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Feb. 6, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
47:43
PURE POISON Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep763
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Coming up, it looks like the Senate border bill is going down in flames.
I'll tell you why, and I'll tell you what I'm doing to celebrate.
A concerned father, Dennis Hannon, joins me.
We're going to talk about why he was helpless to prevent his son from taking puberty blockers in order to transition into a girl.
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. In a time of confusion, division, and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
I was heading out to the podcast this morning and usually I get dressed and then as I come marching out Debbie checks out what I'm wearing and she's like is that what you're wearing?
I'm like, yeah.
She goes, well, this is Texas.
I go, yeah, I know. She goes, bright pink sweater, Dinesh?
She goes, it takes a very secure man to wear a bright pink sweater in Texas.
And putting on my best lisp imitation, I go, I don't know about that.
Stop it! Stop it!
Oh my god. Anyway, I guess this outfit...
Brian, just don't show his pants, okay?
Well, Brian here in the studio is only concerned about one thing, and that is, does my outfit match the background?
Yeah. So typically if I come in with like a brown sweater, which would be a more Texan sweater, a brown sweater, Brian goes, well, we can't really see you.
You're a brown guy, the brown sweater, and you got a brown wall behind you.
You know, this is just not going to work visually.
So we're hot people. So that's why...
So, yeah. I mean, look at the contrast and how awesome it is.
All right. Let's talk about the border.
Now, I'm happy to say that I think this border bill is going kaput.
It's fizzling.
It is going down in flames.
And it's kind of a glorious thing to see.
Now, first of all, I was very encouraged to see...
The Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, and he said with really utmost clarity, the first line of his comment was, I've seen enough of this.
And he goes, this is not only dead on arrival in the House, it's not even going to be voted on.
Great! This is the kind of thing we need from the House.
This is the House acting like a Republican House.
And right away, Mike Johnson was buffeted, was affirmed by all the leadership.
Steve Scalise was right there.
And Elise Stefanik was right there.
And, of course, a lot of the others, Byron Donald, so many others, Anna Paulina Luna, is that this is going nowhere in this House.
Great. Because, as you know, for a bill to become a law, it needs to pass the House and the Senate and be signed by Biden.
So now the question shifts to the Senate.
And there's the puzzle of, are Republicans in the Senate really going to sign off on this bill?
And I think the answer to that question now is a clear no.
It looks like McConnell himself has gotten cold feet, and he is telling people privately, all right, that's it.
We're gonna... Don't vote for this bill.
So let's look at the situation.
McConnell kind of cooked up the scheme with Schumer.
He brought in this point man, James Lankford of Oklahoma.
Now... I mentioned this to Debbie, and she was a little uncomfortable about me bringing it up.
But anyway, I'm going to bring it up.
Which is that, well, Langford is a Bible study guy.
You know, he's a guy known for running these Bible courses.
And look, I have nothing against that.
That's a noble calling.
But here's my question.
And it's just a Machiavellian strategic question.
When you're dealing with the mafia, and that's what's going on.
You're dealing with Schumer.
You're dealing with the Biden regime, Mallorca.
You're dealing with a gang of thugs.
Is it really effective to send like a Bible study guy?
I mean, this is like, I'm going to have a ruthless negotiation with Xi Jinping.
I'm going to send in a dance instructor, you know, to represent him.
No! This is not necessarily the best way to go.
There are plenty of senators.
Send in Ted Cruz.
I mean, send in Tom Cotton.
There are Josh Hawley.
There are Republicans who would understand completely what they were dealing with.
I don't think Lankford did.
And guess what? Doesn't a priest go in for an exorcism?
I mean, hello? Yeah.
Okay, Debbie has a good point.
She's like, if you're dealing with demons, it may be that a guy who's an accomplished exorcist.
But this is a good point.
What Lankford should have done is he should have gone in with basically holy water.
And when they whip out the bill, he starts sprinkling holy water on the bill, sprinkling holy water on Schumer.
Naturally, Schumer would run shrieking out of the room, kind of like a scene out of The Exorcist.
But he didn't do that.
What he did was he assumed that the other side had the same good faith that he was bringing to the table.
And I saw him on CNN. I mean, his whole philosophy was a little bit turned the other cheek.
Again, a philosophy...
I don't think appropriate to dealing with these kinds of characters, I'm sorry to say.
Now, let's look at the bill, because I haven't discussed the content of it, and fortunately, since the bill is now going to be receding in the rearview mirror, we don't have to hash out all the details, but here are just a few of them, which leads me to the conclusion that no sane Republican with a capacity to read and digest context is Could have signed off on this.
And that really raises questions about Langford and his naivete.
I don't attribute to him ill will.
And McConnell, to whom I do attribute some ill will.
McConnell is a very seasoned hand.
And by the way, McConnell has been very good at doing block and tackle in the past.
I am not one of these guys who just says, McConnell's horrible, McConnell's a rhino, get rid of McConnell.
I have a lot of respect for things McConnell has accomplished.
But something is going on here in which McConnell, I think, was trying to pull a fast one using Lankford, and now that this ruse has failed, McConnell is sort of throwing Lankford under the bus.
But here's the bill.
Number one, before calling a block, before sort of calling a stop, it allows up to 1.8 million illegals to enter and then parts of the border get closed.
Number two, it allows Biden to cancel even that.
Biden has the discretion to declare that it's in the national interest to temporarily stop this and he can unilaterally suspend the bill.
It funds sanctuary cities and NGOs, sending millions and millions of dollars to the very organizations that are running this whole operation.
They get bankrolled by who?
By you. By me. By taxpayers.
It subsidizes free, taxpayer-funded legal counsel to illegal aliens.
It does not require a single deportation.
It takes all the illegal Afghans who went running on the plane, many of them who were never vetted, some of whom may be terrorists, And it essentially creates a process to make them all citizens.
So it creates a pathway to citizenship for 60,000, you can say, runaway Afghans.
So this bill is an unmitigated disaster.
Lankford keeps saying, read the bill, read the bill.
I've gone through the bill.
I've looked at all the key provisions of the bill.
It's a horrible bill.
And I think no Republican, no one who takes our laws seriously...
And think of what it means to take our laws seriously.
The people who should be here should be here.
The people who should not be here should not be here.
And the people who should not be here, who are here, should be sent back.
So that is the necessary template.
I'm picking this up, by the way, from Mark Krikorian in a post that he did this morning.
The necessary template for any rational immigration policy.
And if we depart from that, which this bill clearly does, it deserves to be sent into oblivion.
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You know, the topics of woke ideology, the trans issue, to some degree the race issue, I'll sometimes listen to people talking about this and they are so dug in that the thought crosses my mind They seem so persuaded of the irrational things that they're saying.
The country is a fount of white supremacy.
Every white enjoys privileges over every black person.
Yes, Dinesh, even a white guy from Appalachia who makes $11,000 a year is privileged compared to Oprah Winfrey.
There are people who say this stuff with a straight face.
And they believe it, or they seem to believe it.
And the same thing with the trans issue.
And that is, I'm in the wrong body.
And I begin to think to myself, is it even possible to persuade these people?
Is it even possible to have a dialogue with them?
Are they so brainwashed, indoctrinated, call it what you will...
And then I saw a very interesting exchange between a student and a professor on social media.
This has gone viral.
I don't even know where this happened, what school it is.
But you've got a teacher in a classroom and doing the job of a teacher, which is what?
Not blasting the student and saying that he's wrong, but showing him how to think about the issue.
And the nub of it is that the student begins by saying...
Given that J.K. Rowling, this is the author of the Harry Potter stories, is a known homophobe, and then on the student is to the races with that, and the professor or the teacher just stops him right there and says, alright, look... Let's do a little bit of an exercise because you're starting with the premise.
What is your premise?
You use the word given.
That means that it's established.
It's known. And a known homophobe.
You're starting with that.
And so he says, give me an example of how you arrived at the conclusion that J.K. Rowling is a homophobe or a transphobe.
And the student goes, well, I'm not necessarily saying that I think that she's a transfer, but there are many others who have said that.
And the professor and the teacher stops him and says, well, listen, we're trying to learn critical thinking here.
We're trying to learn how to use evidence.
So we're not going to appeal to what other people think.
I'm asking you what you think, because you said...
Not that given that there's an opinion out there, given that there are rumors, but rather you said given that she is, she is, meaning you believe her to be a transphobe, what has she said that is transphobic?
And then the student is kind of flustered, but quickly fumbles through the J.K. Rowling feed and says, well, here we go, here we go.
J.K. Rowling says something to the effect of, Listen, I don't have anything against the trans people.
Anybody who wants to be a trans can live their life.
But I also have the right to live my life.
And all my life I've thought of myself as a woman.
And my experience is experienced as a woman.
And I refuse to be bullied by someone telling me that my experience is somehow invalidated because of some trans ideology out there.
Identify what in that statement is transphobic.
And now comes that moment of truth where the student is fumbling and the student says, well, I don't really know.
I assume.
And pretty soon the student is like, well, I don't really perhaps think it's transphobic at all.
And then the professor affirms, isn't the statement merely saying that if a trans person has a right to their truth, that's the way that they want to be, that's the way that they want to live, but it's a whole different matter to demand of you.
That you alter your perception, including your perception of them, because if they have the right to perceive you as they wish, you have the right to perceive them as you wish.
If they have the right to interpret your reaction, you're a transphobe, you're this, you're that, you have the right to interpret their behavior.
You're not really a girl.
You're suffering from, you know, a confused identity.
There's something wrong with your mind.
I have the same right to these opinions as trans people have to their opinions.
And then the student says at the end, I feel like such an idiot because I actually agree with that.
So this is a case where, again, and it's a power, it's in a way a reflection of indoctrination because the student's real view was always the same as J.K. Rowling's view.
But the student had been browbeaten.
Perhaps in order to be cool, perhaps by other teachers who had just insisted on this dogmatic premise and the student was not employing the tools of critical thinking.
So what I get out of this little episode is that it is possible.
It takes work.
And it obviously takes some skill.
This professor was very skilled in not saying to the student, you're wrong, you're mistaken, because in that case, the professor would be doing the same thing as the professors who indoctrinated the student in the first place.
So the professor says, let's examine why you are saying what you are, and let's see if those premises really hold up.
So I think this was a kind of a master class, if you will, in ideological deprogramming.
And so it gives me some, I wouldn't say optimism, but perhaps hope that we can rescue some of these lost souls.
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One of the most remarkable and, I would say, puzzling phenomena of our day is the issue of children who decide at some point, or at least claim to know, that they are in the wrong body.
That I was born a boy, I was...
I was called a boy and I decide I'm actually a girl.
I'm a girl in a boy's body.
Now, I'm assuming that some of this has occurred for a long time, but what is striking is how pervasive it seems to be today and the complex issues it generates with regard to parental rights, with regard to indoctrination in schools, and so many other issues.
I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast Dennis Hannon.
He is a software engineer.
He's a former banking vice president.
But most importantly, for our purposes, he's a dad.
And he's a dad who has gone through this phenomenon with his kid.
And I want to explore how this happens with some granular detail.
Dennis has a website.
It's a GiveSendGo where you can support him.
It's GiveSendGo.com slash IndoctrinateThis.
And the organization is called IndoctrinateThis.
IndoctrinateThis.org is the website of the organization.
Dennis, welcome to the podcast and thank you for joining me.
I realize this is an uncomfortable topic to be talking about.
So I want to begin the story kind of at the beginning.
And that is, talk about your family and talk about when you first had an inkling that you were dealing with this so-called trans phenomenon in your own household.
Thank you for having me.
I appreciate this opportunity to be here and tell this story.
There was never any indication from my child ever that there was any kind of gender confusion or gender dysphoria at all.
I found out about this, about the transition of my son from a letter in the mail addressed to the parents or guardian of Ruby Rose Hannon.
And this was from the school.
And this was after I reached out to them because I wasn't receiving any important school updates.
There was an issue, they fixed it, and then shortly after I received this letter in the mail.
Now, I opened the letter because the address was correct.
However, I thought that maybe they had the wrong name for the child printed on the letterhead.
When I opened it, I was devastated to learn that my son was assigned a new name, Ruby Rose, and they referred exclusively to my son using female pronouns.
So it was she, this, her, that.
And that was really the starting point.
Now, You and your wife were separated, I believe, in the year 2015, correct?
Correct. And so your son was living with his mom when all of this happened.
And so I'm assuming, tell me if this is right, was the mom kind of on board with this and didn't inform you about it?
Is that what happened?
Or did the school kind of...
Who initiated this?
How did this come about?
Does a child go up to the school or to the mother and go, I think I'm really not what...
How does this work?
This was purely initiated by the mother.
So I found out after that letter and through court discovery and proceedings that I found out that his transition actually started at about the age of two to three.
During this time, when I was picking my son up, I only had him for two hours Tuesday, two hours Thursday, supervised visits only.
And a lot of that time was spent during commute.
However, when I was picking my son up, he was a boy named Matthew.
When he was in my care, he was a boy named Matthew.
There was never any indication that any of this transition was going on.
However, when he was in his mother's care and when he was going to school, he was a girl named Ruby Rose.
So you're saying that while your son was with you, there was never a single point are you saying that your son goes, you know, hey dad, you know, I'm having these weird feelings.
I kind of, I'm not sure who I am.
I want to wear a dress.
Any of that occurred? Was any of that kind of conversation or not at all?
Not at all. There was never any indication whatsoever.
And I think that the lack of time that I had with him during this point because it was the divorce and custody was still fresh. A lot of that time, you know, the two hours, I would say 20 to 30 minutes of it was spent commuting.
So I would get him and it was right around dinner time.
We would focus on dinner.
We would have some play, some activities, but there was never any mention of this whatsoever.
And I think that my son living a double life had become normalized.
And because he was so young, he just accepted that as normal.
So he never... You mentioned the contrast in lifestyles between being with me as father and then when he would go back home with his mother.
I mean, it seems obvious to me, Dennis, that there is an elaborate kind of deception at work here, right?
Because somebody told the kid, don't tell your dad anything about this.
Because let's say, for example, that Matthew decides, I want to be Ruby.
Let's say the school goes along, the mom goes along.
The next time you go to pick him up...
You'd assume that he'd be a she in a dress and pigtails and, you know, bobby pins and so on.
But the very fact that your son would show up presumably in male clothing and give no indication of this, I mean, that must be part of what is disturbing about it, right?
In other words, somebody has created in this child a dual life.
One life with your dad, one life presumably with your mom and at school.
And why do you think this was done in this way?
Why wouldn't your ex-wife call you up and say, hey listen, you know, I think our son is actually a girl.
I think the deliberate attempt to conceal this from me was done solely because this was something that was inflicted upon him.
This wasn't something that he wanted.
This was an illusion pushed by the mother.
I think that the mother knew that if I found out about this, then I would put a stop to it as quickly as possible because when I did find out about it, that's exactly what I did.
But there were other people involved.
So when he was two to three, he was seeing a therapist.
And the therapist is a self-described gender-affirming specialist that specializes in adolescent care.
Now, he was also going to this therapist.
At no point did that therapist ever reach out to me, offer for me to be a part of any treatment plan.
I was never informed that he was even going to therapy.
He never met the DSM-5 criteria for gender dysphoria.
Still has never met that criteria.
And when the therapist was subpoenaed for records, she denied the subpoena, and her reason for that was because she kept no notes of any therapy visits.
However, that didn't stop her from recommending or referring my son and the mother to an endocrinologist by the name of Dr.
Tran. That's a real name, not making that up, Dr.
Tran. In over two phone calls totaling 45 minutes with only the mother, they never spoke to the child.
They recommended the possibility for puberty blockers around the age of 9.
Now, you find out about this.
It apparently is a, well, clearly a pretty elaborate collusion, right?
You've got the mom involved.
You've got the school involved. I assume that the school is marching in lockstep with the mom.
The mom says, hey, I've got, you know, a boy that is transitioning to be a girl.
The school goes, okay, we're going to now start calling her Ruby, and we're going to send letters, obviously, with that designation.
Then you've got a therapist saying, I'm assuming that you're aware that there is now a sort of an industry similar to the plastic surgery industry that makes a lot of money off of these treatments because it's not that easy to make this biological transition.
It's pretty expensive. It's a process involving several years.
Let's back up for a minute.
Do you think that this is a...
I mean, to put it bluntly, a form of child abuse where you take a kid that is born male, is male, and you subject them with parental authority, with school. We have authorities here that are making these decisions, that are making decisions for the kid.
That have lifelong impact.
I mean, the kids are going to have to live with this, right?
Pretty much your whole life.
Unequivocally, this is a form of child abuse.
They had a treatment plan, a transition plan before they had a diagnosis.
And what is that? Lay out that plan.
I mean, I'm just not so familiar.
What are the four steps of that plan?
The first step was affirming.
Affirming that he was a girl and using the name Ruby Rose in school.
He was completely socially transitioned in school, meaning he went to school wearing dresses, makeup, hair done up, female accoutrements, accessories.
That kind of thing.
And then they fast-tracked him to an endocrinologist, having still never even been diagnosed with gender dysphoria, mind you, who recommended puberty blockers at the age of nine, the potential for puberty blockers, and they had never even spoken to the child.
So this is a big business.
And it's very clear that their business model is gender dysphoria.
And had they done their due diligence, they would realize that my son was never a candidate for any of this.
Not only that, but we had doctors testify during trial that said that they were unable to formally diagnose him with gender dysphoria at the age of 5 or 3 or 4 for that matter because his gender identity hasn't developed yet.
What do you think, Dennis, is the motive here?
I mean, this is not really about you and your wife and issues between the two of you, but I mean, are we dealing here with a left-wing kook who basically decides for ideological reasons, or is this a form of lashing out at you?
In other words, I'm trying to get at why somebody would do this.
Well, I've spent many sleepless nights wondering that same question as well.
Years ago, I first said this to a therapist and I was laughed at.
I believe that this is a form of Munchausen by proxy or mental illness imposed by another.
That's what I believe or some kind of underlying mental illness and this is how it manifests.
the time of my son's transition, he was being paraded around in public in public beauty pageants. He was giving shout-outs to drag queens on social media from the mother's Facebook.
I think that this was a form of virtue signaling so that she could somehow climb up the social ranks within her inner group and just seek attention.
I don't know how That's my theory on it, but I think I will never truly understand the reason why somebody did something like this.
I can only speculate.
I mean, that's a very arresting phrase, Munchausen by proxy.
I mean, you know, one of the things that's occurred to me is that you have people, I mean, if you have people who are white in a society where race counts for something, and, you know, so how do you, where's your trump card coming from in that phenomenon?
Well, the answer is, my kid is trans.
Yes, right? Suddenly you now join the coalition of the oppressed.
And so I'm assuming that in the oppression Olympics, if I can use that term, you now move up a notch.
I mean, it's just hideous for me to think that this would be a motive.
For you to, in effect, destroy your kid's life.
Let's talk briefly about the courts.
You go to the court, and what was the basis of your claim or your objection?
And talk a little bit about what the court decided and why.
Sure. So, this has gone through many courts.
The legal battle spanned.
It feels like ages, but it was between five to seven years, I believe.
It started out in Niagara County Erie Family Court, and then it went to Erie County Family Court, and then it went to Erie County Supreme Court.
In between that, there were a lot of judges.
When this first came out through proceedings and subpoenas that were being served as to the extent of how they were best tracking them without following any proper medical guidelines or standards or procedures for this, all of a sudden these doctors kind of just drifted off into the sunset.
I never heard from them again.
However, the courts ordered me to take my son, even though he never was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, I was ordered to take him to a psychosexual therapist, sometimes once a week at $145 a session.
They didn't accept insurance.
Because they thought he might have gender confusion.
Even after all of that evidence and everything came out that this is just predicated on a big lie, I still had to keep him in this system.
So, what did I do?
After a year and a half of him being in there, I had sole medical authority at the time.
I said, look, no diagnosis of gender dysphoria has ever been made.
I'd like my son to be discharged.
The therapist refused to discharge my son, wrote a letter to the court, and then afterwards I lost sole medical authority.
And where does the case stand now?
Has the case been concluded?
And are you in the very unfortunate position of, in a sense, helplessly watching your son be bombarded with these medical, if you can use those term, treatments?
Do you have any further recourse?
And what does your organization indoctrinate this aimed at doing?
Yeah, so I took this all the way to Supreme Court trial.
It was a three-day trial.
The final verdict of that trial was sole custody for the mother.
I only have visitation rights.
I do see him a few days a week and every other weekend overnight.
I have no medical decision-making authority, meaning I have no authority over the providers or the treatment plan that is based solely up to the discretion of the mother.
However, the good news in all of this is my son is awake now.
When this first started, he was three years old.
He didn't have a voice.
As he got older, now he realizes what happened to him.
And he's reminded nobody ever considered the psychological impact of transitioning a child ages three to five.
So there were kids in school, you know, weren't you a girl named Ruby?
Wasn't your name Ruby?
So he still has to deal with that.
And that is very traumatic for him to deal with.
However, I am very proud of my son.
He's a warrior. At one point I was court ordered not to discuss his gender identity with him, but we have open, honest dialogue.
He still shows no signs of wanting or having any desire to be a female, and he lives a very normal life.
So Dinesh, although I may have lost on paper, I won where it's most important because I truly believe I saved my son's life with the path that he was going down.
I started indoctrinate this to help other parents in similar situations.
If I have to be the first boot to drop for more parents to come forward and for us to put an end to this gender-affirming care for minors, so be it.
But I feel like by telling this story and raising awareness...
True change starts with exposure, and that's why I'm here.
I want reform from this.
I want people to learn from this experience so that this doesn't happen to another child or parent again so this wasn't in vain.
Well, I really appreciate you sharing your story.
This is Dennis Hainan. I've been talking to the organization IndoctrinateThis.org.
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Dennis Hainan, thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you, sir, for letting me tell my story on your platform.
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I'm in the early section of Harry Jaffa's book, Crisis of the House Divided, a study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates.
We're talking about the case for Douglass.
And contemporary historians tend to say of Douglass with a kind of condescension I think?
These critiques of Douglass fall flat because, number one, nobody knows the direction of history.
Douglass himself, as we will see, had a very powerful and clear view of freedom.
Lincoln had a different view of freedom.
So the issue isn't freedom is going to triumph.
Even if freedom does triumph, whose view of freedom would triumph?
Let's remember Lincoln's view of freedom was from the slave's point of view.
The slave should be emancipated.
The slave deserves freedom.
Douglass affirmed a different kind of freedom, which is the freedom of communities and states to rule themselves, to make decisions about their own internal affairs.
People should be trusted, communities should be trusted with making their own decisions.
So that's freedom too. We're good to go.
And so, simply to say that Douglass didn't see where freedom was, quote, going involves a certain determinism that was shared neither by Douglass nor by Abraham Lincoln.
Now what about this idea that Douglass was kind of a bad guy who wasn't concerned with moral issues and maybe sort of didn't have a strong, vivid feeling about people who were outsiders or people who were oppressed?
This is not true at all, because first of all, the issue again becomes which outsiders do you sympathize with the most?
Now for Lincoln, the answer was kind of obvious, which is to say I'm sympathizing with the slave dragged against his will across the continent through the Middle Passage, brought to America in chains, but Douglas too had his own unfortunates, if you will, that he sympathized with, and who were those?
Well, they were basically the wretched of the earth coming to America from Europe America's ranks were being multiplied by immigrants Now, these were white immigrants, but they were not white immigrants from England, and they were not white immigrants from Northern Europe.
There were a lot of Eastern Europeans, there were Irish, there were Poles.
Remember, these people were Catholics coming to a Protestant country.
And there were powerful movements in America that looked down on these immigrants and sought to keep them out.
There were movements like the Know-Nothings, And the so-called Native Americans, now we don't mean Native Americans meaning American Indians, but Native Americans, people who saw themselves as America born, who saw outsiders, people trying to become Americans as the problem.
People who would degrade the country, people who would bring it down, people who would take away your jobs.
And Douglass sympathized with these new immigrants.
And Douglass openly attacked the know-nothings, and he openly attacked these so-called Native Americans.
Interestingly, Lincoln did not.
Lincoln opposed the know-nothings, but only in private.
In public, Lincoln was almost zipped about it.
And why? Because the know-nothings were potential voters in the Republican Party.
The know-nothings were actually...
They were part of the Northern Coalition that Lincoln was trying to put together in his election in 1864, the presidency.
So, one might say that when it came to defending immigrants, let's remember these are legal immigrants.
We're not talking about today's issue of people crossing the border unlawfully.
We're talking about the fact that America was letting in a lot of people from Europe.
These people were settling the great American West.
Douglas took their side. Lincoln did not.
This is important to know.
Further, when people say that Douglas didn't care about slavery, and Douglas was famous for saying that he, quote, didn't care whether slavery was voted up and down, Douglas did not mean by that that I personally don't care about slavery.
This is what Douglas really meant.
He meant that When I say I don't care, it means that there are certain subjects on which a statesman should not offer a public opinion.
Why? Because it's not his jurisdiction.
It's kind of like a guy is up for trial in a court in Missouri.
It's up to the laws of Missouri and a jury in Missouri to decide what should happen to that guy.
Now, should the President of the United States or a Senator jump in from another state and go, that guy is guilty.
He deserves to be convicted.
He must get the debt penalty.
Douglas' point is, it's none of your business.
You can have a private opinion on it, but this is for Missouri to decide.
So it's not to say that you can't say what you think, but it may be that if you're a statesman in a responsible position of power, like the president, you don't want to prejudge the matter, you don't want to act like you're overruling the state of Missouri, you might be better to say nothing about the subject and let the people who are in charge of deciding decide.
That doesn't mean that you are morally indifferent to the man, his plight, whether he's innocent or guilty.
It's not that you don't care.
It's that it's not your job to decide.
Now, this position that Douglas took was very damaging to Douglas himself, which is why it's such a brave position for Douglas to take.
If Douglas had only said this, listen, I personally am anti-slavery.
I support popular sovereignty and I want each state, each community to decide for itself.
But I think that this mechanism of popular sovereignty will bring about in time the end of slavery.
If Douglass had said that...
In my opinion, he would have destroyed the career of Abraham Lincoln.
Not just my opinion. In Harry Jaffa's opinion, I'm going to read from Jaffa.
In 1858, after the Lecompton Battle Royale, don't worry about that, we'll get to the Lecompton Battle, one public word from Douglass on the immorality of slavery, one word merely to the effect that popular sovereignty, instead of, quote, not caring whether slavery was voted up or down, was in fact the best constitutional instrument for giving Giving effect to the overwhelming Northern free soil condemnation of slavery in the territories.
And Douglass could have destroyed Lincoln's whole claim to leadership and made himself the unquestioned free soil leader in the Northwest.
So, what we're getting at here...
Is that the country is precariously balanced between the North and the South.
But as we will see, the deciding factor, the political deciding force in the country is the great American West.
It's the fact that the country is opening up to the West.
So America is not just North-South.
The West is opening up.
Now, the West at that time didn't mean California.
It was actually what we would today call the Midwest.
But the West was the place...
Where ultimately the 1860 election would be decided, the West was the place where the slavery question would be decided, and Douglass, who had a chance to win over the West simply by saying, I'm against slavery and my solution, popular sovereignty, will bring about the end of slavery...
Douglass refused to do it.
He refused to do it because he believed on principle, it is not my job to take sides in a matter that is decided by the states alone.
And so in doing this, Douglass created a vulnerability.
He set himself up for Abraham Lincoln to step in and essentially say that Douglass's position was a disguised form of defending slavery.
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