All Episodes
Previous Next
Jan. 26, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
46:55
DEFUND THE POST OFFICE Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep756
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Coming up, can machine votes be altered?
It's obviously a relevant question in an election year.
I'll comment on the testimony of a software expert in a Georgia case that's going on right now.
Debbie's going to join me. We're going to discuss why the post office can't seem to do its job.
Also, the mounting problem of airline safety in an age of DEI. Hey, if you're 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 and a time of confusion, division and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
I want to talk about all this crazy voter business that is going on in Georgia.
Certainly there is the Fannie Willis case, which I'll say a word about, but there are There are also some Georgia cases in the courts that Go back to the 2020 election.
They're being adjudicated.
The system has been moving slowly.
And I suppose there's a little part of us that goes, well, what's the point?
When it mattered, this stuff wasn't really being looked at.
What's the point of looking at it now?
I suppose the answer is that it would be nice to get some clear adjudication, some vindication on a legal level.
And that's because people continue to say and the media continues to say, well, there were 60 cases about voter fraud and all of them were thrown out of court.
Well, the real question is why in those 60 cases were most of them, the vast majority, just dismissed without any adjudication at all?
It's kind of like saying that you have a particular issue being adjudicated, the case was thrown out and they never looked at the underlying issue to see if what was alleged to happen did in fact happen.
The classic example of course was the Texas case which was dismissed by the Supreme Court on the basis of standing.
In other words, you don't even have the quote standing to bring the case.
So we're not even going to be looking at what you have to say even though if you looked at the document, it laid out in a very systematic way at least many of the things that went wrong in the 2020 election.
Now in the Fannie Willis case, It could be that she and this guy Wade are going to get kicked off the case.
That's a possibility. But the other possibility is mistrial.
That the whole case is going to be called a mistrial because not only did Fannie Willis not get Fulton County authorization to appoint a special prosecutor to make this kind of sweetheart deal, and I use the term in the double sense of the word, with Mr.
Wade to funnel...
somewhere between $600,000 and a million dollars to him.
And then we have all the evidence now coming out about trips to Napa Valley, to Aruba, to Miami.
And the further wrinkle on this is it now turns out that they might have used COVID money. So money that's in the criminal justice system for COVID has been illegally diverted to create a slush fund for Fannie Willis to be able to pay Wade and also the couple of the other lawyers. But Wade got the lion's share of the money. So this is a big deal. We're probably going to get some clarity about it in February.
Now, what I want to focus on today is something different.
And that is a case that is currently going on before a very liberal judge, Judge Amy Totenberg.
It's occurring in a federal court in Atlanta.
And a University of Michigan professor of computer science testified in the case.
His name is J. Alex Halderman.
And this is a guy who is the author, if you follow this stuff closely, he's the author of something called the Halderman Report.
And the Haldeman Report It's a report about the vulnerability of these voting machines, the tabulation and the voting machines themselves.
J. Alex Halderman is a professor of computer science.
He's an assistant professor also at Auburn University.
He and a co-author produced this report.
And this report had for a long time not been released, but it has finally been released.
And Alex Halderman was called into court to...
To prove his point, to demonstrate that voting machines can in fact be hacked and vote totals can in fact be altered.
Now, the judicial proceeding is closed and so we don't have a video of Halderman's testimony and we don't even have yet a transcript of it.
So, the Gateway Pundit, which is reporting on this, talked to a reporter, a Georgia reporter named Amber Conner, who's in the courtroom, and she described what's happening in the courtroom.
And what happened in the courtroom is that Halderman basically asked the defense attorneys in the case to let him borrow their pen.
And I'm now just going to read what he did.
This is by the way from the case called Curling vs. Raffensperger.
Raffensperger is the Secretary of State of Georgia.
So I'm going to read this because it's just so remarkable.
He asked the main counsel to borrow his pen that he was writing with.
And then he goes over to the power button, leans down, he holds down the power button for between 5 to 10 seconds, probably 7 seconds, and it automatically puts the machine in safe mode.
Then this reboot happens.
And then he shows the judge the display, and it shows the picture of the on-off button as he's pushing it for 5 to 10 seconds to instigate the reboot.
But before you reboot the whole thing, there'll be something that comes up to ask if he wants to go into safe mode, and then he pushes, yes.
So it doesn't shut down or reboot.
He just goes into safe mode and that allows him to open up files and change the content of files.
So the remarkable thing here is that you've got a computer expert...
Who doesn't have to take days or engage in massive kind of safe-breaking techniques.
He's in court and in a process evidently lasting no more than a few seconds and in front of the judge.
I mean, this is the beauty of this kind of thing is that...
Can you make a demonstration in a way that even a liberal judge is going to go...
Oops, I didn't realize that this could happen...
Because let's remember, we have been assured from the beginning of this process, and to some degree even I have gone along with this, the idea that these machines are pretty safe.
That these machines are nothing more than tabulators.
You know, in a sense, this is an abacus.
This is a calculating machine.
This is a machine that ingests these ballots.
It adds up the totals.
And in the past when I've heard about machine fraud and ways of changing votes and giving algorithms where you give 1.4 here and 2.8 there, I've often thought to myself, well, I haven't seen anyone demonstrate this.
I haven't seen anyone open up a machine and show me that you can put in an algorithm that will create this kind of weighted vote totals.
But here's a guy who's showing not exactly that, but what he's showing is, listen, The machine can easily be tampered with by somebody with some expertise who knows what they're doing.
And it doesn't even take hours to do it.
It's like, give me your pen, tap, tap, tap, here we go, reboot, safe mode.
I go into the machine and I'm able to sort of alter the data, come up with a different vote total.
And apparently in one demonstration, Haldeman even ran a campaign involving George Washington.
And he wanted to show how although George Washington actually won the election, he, Halderman, could alter the result so George Washington would in fact lose.
And so I think this is very important.
Now, if you look at the mainstream media, not a word about this.
Now, they might say, well, the trial is closed.
We haven't had a chance to look at what's really been going on.
But this is very well worth following.
And there are a few people following this closely.
The Rasmussen people with Rasmussen survey, they're following this closely.
Gateway Pundit has been on this issue from the very beginning.
So a lot of times these days to get information, we have to go to sources like this one.
We all know that aches and pains come with getting older, but it doesn't mean you have to accept it.
That's why I want to tell you about Leah from Ohio and her relief factor story.
One Sunday, Leah was sitting on her couch in so much pain, she was literally in tears.
That's when she decided, let me try relief factor.
In just eight days, she found relief and she's continued to get better and better.
She says, quote, I am truly amazed at this product.
Now, we know from personal experience that it works.
Debbie can now do planks and push-ups, which for a long time she wasn't able to do.
So if you're tired of living with aches and pains, see how Relief Factor, a daily drug-free supplement, could help you feel and live better every day.
To get started, try this.
It's the Relief Factor 3-Week Quick Start Kit.
It's only $19.95 and comes with a feel better or your money back guarantee.
What do you have to lose? Only your pain.
Visit relieffactor.com or call 800-4-RELIEF. The number again, 800-4-RELIEF or go to relieffactor.com.
You'll feel the difference.
As we head into a presidential election, one thing you can be sure of, 2024 will be tumultuous.
How will your hard-earned savings fare?
You already see the impacts of inflation at the pump, the grocery store, the dollar continues to lose buying power quicker than wages can increase.
How are you protecting your savings?
Consider diversifying with gold from Bert's Gold Group.
For decades, gold has been the choice of investors and central banks to hedge against inflation.
You can own gold in a tax-sheltered IRA with the help of Bert's Gold.
Just text Dinesh to 989898.
Bert's Gold will send you a free information kit on gold.
They'll help you convert an existing IRA or 401k into an IRA in gold without you paying a penny out of pocket.
With an A-plus rating with a Better Business Bureau, thousands of satisfied customers, including Debbie and me, you can trust Birch Gold.
Text Dinesh to 989898 for your free information kit again.
Text Dinesh to 989898 now.
Debbie and I are here for our Friday roundup.
And honey, the funny thing with us this month, and I think this is going to continue in February, the Brandon Gill campaign.
The primary is March 5th.
Those guys are pretty excited because they just got the endorsement of Ted Cruz.
And I think it's actually pretty significant because Ted Cruz is more Texan in a way than Trump.
Trump has that New York vibe.
And so there are a lot of Texans who like Trump, but nevertheless, they don't have the same psychology as Trump, the same style as Trump.
But Ted Cruz, in a sense, makes them more comfortable.
He represents maybe a little more establishment strain, but yet he's conservative.
Ted Cruz is not a moderate or certainly in no way a rhino.
And so I think it...
It fits Brandon because he has, on the one hand, he's got a Trumpian MAGA strain, but on the other hand, he's a mainstream conservative as I think you and I are also.
And so this should really help him, I think, in positioning in this race.
Mm-hmm. Well, in Texas, it's very important to have Texas support.
Texans are very myopic when it comes to their candidates.
I mean, they're very proud of their state.
Proud of their state, yes.
And so, endorsements, and I've told you this all along, endorsements in general don't mean a whole lot to the people that are going to the polls that don't have any clue as to who the candidates are.
They just go that day, they get the literature that people give them there at the voting site, and And that's who they vote for.
They have a voter guide.
They go through the voter guide. That's who they vote for.
So although I know Brandon gets really excited about these endorsements, for the most part, the important endorsement is the endorsement of the voter.
Well, yeah. That's the one that counts.
I think their goal is to take these endorsements and, well, they've already sent out a big mailer with the Trump endorsements, so the idea would be to have a gallery of endorsements and say to people, look, these are the conservative leaders you trust, and they've endorsed Brandon Gill.
Yes. And not to mention the fact that I think they've put in a request to Trump and maybe to Cruz to record a video saying that they endorse it.
They would then use that as part of their commercial.
And just a little FYI side note, we do not endorse candidates in the primary.
So I know you get asked a lot, hey, can Dinesh endorse me, blah, blah, blah.
We're making an exception because he's our son-in-law.
But otherwise, no can do.
Exactly.
So you can go to brandongillforcongress.com.
But what Debbie's saying is right, and that is that from the time going back a decade when I started making movies, we realized that the goal of our films is to unify the right, unify the Republicans, motivate people to get out and participate in the process and not to get into internees and skirmishes among Republicans.
Because the simple truth of it is, if you endorse one guy, the other candidates, well, they hate you.
I mean, that's a simple way to put it.
They're like, why did he endorse this guy?
So that's the reason we wait till the general to take a stance, and that's true typically even in the presidential race.
Now, we want to talk about the post office, a subject with which we all have experience and most of us probably not very good experience.
I mean, the post office is notoriously inefficient and notoriously bad, but it almost seems like they have gotten worse than they were before.
The post office used to do a sort of a okay job like C+. But now they're like in the D or even the F territory.
Oh no, F minus. Okay, F minus.
So much so that I wish they would just go away.
You mean just shut down?
No post office at all? Well, a private post office.
A private post office.
Not a government post office.
And I don't know how much of the government actually funds the post office.
What's the story we were talking about?
But yeah, so apparently there's a Houston region mail office that is under investigation.
Can I have that? It's under investigation.
And although I do not agree with anything Congressman Al Green has to say, I actually was like, wow, Al Green, you go.
Because he represents...
A district that includes Missouri City, and this is where it's in question, right?
Where many parcels have been stuck, like, for months.
And so the office has been contacted about the issue by more than 70.
He's been contacted by more than 70 of his constituents.
And they're like, this is a problem.
I have medication.
I have something that I need.
And so this is a problem.
And he started looking into it.
And it's a systemic problem within the post office.
And as you know, for us, the post office is a little dicey.
I mean, they have, not only has there been fraud committed with us personally, we believe a postal worker actually did steal one of our checks and convert, you know, he changed the name of the pay two, right, on the name. He changed it to a Kersey Williams.
Right. I mean, what happened with us is that the bank mails us a check.
We get our mail at a kind of one of those post boxes that are right near our house.
And so if you think about it, the bank is mailing the check.
The postal guy is delivering the check, which goes through the post office and arrives in our mailbox.
We are the only ones who have the key to the mailbox.
So, unless the bank is stealing its own money, it's obviously...
This is why we believe, and I think it's almost like clinical reasoning, it has to be someone at the post office.
It couldn't be anybody else for the simple reason that the post office is the only intermediary between the bank and then our post box.
Yeah. Very bad stuff.
And interestingly, they were very sympathetic when we reported it.
But as far as we know, nothing has happened at all.
Nothing. And this happened about two years ago.
Yeah. Not only did the bank not press charges, because obviously it was bank fraud, right?
When I called the post office, I called the internal...
It's almost like the FBI of the post office.
Like an investigation unit. Yes.
And they were like, oh, that's horrible.
Yeah. Well, didn't we? We filled out some kind of form.
Would you be willing to testify to the facts?
And we were like, yeah, we'd be happy to.
This is what happened to us.
And we're talking about checks made out to us that were forged, in which the forger put a fictitious name and then pasted it onto the check.
Not once, but twice.
But twice, and cashed those checks.
So, and anyway, the bank did refund our money.
We were made whole. But we're really shocked about the fact that it's almost like they let it happen.
And if you let it happen, it's going to happen again.
And no, it's not even that.
They look the other way.
They knew that somebody committed this, a fraud and crime.
Not to mention it would not have been that hard to trace.
Because if you think about it, all you have to do is reverse engineer the process.
Right, point A to point B. Exactly.
There's some clearing spot where these checks go.
We're talking about a check mailed locally.
Yes, locally. In our own area.
So anyway, the post office is a disaster.
Your idea is very interesting, which is we often take for granted that certain services must be provided by the government.
Like the government has to deliver the mail because otherwise there are people who live in remote areas and they wouldn't get their mail.
Yeah. A lot of times those assumptions are never tested.
It's not even obvious that it's true.
It's not obvious. I mean, you would have said a while ago that if you were going to have overnight delivery, it has to be the post office.
But guess what? A private company, Federal Express, can do it.
Let me give you an example of just the inefficiency of the post office.
So I ordered two items, two separate items.
One was vitamins, another was a hair product, right?
And the companies, because I ordered several items, they divided up the order.
One, they mailed it out via UPS, and the other one USPS, right?
So get this.
I get the UPS within like five days of my order.
I have yet to receive the USPS order.
And it went out I mean, and I ordered it several weeks ago.
And when I look at the tracking, it says it's going through the system, but it doesn't say when a delivery date is.
So it's in transit. It's in transit, yeah.
And, you know, so again, I mean, that's an example of the company using UPS and USPS and how inefficient USPS is.
And I do not understand why no one is doing anything about it.
And I mean this, you know, again, these are things that are not like, one was vitamins, another was hair products.
Okay, they're not life, you know, life-needing items, right?
But there are people, in fact, in this report with the Missouri City Post Office, there are people that have not gotten their life-saving medications.
You know, I think we're dealing with a bigger problem here.
And this is a problem that I just have noticed over the last really couple of decades.
And that is the quality of service.
This is certainly true of government service, but it's also true of private sector.
By and large, essential things that you could get before and were delivered to you or you could buy them easily.
They were easily available.
The service was really good.
From getting your car serviced, to getting your passport renewed, to going to a grocery store, to buying shoes, the quality of American service, which was a notch better.
I mean, it was way ahead of the third world, but it was better than other industrialized countries as well.
And I don't think that that's true any longer.
In fact... Arguably, it's much worse.
These days, when people go to other countries, they go to Iceland, they go to Copenhagen, they come back and they're like, wow, people are polite, the quality of service is better, I went to the hospital, I was treated immediately.
And so, in other words, we're seeing the cultural decline we talk about, which is measured in certain indexes.
Is, I think, seeping more broadly into the society.
The country is just going down and you see it across the board.
So the post office is a glaring, hideous example.
But there are many other examples, unfortunately.
Mike Lindell and the employees of MyPillow want to thank my listeners for all of your continued support.
To thank you, they're having an overstock clearance sale right now for the best prices ever when you use promo code Dinesh and you get free shipping on your entire order.
Get 50% off the new MyPillow 2.0 and the brand new flannel sheets they just got here.
They won't last long.
You can get six pack towel sets for just $29.98 and take advantage of the free shipping on the larger items, mattresses, mattress toppers, 100% made in the USA on sale for as low as $99.99.
Everything is on sale.
The brand new kitchen towels, the bath towels, but also the dog beds, the blankets, the couch pillows, and so much more.
To get the best specials ever, go to MyPillow.com, use promo code Dinesh, or you can call 800-876-0227.
Again, it's 800-876-0227.
get free shipping on your entire order while supplies last.
With each year that passes, the term health goals takes on more and more importance for Debbie and me.
In our younger days, feeling great and feeling healthy was just something we took for granted, but now it's become an active goal in our life.
And that means we do specific things to help us get there.
One of the things we do is this, we take balance of nature, fruits and veggies in a capsule.
fruits and veggies in a capsule. Why did we choose Balance of Nature? Many reasons.
Why did we choose balance of nature?
Many reasons.
Probably one of the most important is that they are always made from whole food ingredients. Have you started getting more serious about your health goals like we have? I strongly urge you to check out Balance of Nature whether you order online or call them direct. You must use promo code America to get the special offer 35% off. The number to call 800-246-8751.
Probably one of the most important is that they are always made from whole food ingredients.
Have you started getting more serious about your health goals like we have?
Again, it's 800-246-8751.
Use discount code America.
You can also go online at balanceofnature.com.
When you use the discount code, you'll get 35% off.
There's another report about airline safety issues in the news.
You want to give people the details?
Yeah, this was last week.
And a NYC-bound flight was canceled.
I believe it was Virgin.
Yeah, Virgin. British, yeah.
Virgin, whatever it's called.
Virgin Air. Yeah, Virgin Air.
So apparently a passenger and his girlfriend were sitting by the wing and he looks at the wing and he notices that there are like six bolts missing.
the wing. So he sees that there's bolts and then there are no bolts and he kind of like looked at it like am I really seeing what I'm seeing? I mean it's you know a little creepy right? So he I think discusses it with the girlfriend or whatever and she's like well you know should you say something? Yeah you know so anyway they finally tell the flight attendant the problem and she quickly goes and tells the captain.
And apparently, they stop the flight.
And the captain gets the engineers to go out there to look at the wing.
They deplane everybody because they're not going anywhere, so they go on another flight, another plane.
But then the airline says, yeah, that wasn't really an issue, like as in life-threatening.
Nothing would have happened.
It would have been fine. It would have been fine.
We went ahead and put all the bolts back in just as a precaution.
Yes. It's like, okay!
Yeah, well, this issue, I think, has become...
We talked a little bit about is this, you know, the kind of lassitude of the Gen Z generation?
Is it just a decline of quality of workmanship, carelessness across the board?
Or is it DEI? Now, I suppose you can't prove that something is DEI because when there is...
When you discover this incompetence, You don't know the reason the incompetence came about.
But here's my point.
You may not be able to prove it's DEI, but you can prove it isn't.
Because these DEI policies are in place.
And I think what...
Look... There are times when all kinds of systems fail and they fail because some elements of it haven't been checked or renewed or replaced or the training is inadequate.
But when you have been trying to get your airline to do its job and be as good as possible, it's meaningful to use the word accident, right?
Because an accident is something that is unanticipated.
You weren't planning on it.
It's an accident. Quality control.
Yeah. And later you may find out that you should have done this or you should have done that, but you didn't know.
Now, the problem with DEI, as I see it, is that you are saying in advance that we value diversity and therefore we're going to depart from the strict principles of quality control, strict principles of merit.
We're not necessarily going to hire the best pilots.
Why? Because we're We as an airline want 25% of our pilots to be black and 50% of our pilots to be women and blah blah blah.
And so what happens is you are setting yourself up for this.
And so if you have, God forbid, a catastrophe, I don't even call it an accident because this is the foreseeable...
Imagine if you were to go on the highway and you're driving in a defective car that you know the wheels can fall off and you can then swerve and kill somebody.
You knew that beforehand.
It's not an accident per se.
It's almost like this is recklessness to a degree that you cannot have any sympathy for the people who do this because they should have known that this is going to happen.
This is likely to happen.
I think this is where we are with these airlines.
I mean, you and I still fly, obviously.
We have to fly. But I've got to say that there's a little additional unease.
For sure. And not to mention the fact...
See, I'm very...
I get airsick, as you know, very, very easily.
But I have actually contributed that to, many times, the pilot.
I know this is going to sound really weird.
Oh, sure. I mean, some of them… And they're better able to maneuver between the bumps.
They're better able to get around the clouds or whatever.
And so, if you recall last year when we went to London, we were flying with a pilot who was retiring.
That was his last flight.
Remember that? I do. Yeah.
And I think he had been flying 30 years or 40 years, something like that.
Yeah, and his family was on board. His family was on board.
And he came out and said hello.
Big production and all of that. But let me just tell you, and this was one of those really large airlines.
I mean, I... It was 777, something like that.
And it was like butter taking off.
I mean, it was like you didn't even feel it.
You didn't even feel it land.
It was like floating on the...
Sometimes the airline landing is so soft that it's almost like it kisses the ground.
Like a little feather. Right.
And at other times, bang, bang, bang, everything shakes.
Yeah, but I can see... Here's the thing, is when the pilot is...
When we're landing, and I'm getting a little nauseous, I know that we're going to land really hard.
And we do every time.
We do every time. So anyway, I'm just saying that...
Picking a pilot, having pilots that are really good is so important, not just for safety, but just the comfort of the flight.
And so this morning I was looking at my, I get KHOU on my app, and it said that Representative Dan Crenshaw, who is our rep, Was blasting United Airlines over a dog policy dispute because he shared a video of an exchange between his wife and the ticket agent because apparently they had a dog and the ticket agent was saying that the dog was too big to fly so they couldn't fly and all of this.
And look, I sympathize with people that have pets and We're good to go.
Well, he was going to try to standardize airline rules about pets and dogs.
And I think the thought that crossed my mind when you mentioned this to me was, you know, airlines are private corporations.
They should be able to make their own rules about luggage and dogs.
But here's the thing, though. Along those lines, yes, I agree.
But I think if he wants to really make a ruckus...
Do it about the DEI. Do it about the fact that the airlines are not safe overall right now that we're having a lot of issues.
Don't do it about something that affects only a few passengers whereas the other affects every passenger.
No, that's true. But I mean, I'm raising the question of whether or not...
I mean, yes, the DEI problem, I think, is a liability problem.
In other words... Yeah, but people can argue it's a private airline.
They can hire whoever they want, right?
No, no. Just like you were saying here.
But airline safety is highly regulated.
Airlines in this sense...
That's why we have the FAA, right?
The Federal Airline.
So the FAA's job is to have safety mandates, and they do.
As you know from shows we've watched, when there's an airline crash, there's a minute study of what caused that crash, and then they go and check all the other airplanes to make sure that they are properly fitted with the equipment.
So this kind of regulation, I think, is legitimate.
Because what it's doing is it's bringing the knowledge of airline safety from all over the world.
Sometimes accidents occurring in Singapore, involving other airlines, and so on.
But that's a little different than, let's say, for example, airlines deciding how many seats they want to have in first class.
It's kind of like Dan Crenshaw going, well, I tried to buy a seat in first class, but they only had eight seats.
I'm going to have legislation required.
No, that's not, you know.
Right, right. In a free market, airlines should be able to have two seats in first class or no seats in first class or have the whole plane be first class.
That's up to them. Well, if Dan's watching this, I think we should talk to him about, hey, if we're going to make Well, I mean, his complaint on the face of it, I mean, it does look like also he was trying to get this adjudicated with United.
And I think part of his point and part of what made him really mad is the rudeness of these guys these days, where you got people working for the airlines.
And by the way, this is just as true of people working in other areas.
Didn't he talk to the CEO or didn't he talk to somebody high up?
Well, he talked to some vice president who was apparently...
So he didn't just talk to management, like lower management.
It was upper management.
Right, yes. And I think he felt that they, you know, disrespected him and he's a congressman and so on.
But I think the point that we're trying to make here is that, well, certainly with the country and the shape it is, we've got bigger problems than you not being able to take your dog on a flight.
If you'd like to support my work, guys, I'd like you to check out my Locals channel and consider becoming a monthly or an annual subscriber.
I post a lot of exclusive content there, including content that is censored on other social media platforms.
On Locals, you get Dinesh Unchained, Dinesh Uncensored.
You can also interact with me directly.
I do a live weekly Q&A every Tuesday tonight.
8 p.m. Eastern and no topic is off limits.
I've also uploaded some cool films to Locals, documentaries and feature films.
2000 Mules is up there and now the new film, Police State.
And if you are an annual subscriber, you can stream and watch all of this content for free.
It's included with your subscription.
So check it out. Here's my channel, dinesh.locals.com.
I'd love to have you along for this great ride again.
It's dinesh.locals.com.
I now have reached the...
Final section of C.S. Lewis's The Four Loves.
We are in the fourth love, which is agape or Christian love.
Lewis also just calls it sometimes charity.
And we might begin by asking, what is this type of love?
Like, what does it mean? How is it distinguished from the others?
I thought I would... To give you an anecdote, this involves Mother Teresa of India.
Well, Mother Teresa was originally from Eastern Europe, but she came to India to administer to the poor and the lepers.
And apparently there was a tourist, this guy walking in Calcutta, and he sees Mother Teresa and she is embracing the leper.
The guy was in bad shape.
Obviously his skin is degraded.
And the tourists couldn't help but blurt out, I wouldn't do that for all the money in the world.
And Mother Teresa looks up and says, neither would I. I'm doing it for the love of Christ.
Now, this is agape.
This is not an anecdote.
This is not a story in C.S. Lewis' book.
But I give it because C.S. Lewis will discuss...
He'll discuss charity.
He'll discuss Christian love.
But oddly enough, he doesn't give examples of it.
He talks about it.
And so I thought an example would illustrate sort of, what are we talking about?
And if you ask, why is this love different?
The key point is that it is love that doesn't benefit the giver at all.
It is love entirely for the benefit of the beloved.
Now, let's look back at the other three types of love to see if that is true.
Because I think we'll see that it is not true in any of the other three cases.
If I enjoy my neighbor's company, for example, I like chatting with him across the fence.
It's because I get a lot out of it.
He's a funny guy. He's amusing.
He does interesting things.
I like learning from him.
That's why I do it. I do it for my own sake.
I have a really good friend.
I enjoy spending time playing backgammon or watching movies together or discussing history or any common pursuit or common interest.
I do it because it benefits me.
I do it because I have that interest.
And so having someone else in the same camp...
Sort of fortifies, reinforces, builds up my level of interest, gives me a way to share my thoughts about the things that interest me.
And so friendship is built on that mutual pursuit of the same goal, but it's a goal in the interest of both the pursuers.
And then, of course, eros.
I don't have to explain that, by and large, in eros, there is an attraction, but it's because I am attracted.
It is because I want something out of this relationship.
It's because there is an obvious benefit to it.
Now, this is not to say that you can't be selfless in marriage.
It's not to say you can't be selfless in friendship.
But see, this only goes to reinforce Lewis's point that when you are selfless in marriage...
You're importing a little bit of agape into eros.
When you're selfless in friendship, you're importing a little bit of agape into philia.
And when you're selfless in, let's say, for example, doing a good deed to someone, you can't benefit from it all.
There's no reciprocity.
Even something as small as giving up your seat to an old lady in a bus, it's not in the expectation that she's going to give up her seat to you some other time.
No, this is a one-sided transaction.
It's for her benefit, not yours.
Now, of course, other motives can contaminate this.
I want to look good in front of all the other people in the bus and so on.
But removing those motives for a moment, and let's just say you're doing it purely for the benefit of the other person, now you're beginning to get closer to the definition of Love is Enough.
Lewis begins in very much his characteristic mode by saying, my message in this chapter is the opposite.
Love is never enough.
In other words, none of the natural loves, and he calls the first three of the four loves the natural loves.
Why? Because you don't have to be a Christian.
You don't have to be particularly charitable.
You can have those other loves just in a natural human sense.
Anybody can have them.
It doesn't mean anyone does have them.
Someone could have no friends, for example.
But nevertheless, it is possible for anyone to have them.
But, Lewis' point is that these natural loves are not self-sufficient.
Now, he says, that's not a bad thing.
He says, I'm not, like, diminishing them by saying they're not self-sufficient because things can be really good and yet not self-sufficient.
He goes, for example, if you're looking at a garden, a beautifully manicured garden with trees and plants and so on, he goes...
That is something that is natural.
It grows in nature.
In fact, the garden wouldn't exist without nature.
Who produces the trees?
Who produces the seeds?
Who produces the plants?
Well, the answer is God does.
This occurs in nature.
But then what do human beings do?
Well, they come around, they kind of build a little fence, they do some pruning, some cutting, some planting.
So the human effort is necessary to make the garden into a garden.
Now, the human effort, Lewis emphasizes, is supplementary to what nature is doing.
Nature is doing the main work because what's the main content of a garden?
Well, it's shrubs and it's trees and branches and flowers and plants.
And human beings didn't create those things, not at all.
But the human effort is to sort of put them together and maintain them.
And so this is what Lewis is getting at is that the natural loves are really good.
They sort of approach divinity in a certain way but they don't get there. To get there you need the fourth type of love and that is this love that is called agape. And once Lewis has raised this topic he doesn't hesitate to say that not only is agape necessary to fulfill
the promise of the other loves, to make the other loves deliver what they promised.
but agape is really the best of all the loves.
And when forced to choose...
It should always be agape over the others.
Now, Lewis realizes that this is going to be somewhat unpopular to say, but he says it is sort of the scriptural thing to say, and he goes into it.
He starts by saying, the Bible, even though it talks a lot about love, every now and then unexpectedly it drops, let's call it the H-word, and the H-word is hate, and it drops it in really surprising contexts.
If a man come to me and hate not his father and mother and wife, Esau, Jacob did I love, but Esau did I hate.
Right away, you're sort of startled.
God hates Esau?
Why? What did Esau do that somehow brought the hate of the God of the universe?
And it's pretty clear in the biblical context that hate doesn't mean what we think of today.
He hates speech. He's a hateful person.
Hate simply means God rejects.
God doesn't choose.
God goes in a different direction.
So if you look at Esau and Jacob, for example, Lewis makes the point that actually Esau had a better life.
Then Jacob. Jacob had trials, he had tribulations, he had disappointments.
If you look at it in an earthly way, Esau actually came out ahead.
So, what does it mean to say that God hates Esau?
And the answer simply means this, that for all his disappointments and travails and so on, it was Jacob who had the ancestry of the Lord.
In other words, it was Jacob who became the patriarch.
Jesus ultimately came out of the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
So, Esau was rejected, but not rejected in the sense that God didn't love Esau.
God rejected Esau as a man.
Esau is in hell.
Not at all. There's no implication whatsoever that this is what happened to Esau.
It simply means that when God had to choose the patriarch, he chose Jacob.
He did not choose Esau.
And so Lewis is going to all this to make the point that when an agape comes into contradiction with the other loves, and that can happen, usually agape simply reinforces, fertilizes, builds up the other loves.
But there are times when Christian charity requires you to do X.
Let's take for example something like a person who is called to be a missionary and to preach the gospel and serve people.
Let's just make it extreme in a faraway country, among the Maoris or among the aborigines of New Zealand or Australia.
But this person has some responsibilities at home, and yet this calling, let's call it calling to agape, clashes with these other duties.
So think of the opening scene in The Pilgrim's Progress, where Christian, who is the main character, goes to see this guy called Evangelist, and it's because he's seeking eternal life.
He's seeking a life of love and charity.
And his family objects.
That is both Storgi and Eros.
His wife is there. She objects.
The neighbors object.
His friends show up and object.
So all the other loves are clamoring and saying, No!
Don't go for agape!
You've got us!
You've got your life over here!
And what does John Bunyan write?
He writes that Christian...
Put his fingers in his ears.
So, in other words, made himself deaf to all these other cries and ran headlong into the street shouting, life, life, eternal life.
Again, this is not an example that's given by C.S. Lewis.
I'm pulling it out of Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress, but it makes the point.
That when agape conflicts with the other loves, always choose agape.
Agape is really the love that is distinctive to God.
In fact, Lewis makes the point that if you look at the other loves, they are given by God.
All love comes from God, but they don't resemble God's own love.
God himself, even though he sometimes says, I'm God the Father, God doesn't relate to us.
God... God does not have the same need that a father might have or the same...
God does not relate to us like a friend.
God certainly doesn't relate to us in a purely erotic sense.
So God is defined by agape and that, Lewis says, is ultimately the greatest love, the love that makes all the other ones complete.
Subscribe to the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast on Apple, Google, and Spotify.
▲
Export Selection