and they just be...
Great people. And I do think that conservatives, and this is one of the things I love about you and so many of the leaders in the conservative movement, is we need to fight.
We can't just roll over, but we're nice people.
We're ethical people.
And we kind of go, ah, look, I don't want to fight about this.
You know, it's okay. Don't worry about me.
And we end up just giving ground that we should never give ground.
And it's time to start fighting back.
I think we've got to learn the joy of tormenting others.
We have to become a little bit like Margaret.
You wouldn't put it that way, but I'm putting it that way.
I'm not saying in our private lives we have to become pests, but what I am saying is in political settings where the left is willing to use its leverage, we should do the same.
I remember a friend of mine Who has a big company, an investment company.
He is nakedly political in his hiring process.
In fact, one of his favorite movies is my movie on Obama, 2016 Obama's America.
So when he interviews people, he usually tells them something like this.
If they seem like a good candidate, in the middle of the interview he says, listen, I gotta go take a phone call.
But I want you to watch something I'm going to put on my iPad.
And when I come back, I'd like to have you tell me what you think about it.
And he puts on a section of my film.
And he has them watch it.
And when he comes back, he gets their input on it.
And basically, if they don't like the film, he goes, I'm not hiring that guy.
It doesn't matter how competent he is.
It doesn't matter if he went to MIT or went to Harvard Business School.
The fact is, if he's not aligned politically, it's like goodbye.
So this becomes a very...
Now, most conservatives, I think the majority would be like, well, you know, I don't think we should go that far.
It's so like us.
Whereas the left would never think about worrying about this kind of stuff.
I mean, they have systems in place in the universities, in business, to get rid of people who don't fit their mold.
And their only diversity is within a certain accommodation.
Like... Various types of feminism, you know, various types of intersectionality.
That's the diversity that they allow.
My only concern for your friend would be getting sued because they'd say, yeah, he showed me this video and then I didn't get hired.
Here's what I would do. I would say, boy, this is going to be a crazy election cycle, isn't it?
And then they're going to, oh, yeah.
They may say, yeah, let's hope Trump loses or whatever.
But if they don't, then you follow it up with something like, well, who do you think is going to win?
And then when they say, well, I hope Joe Biden does, you go, oh, boy, that'll be interesting, won't it?
And then you just don't hire him.
You can ask questions and find these things out.
But I'm surprised he hasn't gotten sued for that.
Remember, businesses have a lot of latitude in whom they can hire.
The restrictions really come down to the race and gender and national origin.
Those are special categories.
But you're allowed to hire people for whatever reason you want outside of those so-called discriminatory categories.
So, you know, frankly, I mean, I'm thinking about it.
And while I agree, most people wouldn't do it.
I don't see any legal obstacle to doing what he's doing, and obviously he's been doing it for years without any problems, so it seems to be working.
You know, let's talk about the Red Referral Network.
Give us an update on where things are.
We've introduced people to the idea.
The notion is to have groups around the country that congregate together that are not only politically aligned and sort of socially aligned, and you find sort of camaraderie in it, but you can refer business one to the other.
It's a really wonderful idea and I'm happy to be associated with you on this.
Talk a little bit about how the early stage of it is going.
Yeah, it's going fantastic. We've been in pre-launch as we've been building our website, which is so technologically advanced, it's going to help people actually build their groups.
We have almost 10,000 people who've pre-registered.
They've come in, they've said, hey, I want to know what's happening and when it's happening because I'm very interested in this.
We've had almost 500 people raise their hand and say, I'd like to consider leading a group.
I do about 12 leadership training sessions a month for people who want to lead a group.
And today, as we record this in about two hours, our first group ever is launching in Scottsdale, Arizona.
They have 14 people already signed up for their group literally before they even have their first meeting.
So we expect to launch about 50 groups in the next two weeks because we have, we've had 50 leaders who've gone through the training.
They've decided it's for them.
And our goal is to put 3,000 to 5,000 groups all around the country in the next three to five years and really build an army of conservative business people who can meet locally and do business with conservative people so they don't keep funding the left.
And if you were talking to my audience now, what would you encourage people to do?
Just check out? Should they just go to redreferralnetwork.com, learn more about how this works, maybe sign up to get more information?
Is that the next step?
Yeah, absolutely. You simply go to redreferralnetwork.com.
I have a little two, three minute video there that explains it.
It talks about what you're doing with us.
It's amazing. You're providing that exclusive content each and every week for the groups to base their discussions on.
And the registration will take you 90 seconds.
You just tell us who you are and that'll put you on the list.
You'll start getting all the information as groups begin to form.
We also have a place during that registration where you can say, yes, I'd like to lead a group or I'd like to learn more about leading a group, which point then we will follow up with you and get you into some leadership training.
That's very simple.
Redreferralnetwork.com takes 90 seconds.
It's free to join.
And we've had lots and lots of interest in it.
Everybody I tell this to, they say, this is such an amazing idea.
It really is. Okay, guys, you know what to do.
Redreferralnetwork.com. And Chris Widener, thank you very much for joining me.
Thanks, Dinesh. You're great.
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I'm hoping today to conclude my discussion of friendship.
In C.S. Lewis' classic work, The Four Loves.
And in this segment, we're going to talk about...
Kind of the dangers, the risks, the downside, if you will, to the upside of this great type of love.
Now, Lewis begins by talking about friendship as a spiritual love.
And I think what he means by this is not that friendship by itself is holy or that it necessarily involves some kind of religious conviction.
What he means is that it is a love that seems abstract.
It seems to be removed from either social or physical bodily necessity.
You don't need it the way you need eros in order to reproduce.
You don't need it the way you need storgi or affection simply to get along in social life.
Friendship is something utterly optional.
It's voluntary. It's chosen.
And it's chosen for kind of higher reasons, shared ideals, shared aspirations, shared interests, and so on.
Lewis writes,"...it is the sort of love one can imagine between angels.
Have we found here a natural love which is love itself?
Friendship appears in this sense to be elevated above the other types of love because of these qualities." And then Lewis, as he frequently does, he builds something up and then he gives you a little bit of a jolt.
And the jolt here comes when Lewis says, you know something?
Let's look at the Bible.
He says, you notice that this type of love, friendship, is not the type of love that seems to be recommended in terms of God's relationship with human beings.
In other words... Think of the ways in which God is pictured to relate to humans.
God is presented very often as a father, our father who art in heaven.
So, think of it. That is storgi.
That is affection. God is more like a parent.
We are more like children.
Similarly, in the New Testament, Christ is represented as the bridegroom of the church.
Christ is the husband, if you will.
The church is the spouse.
That's eros.
That is romantic love.
And so Lewis goes, it's interesting that when the Bible chooses two types of love to represent the relationship of God to us, it chooses storgi, it chooses eros, It doesn't choose philia.
Now, admittedly, in evangelical circles, there are lots of people who say things like, Jesus is my best friend.
Now, first of all, that always rubs me the wrong way because not only is it sort of unbiblical, nowhere in Scripture do we have this notion that Jesus is like our buddy.
And that is how people present it.
Like, yeah, I talk to him, he talks to me, he's my buddy.
I'm not sure this is...
I mean, this is an understandable way of thinking, particularly in the modern era where we're more accustomed to relating to people on an equal level.
So we don't like to say God is our parent.
Why? Because, well, parents tell you what to do.
Parents have rules.
Parents have codes and commandments.
You're late. This is your curfew.
And so to escape that...
Well, we get into the whole idea of God, in this case Jesus, who is God, is kind of somebody who's more like your pal.
You know, Jesus doesn't really have any demands of you.
Friends don't make demands of each other.
Jesus sort of recommends.
He has ideas. You know, he offers some thoughts, and I have some thoughts.
And he gives me some thoughts, I give him some thoughts.
And as I say, this is very understandable in the soft spirituality that defines our modern culture.
But I don't think it has any, at least, concrete foundation in the Bible.
And I think Lewis here agrees with me.
Now, Lewis then asks the question, why is friendship not given the same high status in scripture as it was by the ancients in pagan civilization, in pre-Christian Greece and Rome?
And Lewis offers two answers for this.
He says, first of all, that the pagans thought of friendship always in positive terms.
Two soldiers. And you see this frequently in the Iliad and the Odyssey.
You got two guys who are doing something together.
They're fighting together. They die on the battlefield together.
their friends. In some cases, you even have in the Iliad people who are on opposite sides of the battle, who are nevertheless bound in some sort of friendship. Their families knew each other, they became friends in childhood, and so they meet in battle and they fight each other. Possibly one even kills the other, but then you have this kind of poignant death scene which makes it clear that their relationship transcends their opposition on the battlefield,
and so they remain, if you will, even in death friends. So this is, if you will, the glorious side of friendship.
But Lewis goes, listen, there's nothing inherent in friendship that says you have to come together for a good cause.
Yes, you can come together for a good cause, but you can come together because the two of you are both like good Nazis.
You've just read Mein Kampf together and you're like, I can't believe what a great book.
This guy was right on about the Jews.
Oh wow, you think so too?
Okay, we're friends right away.
And we'll, you know, we're gonna study this stuff together.
So the point is, friends can come together for a shared cause, whether the cause be good or whether the cause be bad.
The cause itself is in that sense neutral.
And that's Lewis's point, is that there are good friendships and there are bad friendships.
Now, they're not bad friendships in the sense that the friends are really friends.
But when you're united in a bad cause, you're obviously, your friendship is not good in that sense.
It can't be, it's like, can you be a good citizen in a bad society?
Not really. Because the bad society is telling you to do bad things, and if you, quote, follow orders, then you are being a good citizen in one sense.
You You're going along with the edicts of your society, but on the other hand, they happen to be bad.
They happen to be bad edicts.
The second point that Lewis makes about friendship is that friendship is...
Exclusive and sometimes in a very bad way.
Now, earlier Lewis had said that friends don't mind admitting other people to their group and that's true.
But Lewis goes, once the group is united, it's united based on a cause, you're tempted to take that cause, whatever the cause may be, and make it the greatest cause in the world and consider the people who are now united with you in that cause to be the best people in the world and everybody else is basically...
Well, not really worth your time.
At best, you're indifferent to them if you don't actively exclude them, hate them, push them away.
And Lewis illustrates the point by looking at the famous chronicles of a guy named Frassat.
This is a French writer.
And he's writing about the knights around King Arthur's round table.
And he goes, man, what a brotherhood.
What a bunch of friends. And look at the way that they will sacrifice for each other.
And he goes, but... In order to be worthy of that company, that elite company, you gotta be a knight.
Now, if you're not a knight, then what?
And he goes on to say that when you really look, what the knights do is they create an extremely high standard for themselves.
And by the way, this is a good standard.
Lewis is not talking about people who are coming together, you know, around Mein Kampf.
These are people coming together around chivalry, gallantry, protecting the round table, searching for the holy grail.
So their causes are good.
But because their causes are so high, their basic assumption is, anyone who's a knight, yeah, they're going to be admitted to this elite circle.
But if you're not a knight, well, what are you?
Well, you're probably some kind of a bum.
You're some kind of a peasant.
You're going to be spending your time, while I'm pursuing the Holy Grail...
You're digging the earth to find herbs that you can then plant and eat food, and so you're living off the land, and this is an ignoble pursuit compared to the great thing that I'm doing.
Now, obviously, in an aristocratic society, it's much easier to see what Lewis is getting at, but Lewis says that friendship is, quote, a self-appointed aristocracy.
Precisely because you choose your friends, you think that they are, well, a higher breed.
They're a bit like you.
They're cool. Friendship must exclude.
It's in its nature.
And from the innocent and necessary act of excluding to the spirit of exclusiveness is an easy step.
So, what Lewis is getting at here, and he doesn't spell it out completely, but what he's really saying is that friendship can be rooted in pride.
And let's not forget that pride is, in Scripture, and I think in general, understood to be one of the worst, if not the deadliest of all the sins.
Pride because pride is really us putting ourselves in the place of God.
That's really what pride is.
Think about it, Adam and Eve sinned out of pride.
Well, where's the pride?
They ate an apple.
But they ate an apple, why?
Because they said, okay, God told us not to, and God thinks he knows, but we know better.
Or somebody else told us that it's perfectly fine to eat the apple, nothing's gonna happen to you.
And you decide, well, this is gonna be my decision, not somebody else's decision.
And so my decision implies my superior wisdom, my superior insight, my ability to forecast what's really gonna happen to me.
And of course, all of it turns out horribly wrong, but it turns out horribly wrong because the root of it is a certain kind of spiritual pride.
And for this reason, Lewis concludes that great as it is, friendship is not the greatest love.
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