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Feb. 9, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
48:41
SENDING THEM HOME Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep766
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Coming up, I'll tell you how the Cybersecurity Infrastructure Agency, CISA, knew the risks and dangers of absentee ballots and mail-in dropboxes and still worked to promote them and to censor the public from discussing those exact risks and dangers.
Debbie's going to join me for our weekly roundup.
We're going to talk about the Colorado case before the Supreme Court.
We're going to talk about how to deport illegals and also the example of Javier Millet.
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.
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.
This has been quite an eventful week.
Big decisions on the border deal that has happily gone into a crash and burn in the Senate.
It is now off the table and McConnell and Schumer are trying to rescue the Ukraine funding and rescue the Israel funding, but the border thing is a done decision.
It's been shut down happily.
And, of course, the massive Supreme Court case on removing Trump from the ballot in Colorado.
Many of us didn't think that was going to fly, and the hostility of the court makes it pretty clear that it's not going to fly.
Debbie's going to join me. We're going to talk about these things.
I want to talk in this opening segment about Some very interesting documents that have come out about CISA. Now what is CISA? The Cyber Security and Infrastructure Agency.
It's an influential part of the government.
It's supposed to maintain cyber protection for elections and for other things.
Now as it turns out, CISA... Based upon internal documents and reports knew that mail-in balloting was insecure, dangerous, susceptible to fraud, and not even necessary at all.
Not even necessary at all.
why? Because there was no credible evidence that COVID was going to spread if people voted in person. Lots of other countries were having in-person voting. There was no evidence that that was enhancing the spread of COVID. By and large, people are standing in line to vote outdoors, and they go and vote and leave and go home. So, the whole pretext that we have to change the rules, that we have to have a different way of voting, that we
need to be installing all these drop boxes, because people can't even be expected what to take your vote to City Hall.
No, you've got to have a drop box in your neighborhood.
All of this was done on a false pretext, and SISA knew that.
Moreover, SISA knew that mail-in balloting and mail-in drop boxes have all kinds of problems that normal voting doesn't have.
Now, you don't need to be a genius.
You don't need to be in SISA.
You don't actually need to have sort of cyber knowledge in order to know that a vote in person is very secure.
There's a whole team of people there.
You sign in.
You show your ID.
You go in behind a curtain.
You're given a ballot.
You vote the ballot.
And you leave without the ballot.
The ballot is already scanned.
It's already put in.
And all that remains is for the ballot to be counted, to be tabulated.
That's it.
So the possibilities for cheating there are really hard.
I mean, how can you cheat?
What are you going to do?
Bring another ballot in your pocket and switch the two ballots?
The chances of cheating in person are not impossible.
But they're very, very low.
On the other hand, in a mail-in ballot, the ballot is mailed out.
It may or may not go to the right person.
It may or may not go to the right address.
Even once it gets there, the ballot is opened by who?
Not necessarily by the person it's addressed to.
Could be opened by a family member.
Could be opened by somebody else.
The ballot is then filled out.
There's often a signature on the envelope, by the way, not on the ballot, but on the envelope.
Often that signature isn't properly checked or matched or verified.
Then the ballots are mailed back.
Again, that itself is a dicey process, not just because the post office is a dicey operation, but also because you give it to somebody.
Give it to your brother or family.
Will you drop the ballot off?
Let's say he decides, I don't like the way my brother's going to vote.
I'm not going to drop it off at all.
So SISA is aware of the 15 different ways in which voting can be obstructed, can be tampered with, makes things delayed, makes things more difficult, and as I say, is not even necessary in the first place.
So you would think that with this knowledge, SISA would...
Come out against mail-in balloting, try to keep the process as secure as possible, but in fact, SISA does the opposite.
SISA promotes mail-in balloting.
SISA even promotes censorship of people who raise the very same questions, the very same objections, point out the very same risks that SISA is fully aware of.
So, people are censored, in other words, for raising legitimate questions about counting, about delays, about the possibilities of fraud.
And again, SISA, on the one hand, knows it, and at the same time, they're participating in the censorship operation.
Now, SISA, at one point, does brief the media specifically.
But guess what? Even though SISA briefs the media, on these risks that SISA is aware of, the media articles that appear say the exact opposite of what SISA says.
In other words, the media goes, decides that because Donald Trump is questioning mail-in balloting, because Donald Trump is saying that the process is going to be tampered with, there's going to be fraud, the media ignores the CISA warnings and basically attacks Trump for spreading misinformation, even though, again, the media has been briefed by CISA that these are legitimate dangers, these are real questions about mail-in balloting.
So what we're seeing here is, I've talked at other times about this kind of institutional breakdown in the United States, and we're seeing it on so many different levels.
And here we have two separate institutions, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency.
They're not to be trusted, and they have earned our mistrust and our distrust, and then the media, which is not to be trusted.
In fact, as I've said, when you read something or see something on CNN or MSNBC, not only should you not believe it, It's almost like you should start off your starting premises to believe the exact opposite because it is more likely that the exact opposite is true than what you're hearing.
These are propagandists, they are deceptive people, and being on guard against their lies is now one of the necessary duties of citizenship.
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Debbie's here with me for our Friday roundup and, well, she's not quite herself the last couple of days and it's not because of my references on the podcast.
It's actually because of her mom who has not been doing well.
So, Let's talk about, I mean, your mom's 87 and she's had various ailments over the years, but it seems like at a certain age, these things like intensify or they all gang up on you and then you're suddenly faced with the prospect of my mom won't be here forever.
Yeah. Well, as you know, for the last, I don't know, 10 years or so, every time my mom gets a cold, it goes directly to her lungs.
She gets pneumonia, very ill.
This is why I was so afraid during COVID that COVID would get her because of this, right?
Yeah. I mean, you had her wearing a mask before COVID. Yeah, I did, and everybody says masks don't work, but for her, it was more of a matter of just catching little colds, people sneezing or coughing in her face and all those things.
It minimized it.
It maybe didn't eliminate it, but it did minimize it.
So anyway... All that to say, thank goodness she got a very mild form of COVID during the pandemic and she was fine.
It didn't do anything to her lungs because it wasn't that type, right?
But since maybe December, she has been, actually even before then, for the last three months, she's been having this horrible cough and And she got diagnosed with COPD, but nothing that they've given her worked.
And so in the last few days, it got to where she really couldn't even breathe.
So she went to the hospital, and she's there now, and I'm leaving also in a few days here to be with her.
And her birthday's next week.
So I wanted to spend her birthday with her anyway, so I was going to go anyway.
But I'm going earlier than planned.
And, you know, just keep her in your prayers.
She is very devout, and she's 88.
So it's, you know, we know where she's going, and that's a comfort.
But obviously, when you have ailing parents, you still...
I mean, it's interesting how you, it's still a blow when you lose a parent, and it doesn't matter what the age is.
I mean, my dad died in the year 2000.
I was 39.
But I felt it, you know, because he had been such an influence in my life that I realized it dawns on you.
And of course, in your case, you've been raised by your mom.
Single mom. Since you were 10.
Yep. Yep. And your mom left Venezuela, came to America, so she's been your support all the way through.
And your mom is a major character, I've got to say.
She's very social.
In fact, COVID hit her hard because she loves to get out there, she loves to do things.
She's a definite people person, and she loves being the center of attention.
And we used to always tease her because she loved going to the hospital so that people could go visit her.
She loved the visits.
Oh my gosh. I also was chuckling because you once said that, you know, because your mom, every time we would call her, she seemed to be going to a funeral.
Yeah, she liked that too.
And I got the idea it was because she just not enjoyed funerals, but enjoyed the social aspect of funerals.
But then she also made the point of view that this is a way to ensure that many people come to her.
Yeah. Totally in character for your mom.
In any event, let's talk about some of the big things that happened this week.
One of them, of course, was the Colorado case coming before the Supreme Court.
Now, you know, we customarily expect the left just to go down the ideological road.
In fact, they're more reliable in doing that than our side is.
And yet, here was a case where you had Eleanor Kagan, you had even Ketanji Jackson, Expressing skepticism that Colorado could throw Trump off the ballot.
Do you think...
Why do you think that was?
Well, it's obvious, honey.
I mean, if they could do it to Trump, we could do it to Biden.
So that's what dawned on them.
Absolutely. So they weren't doing it because they are committed to principle, because they believe in the Constitution.
None of that. No. We're good to go.
Check. So that's giving aid and comfort to the enemies of Iran.
Exactly. Iran. The border.
The border. His corruption.
Exactly. Not to mention the fact, what about the efforts to rig the 2020 election?
All of the above. Isn't that an insurrection?
All of the above. And so if we say it's an insurrection, then, by golly, we're going to take him off the ballot because we believe it's an insurrection.
So where does this stop?
When states do not want to participate in our national election— We will essentially...
You know how they talk about the end of democracy?
My friend, that will be the end of democracy.
Yeah, so they, in other words, what you're saying is that they respect power politics.
They recognized in a Machiavellian way that even though we, the left, have been pushing this, I mean, there are innumerable leftist law professors who have been arguing that, yes, Colorado has every right.
There are all these amicus briefs filed with the court by leftist organizations, all backing.
And so I think it's very interesting to see the left take a whipping back Not just from Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, but also from, in a sense, their own justices.
Their own side. Because what are they going to say if the decision comes out 9-0 or 8-1?
It's such a slapdown.
And by the way, this is the first big case.
Of all the Trump cases, this is the first big case that's going up to the Supreme Court.
So I think just based on the arguments, I was quite encouraged to see that the court is like, You know, there's no end to this.
If you let a state make a factual determination, this was an insurrection according to us.
There's no end to it. No end.
And let's talk about one of those, I believe, real insurrections going on, and that is the influx of these people coming in.
The border. You know how there are candidates, including our very own Brandon, who say, I'm going to deport every single illegal that we have in this country.
And I always tell you, that is very easy to say, but very difficult to do.
Yeah.
Yeah. Well, I mean, this is how I would do it.
And of course, I agree that once you've created this situation where these people are scattered, you don't know where they are, it's not going to be easy.
And you're not going to get all of them.
You're only going to get some of them.
So the question then becomes, how do you get some of them?
The first question you have to ask is, is there a way to get some of these people to self-deport?
Because obviously, if you can get people to leave on their own, it's going to be better.
I mean, the...
The second question is, you have to ask, who do these people interact with?
What is the support structure?
Well, let me tell you something right now.
As you know, there is a big controversy right now in New York that illegal immigrants in New York are going to get a prepaid debit card in a $53 million program, city program.
Right now, they don't even have money to pay their, like, City workers, they're laying off people.
They have all kinds of fiscal problems.
They're even trying to defund parts of the police.
All these things. But yet these people are going to get prepaid cards for food and shelter and whatever else.
So if they know, if these people are getting these cards, they obviously know who these people are, right?
So instead of giving them these cards, why don't you give them a one-way ticket to Mexico?
Right. Well, that's true.
But I think what this example points to is the fact that even if you have a federal policy of deporting illegals, there will be cities and states that are run by Democrats that will try to subvert it.
But again, a lot of these cities are complaining that, you know, when we bust the illegals in buses, Texas sent them on a bus, Florida sent them on a bus to Chicago, to New York, Philadelphia, they're complaining, right?
So they know that even though they call themselves sanctuary cities, No, but I think what they're doing is their complaints are not so much send these people home.
Their complaints are we're not getting enough federal aid to pay for bankrolling all these people.
So it's almost like what these cities are doing, including Mayor Adams and others, is they're saying, hey, Biden, if you want these people in, you've got to bankroll them.
You've got to provide federal aid.
We don't want to be raiding the city budget.
Why? Because in cities like Chicago, as you know, there are black communities where activists are coming forward now.
So bottom line is that these black activists are coming forward.
They're not going to vote Democrat.
Right. Right. They're even saying that.
They're going to lose this constituency that they have had for so long because of what they're doing.
So I don't know why they're taking such a gamble on these illegals.
I mean, is it a case where they feel like, you know what, we'll wait it out.
These people will have children.
These children that will be born in America will become citizens.
They will vote in 18 years.
We're going to guarantee a one-party bill.
You know, honey, that's part of it.
But there's another part of it that is a little more sly, and that is, you mentioned to me just, was it yesterday, that California is going to get four, potentially four new congressional districts, right?
Now, think about that.
People are leaving California.
So how is it possible that a state that is losing its citizens who are going to other states, there's a whole procession of Californians coming to Texas, for example, and How is it gaining population?
The answer is illegals.
And it is a detail that maybe needs to be fixed, but in the census right now, a census is a body count.
They don't discriminate between legals and illegals, and the census is used as the basis for a portion Exactly.
So California, by gaining illegals, gains population, which means it gains political representation, which means it gains Democrats, which means the Democrats benefit that way.
So quite apart from having to wait a whole generation for them to have children, for their children to grow up, this is a way they benefit now from illegals.
And that's not even counting voter fraud.
No, it's not. And guys, guess what?
It's going to happen in Texas.
We are going to become like California.
Because of all the illegals here.
Yeah, and this is why it's so important to do something about it now.
Because, look, if we lose this next election, I'm really convinced that we're going to lose the country.
And I don't know about you, but I don't know that there's any other country to go to, really.
Yeah. In all actuality?
I mean, I believe there are places to go to in the world if you're going to be forced to flight.
Not if the left follows.
Because as I've told you, every time...
Well, the goal of the left is global tyranny.
Global tyranny. At least global tyranny.
Now, they don't call it tyranny because to them it's a certain type of freedom.
Because to them, the trans phenomenon is freedom.
Abortion is freedom. So they have come up with a whole new definition of freedom.
Yeah, but along with their freedom, there's also a fiscal portion to their freedom.
There's a fiscal portion. Bankruptcy.
Because when you pay Peter, when you rob Peter to pay Paul, guess what's going to happen when you don't have any more Peters?
You know? I mean, I'm just saying.
Well, absolutely. And not to mention the fact that their freedom goes along with censorship, going after political opponents, one-party states.
Look at South America. Look what's happened to Venezuela.
Look what happened to Argentina.
Argentina before Malay.
The left is a cancer.
Not just with social issues, but with fiscal issues.
They go together, right?
So, again...
It's not even a matter of losing our kids to the trans issue or abortion or anything like that.
It's also the fact that we are going bankrupt as a nation, and we are.
I mean, look at the trillions of dollars in debt we are.
In about 20 years, it's going to be like a million dollars per family, right?
Well, even the interest on the debt, I just read today, the interest on the debt now exceeds the entire defense budget.
Think about that. You're looking at the line items of the budget, and the biggest one, the biggest one, bigger than any single social program, bigger than the defense budget, interest, not even the debt, but interest on the debt.
Wow.
We're headed not in a good direction, guys.
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I'm back with Debbie for our Friday Roundup.
In the last segment, honey, you mentioned Javier Millet.
And apparently Millet is in Israel this week.
And you subscribe.
I always chuckle about this because you subscribe to a very left-wing Jewish publication.
I'm not sure why, actually. It's called Haaretz.
And these guys, this is sort of like, you know...
MSNBC, Israeli version.
Or even Mother Jones.
Or even Mother Jones.
And what is so eerie is that the same arguments you get from the left here about the trans...
I mean, we talk about Trump derangement syndrome.
These people have... They have Bibi derangement syndrome.
Totally. Yeah.
And not to mention the fact that they're often even willing to, it seems, empower the enemies of Israel to deliver a blow to their domestic, what we see here.
I know. It's the same thing.
But it is crazy. So what's funny here is that here's Millay.
He's in Israel.
He's at the wall. He's praying at the wall.
But look at this.
They go on to say that Millay has, quote, positioned himself as a firm ally of Israel.
As if he's not a firm ally, this is like a political positioning.
It also goes on to say Millay, who was raised Catholic.
Now, they nowhere mention that Millay...
He wants to convert. He's converting.
He's in the process of converting to Judaism.
But they go on to say that Millet is kind of a right-winger.
He's changing price controls on medicine and food and so on.
And then they say, quote, his itinerary, it seems, is studded with rabbis.
Okay. First of all, he's in Israel.
Second of all, he's converting to Judaism.
He obviously has an affinity with meeting with these rabbis and probably learning about the Jewish law and the history and also about their situation.
They almost act like they don't trust him.
They don't trust him. Like, what's he up to?
Why is he meeting with rabbis?
What's his agenda?
Well, look at this. I'm quoting, it's unusual for world leaders, and particularly ones who aren't Jewish.
They're right there.
They don't want to let their readers know that Millet is on the path to Judaism.
For a little bit of context, Millet was raised Catholic, but apparently he became alienated, not because he didn't like the Catholic religion, but he doesn't like the current Pope.
He's not a fan of Francis, and in fact, Who is?
Or at least many of us are not.
And isn't he from Argentina as well?
The Pope? He is. He's from Argentina.
So Millet probably identifies Francis with the liberation theology, the socialism, the very forces that in his view and rightly have destroyed Argentina.
Yeah. And so, but Millet has been, and this now we're going beyond the article, he's really trying to bring about a sort of Reaganite revolution in Argentina.
Right. Now he's dealing with a Congress that is not entirely on his side and is blocking him.
Ooh, that sounds familiar. Yeah, well Reagan had some of that, although Reagan was very successful in the beginning and And also, again, in the middle of his term, in being able to win pretty decisive majorities for tax cuts and tax reform.
He was blocked by Congress in some other ways.
Some of the nuclear policies and so on.
Strategic defense was blocked by Congress.
But Milley combines this sort of very clear sense of, I want to go from here to there.
Now, I realize that I'm not going to be able to get all the way there.
I also realize that at times I have to take the bus, at times I get to take the train.
Only in a few cases can I fly.
So he combines a clarity of goal with a pragmatism about how to get there.
And he's very forthright with his own supporters.
In fact, some of the extreme libertarians are blasting him and saying, you know, you're not getting it done, Millay.
And he's like, I can't.
He can't go from zero to ten, right?
Yeah, and not to mention he's not a dictator.
Right, right. So he has to operate within democratic systems.
Yes. So ironically, the very guy Millet that people say, and I love this, you know, you have guys like Millet, he wins the election, and people say he's anti-democratic, or he's a threat to democracy.
And you know who else they're saying that about?
Yeah, Bukele. Bukele.
So Bukele wins by...
Look, Bukele has won by the biggest margin of any democratic leader in living memory.
He annihilated the opposition.
So his success is a triumph of democracy.
So what does Ilhan Omar say?
We need to investigate Bukele.
He's a threat to democracy.
You know, the women's march in El Salvador, right?
They were calling him a fascist.
He's a fascist.
He's a fascist. And I'm like thinking, wow, doesn't that sound familiar?
It sounds familiar. And again, think of it.
The reason they say he's a fascist is because he brings in the military and annihilates the gangs.
And he explained that.
In fact, in his inaugural speech, Bukele goes, listen, I had a choice.
Either I prefer the rights of the criminals or Or I prefer the rights of the citizens.
Because I chose the rights of the citizens.
And do you realize that El Salvador, which was one of the most dangerous countries in the world, is today the safest country in the world?
Think about that. I can't even get over that.
Yeah. Yeah, I heard that. It really shows you that a politician who campaigns firmly on something as important as this...
Not to mention, it also shows you that you can win against the cartels.
Because you know how we always think, oh, once the cartel takes over...
They're so powerful because they've got this and they've got that.
And Bukele was faced with that.
And he goes, you know what... I've got the military.
And he lines up these guys, and many of them are 18 and 19 years old, and he gives this incredibly inspirational speech, basically saying, I'm giving you the weapons, now go and take back your country.
And they did. It's incredible.
It's incredible. It's incredible.
So this is... And the media's...
Dead silence about Malay right now.
They're very uncomfortable with Malay.
They're dead silent about Bukele.
So what's happening is that an alternative model is emerging in the world that works.
And it works for poor countries.
I mean, El Salvador was poor before.
It's poor now. But it's poor and safe.
And it was poor and unsafe.
And I'm sure that he will at some point have a good economic plan for the people as well.
I think he does. Yeah. I think he does.
Let's switch gears and let's talk about this interesting case where you got a school shooter.
And as often happens, the school shooter in some cases is apprehended, in other cases ends up dead.
But the question at issue here is, were the parents of the school shooter...
He's responsible for what he did through negligence.
And I assume that what they're talking about is, let's say the guy made threats.
Let's say it was well known that this was a very dangerous kid.
He posted online or he made declarations.
I'm going to do this. He accumulates a big weaponry.
He's around shooting. Maybe he's carving up animals.
I don't know.
So the question then becomes, in a society where parents don't have full control over their children, but are supposed to exercise a certain discipline over their children, and in this particular case, the parents were found guilty by a jury of manslaughter, which means reckless behavior, right?
Manslaughter is like you're driving on the highway, you kill somebody, you didn't mean to kill them.
Obviously, the parents didn't intend for their son to do this.
What do you make of extending the responsibility to parents?
Is it fair?
Is it too much?
Bye.
Well, to be honest, I think that it depends.
It really depends. Because if the parents knew that their child was reckless, and if they thought that perhaps maybe mentally disturbed, maybe had a mental condition, and they didn't try to intervene...
Then, yes, I think they're reckless because you know that your child is capable of doing something so horrific, right?
And yet, you did nothing to stop it.
So, if that was the case with this mother...
If there were a lot of red flags and she ignored all of them, then yes, I think it's great.
I think it sends a really big message to parents.
You know what? If you don't watch your kids and if you don't try to intervene before something really bad happens...
Or if you can't control them, report them.
I mean, think of it this way. You have a kid.
Let's say you're a single mom or even parents, but the kid is much bigger and stronger than the parents, right?
And the kid goes, I'm going to go out and I'm going to kill some people.
And you can't stop them.
You're not strong enough. You don't have any control over the kid, whether or not they live in your house.
Report them. Yes, but sometimes, and this is, I know this for a fact, sometimes what happens is that they report it and the law does nothing because they say, well, he hasn't done anything.
Yeah, but see, in that case, you can't prosecute the parents.
You know, okay, that's what I mean, is that if, did she do this?
Did she, in fact, try doing this and was met with all kinds of obstacles?
Like, no, you can't, you cannot institutionalize them.
You can't incarcerate him.
He hasn't done anything yet. Yeah, he hasn't committed a crime.
He's merely said threats. Right, he hasn't committed a crime, therefore we can't do it.
So if she took steps to do this, to prevent him from doing something so bad like this, then yeah, I don't think she's responsible.
But if she didn't...
So I think what we're saying is that this is a fact-dependent sort of prosecution, that the parents should be able to defend themselves by saying, well, listen, A, I didn't have full control.
B, I took the steps that I thought were reasonable under the circumstances.
And C, the authorities.
So that would be an adequate defense.
But if the parent doesn't take those steps, you're saying, and in some ways, as we know, and this is sadly true, a lot of parents...
And this is true even in small things, become enablers of bad behavior on the part of their kids.
And so it's not unreasonable to say that if the parent hadn't been the enabler like this, the kid wouldn't have turned out like that.
And the kid wouldn't have done these things.
So it's a complex business interfering with the parent-child relationship.
But it seems to me in these extreme circumstances where the kid is not just a delinquent, not just a bully, but going out and killing people.
It's possible that their responsibility does extend to the parents.
I'm continuing my discussion of the case for Stephen Douglas.
And I remind you of a quotation that Douglas said that I quoted a few days ago.
Douglas says, I'm not pro-slavery.
I think it's a curse beyond computation to both white and black.
But we exist as a nation by virtue only of the Constitution, and under that, there is no way to abolish it.
Now why is it that Douglas is so emphatic in taking his stand on the Constitution?
Well, the reason is that the abolitionists who are at the other end of the spectrum, let's remember that the abolitionists are the sort of far wing of the Republican Party.
The mainstream of the Republican Party is not abolitionists.
Lincoln is not an abolitionist.
But what are the abolitionists saying?
What the abolitionists are saying is, we have no allegiance to the Constitution.
We don't care about the Constitution.
Slavery is wrong, period, end of story.
And so, if you have to throw out the Constitution, the abolitionists would sometimes have meetings with which they would burn the Constitution.
It seems a little hard to believe.
We might think of the Southern slaveholders burning the Constitution, but no.
The Southerners took their stand on the Constitution.
And so Calhoun, for example, had an ingenious theory of constitutional interpretation that essentially made the Constitution into a pro-slavery document.
Douglas is not the same as Calhoun.
Calhoun is a Southern Democrat and...
Douglas is a Northern Democrat.
Now, they are both, in their own way, defending the Democratic Party.
And the Democratic Party is the party of slavery.
And that's what Lincoln will say.
He'll say, look, you've got pro-slavery Democrats in the South.
And you've got concealed pro-slavery Democrats in the North, including Douglas.
So we'll come to Lincoln's argument eventually.
But here is Douglas, and you'll see that Douglas here is taking a position different, not just from Lincoln, but also from Calhoun.
He's talking about slavery.
In the North, he says,"...it is not to be expected that we should take the position that slavery is a positive good, a positive blessing." And then he gives a kind of a crushing argument for why he's not going to do that.
He's not going to say that slavery is a good thing.
He goes, if we did assume such a position, it would be a very pertinent inquiry.
Why do you not adopt this institution?
This actually reminds me of a very amusing quip that was made by Abraham Lincoln at one point.
Some guy was talking to Lincoln about the virtues of slavery and why it was good for the slave and why there was nothing wrong with it and slavery was actually an excellent idea.
And Lincoln's response is, well, if you keep telling me this and if you're persuaded of this, why don't you become a slave?
If slavery is such a wonderful thing, why don't you derive the advantage of it by assuming the position of a slave?
But you won't do that, which suggests that you know deep down it's not such a great thing after all.
That's kind of what Douglas is saying here.
He's saying, I'm not going to say that slavery is a good thing, because if it's a good thing, well, why don't you have slavery in Illinois?
Why aren't you promoting slavery, Douglas, in your own state?
And he goes on to say, So we see here how Douglass is pressing toward his central argument, and all his other arguments will radiate out of this central claim, and that is that, look...
On slavery, as on all moral issues, by and large, communities have to make their own decision and live with the consequences.
So slavery has maybe some advantages.
Maybe it's an efficient way to do plantation agriculture.
Maybe it's a great way to grow cotton.
But it's going to have a lot of disadvantages.
You're going to have people living in your house or in your household who want to murder you.
You're going to have people, for example, who are going to disrupt you.
You're probably going to have mulattoes showing up on your plantation because of the philandering of the slave owner.
Douglas, again, doesn't say any of this explicitly, but he's implying it.
He's saying, if you want slavery, you're going to get the advantages of it and the disadvantages of it.
You're going to have runaways.
You're going to have to chase them to free states, try to get them back.
That's your problem. We don't think it's so great.
That's why we don't have it in the North.
So, Douglas is always searching for a way, essentially for people who disagree about slavery, to live in the same country as fellow citizens.
That's the interesting question, because Douglas is saying, if there's any moral question so big that people not only disagree about it, but don't even have a way to disagree, how can they continue as fellow citizens?
Now, California, as I mentioned yesterday, became a free state in 1850.
And Douglas looks out west and he says, what happened in California?
Did Congress go to California and force California, listen, you can't have slavery, you must be a free state, we're not going to allow you to have slavery even though you want to?
No, Congress didn't do that.
The Californians looked at slavery and they go, well, it's not really going to work here.
We don't want it. And so even though there were Southerners who had moved to California, the simple fact of it is without a whole bunch of even conflict or strife, California decided it made sense to be a free state.
And abolitionist sentiment in California was virtually non-existent because the Californians go, it doesn't work for us.
We don't want it. We're not going to tell you what works in South Carolina, but we don't want slavery in California.
And Douglass goes, there you go.
That's what I'm saying.
What I'm telling you is that as people move out west, Oregon, California, ultimately Washington State, and so on, they're not going to choose slavery.
So even though they're allowed to choose it, we have popular sovereignty, we're going to let them decide the matter, we kind of know how they're going to decide anyway.
And what that means is that the free states are going to outnumber the slave states, and the delicate balance of power is going to shift I won't say in the favor of the North, because now we're talking not even so much about the North, but about the West, but it's going to shift against slavery.
Let's remember that the middle of the 19th century was a time of massive immigration.
Millions of people coming to America, almost all of them from Europe.
So these are white guys, but I say the word white with a little bit of qualification because since everybody's white, they weren't understood as white.
No one said, oh, there are all these white people coming over.
No. Because they're all white, they're going to say, oh, there are all these Irishmen coming over, all these Germans, all these Scandinavians.
There are big debates about some of them don't speak English.
They come here speaking German.
This was a big issue in Philadelphia, for example.
Ben Franklin talked about it as early as the previous century, which is the 18th century.
So about 40% of the immigrants are Irish, about 33% are German.
There are also people coming in from other parts of Europe.
And These were Douglass' people.
Interestingly, they're not Abraham Lincoln's people.
Abraham Lincoln is actually supported by people who are anti-immigrant.
They're so-called know-nothings.
They are people who belong to parties that are called like the American Party.
And their idea is that immigrants are bad.
And they mean immigrants from Europe are bad.
Shut the doors! Now, their main reason for saying this is not cultural.
They're not saying that these people aren't, you know, pro-family or they don't want to work.
In fact, their fear is the opposite.
They do want to work, but they'll work for lower prices than Americans who are here now.
So there is an anti-immigrant sentiment mobilizing.
And interestingly, that anti-immigrant sentiment is pro-Republican.
Perhaps in some ways, like today, the Democratic Party is the party of welcoming these immigrants and...
Stephen Douglas is, you guessed it, Irish.
He isn't a new immigrant.
His family has been here for a while, but he has Irish roots.
He's very sympathetic to these immigrants, and he believes that they are the solution to the long-term problem in America.
The immigrants, in other words, will keep adding to the ranks of America and will ultimately sway the balance against slavery.
So, in a sense, what Douglass is saying is that the example of California becomes an example for the whole West and ultimately for the whole country.
Already in Douglass' time, the free states were greater in population than the southern states.
And the free states also have a majority by themselves in the Electoral College.
Now, this is critical because you can see right away why no one can win the presidency by having the votes of the South alone.
You need the South and you need some elements of the North.
And the political kind of genius of the Democratic Party is it was able to get the South by being sufficiently pro-slavery and then to capture enough of the North that was...
Sort of pro-slavery, or had some dealings with slavery, or was purchasers of southern cotton, or actually just wanted to leave the South alone and didn't think there was a North's business to be interfering in what the South had.
So you had all these elements in the North that were...
Part of the Democratic coalition, Douglas' job is to keep this coalition together.
Lincoln's job is to break up the coalition.
In other words, Lincoln's job is to drive a wedge between the Northern Democrats and the Southern Democrats and peel off Northern Democrats who are sufficiently anti-slavery that they can't stay in the Democratic Party anymore.
And so, if you're asking what is the Lincoln-Douglas debates really all about, it's about the Democratic Party's effort to hang on to being a national party that's drawing from the North and the South, that's uniting the slave owners with Northern Democrats on the principle that slavery should be a matter that should be decided by each community for itself.
Abraham Lincoln is going to argue that that's not going to work, that that not only doesn't make any sense, but is in fact morally and constitutionally wrong.
And so the Republican Party stakes its mantle on the idea that even though we're not trying to abolish slavery now, the end of slavery should be our goal.
Slavery may be a necessary evil, but it's an evil all the same, and we need a party dedicated step by step to getting rid of it.
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