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March 27, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
50:37
THE GOPs VANISHING HOUSE MAJORITY Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep799
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Coming up, what can we make about these House Republicans getting out of there and jeopardizing the Republican majority?
What are the really frightening implications of that?
I'll use the recent flare-up at The Daily Wire to expose the question, what is the real anti-Semitism that we are dealing with in the world today?
And conservative influencer Isabella DeLuca joins me.
She's going to talk about her preposterous targeting, the targeting of her in a January 6th case for doing essentially nothing.
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This is the Dinesh D'Souza Show.
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I am very alarmed at this pattern of Republicans in the House Not only making decisions about retiring and not running, but in some cases quitting now or quitting imminently in a short time, in a few days, and putting the GOP House majority into question.
Now, this can be interpreted in one of two ways.
It can be interpreted as something that is unfortunate but accidental.
In other words, you've got 200-plus Republicans.
They all have their own family issues to deal with.
They also have ideological issues, including maybe disagreements with the leadership, anxiety maybe about Trump as a nominee.
And so some decide to stay, some decide to go.
And this is just part of an organic process.
That's one possibility. Let's call that the accidental explanation.
But there's another possibility, and that possibility is that there is some diabolical scheme afoot to destroy the GOP House majority.
This is the, let's call it the intentional explanation.
And, you know, we all...
Can think about this very much in the mode of Detective Columbo, namely, which is correct?
Now, the left is always saying, well, you on the right are always engaging in conspiracy theories.
No, we're not engaging in conspiracy theories.
What we're actually asking is whether an event that occurs, and you can ask this generally about any event.
I mean, a cargo ship careens into a bridge.
You can't automatically say it was an accident.
Well, it is an accident of sorts, but the point is, is there something more to it?
Is there some larger explanation?
Just to say accident doesn't specify what went wrong.
Was there a mechanical failure?
And whose failure was that?
Was DEI responsible for that failure?
So the probing for causes based upon evidence we have...
And the evidence may be insufficient.
Someone could say, well, we don't know, Dinesh, what really caused that to happen.
You can't say it's DEI. And I'm like, I'm not saying it's DEI. But what I am saying is, listen, we have DEI. Corporations in the industries like shipping and airlines are boasting about it.
They run ads about it.
And then we have a spate of bad events.
Ship smashing into a bridge with casualties, windows flying off the airplane, the emergency, the landing gear not functioning, the plane careening off the course.
So all of this suggests something is going wrong and it's not unreasonable to ask what has changed?
What is the factor that would explain why this is happening?
Let's come back to what's happening in the house.
Keeping this in mind.
Is there any evidence of intentionality?
Now when Ken Buck decided that he was going to quit, I thought that this was quite likely a scheme on the part of Ken Buck and maybe some others around him to thwart Lauren Boebert.
Why? Because Lauren Boebert is running for Ken Buck's seat and She's, of course, a Trumpster, and he's not.
He probably doesn't approve of her.
And so by him deciding not to run, he forces a special election.
Now, Lauren Boebert cannot run in that special election.
Why? Because she would have to give up her seat to do that.
She's not going to give up her seat.
That would, right there, jeopardize the GOP House majority.
So Lauren Boebert's going to hold on to her seat, but that means that somebody else will win that runoff and become the incumbent.
They will serve through November.
They will be the incumbent for the next election.
Lauren Boebert will have to beat that person.
So I thought, look, Ken Buck's got somewhat of a petty local scheme in his district, but he doesn't want to be succeeded by Lauren Boebert.
That's why he's doing it. But then came Gallagher.
This is Mike Gallagher, who represents the 8th Congressional District of Wisconsin, who had said he was going to retire, but then decided that he was going to retire on April 19th.
So, coming up, in about a month, I'm going to stop.
But it's a very significant date, because he's resigning in such a way that had he decided to retire...
At a different time, there would be a special election.
And that means, because it's a conservative district, that there would be another Republican, not Gallagher, but somebody else who would be in that seat.
But by Gallagher deciding to retire when he is, just the way the dates work, the way the calendar works, his seat remains vacant until, well, until January of next year, where somebody new will retire.
We'll win that seat.
And what that means is the GOP majority now shrinks.
It's a one-seat majority.
Just one defection, one more Ken Buck, one more Gallagher, and the Democrats become the majority.
Wow! Not only is that disturbing in and of itself, But it's disturbing on one particular count that is worth mentioning because it is so unnerving.
You remember when the Supreme Court took up the Colorado case, this was the Colorado Secretary of State saying, we're going to throw Trump off the ballot because he is, in our view of the matter, an insurrectionist according to the 14th Amendment, so he is ineligible to run for office.
And of course, there were other states that were ready to do that.
I think that there was Maine, the Secretary of State had already said, I'm going to do it too.
And there was a move in Hawaii and some other places to do it also.
And what did the Supreme Court say?
Well, the Supreme Court said, look, there is a clause in the Constitution that says that someone who has participated or led an insurrection can be held ineligible to run for office.
But the Supreme Court said that is not for the states to decide.
That is for someone else to decide.
Well, who? Congress.
Congress. And Congress can decide it by the way that Congress normally decides things, by passing a law.
Now, what do you need to pass a law?
Well, you need a majority in the House, you need a majority in the Senate, and then it's signed by the President.
And here's the point.
The Democrats have a majority in the Senate, they have the presidency, they just don't have the House.
That's all they need.
And in fact, there is a bill to outlaw Trump from being on the ballot that has already been submitted by Jamie Raskin.
So my here's my point. If the Republicans lose their majority prior to November, then it means that the Democrats could say, all right, let's move really fast and pass a law in the House, and then the Senate, and then Biden will sign it, taking Trump off the ballot as an insurrectionist.
And we know in advance that that law would be held to be legal, constitutional by the Supreme Court.
Why? Because the Supreme Court itself issued that clear interpretation of the 14th Amendment, that the enforcement of this amendment and of this provision is in the hands of Congress.
So Congress, in other words, does have the right to proclaim or to make the judgment that someone is an insurrectionist and keep them off the ballot.
Now, it's not all that simple.
Things like this can be filibustered in the Senate.
You might need to get over 60 votes.
But even then, there is a never-Trump faction in the Senate.
It is conceivable.
I don't think likely, but it is conceivable that you could even...
And there's the other possibility, which is that they decide to nuke the filibuster.
And that's something that has happened before.
It's something that could happen again.
So all of this is a way of saying that we are on the edge of a precipice here.
And it is partly due...
I mean, there's so much blame to go around.
Do you blame Ken Buck?
Yes. Mike Gallagher?
Yes. And there are some theories floating around that never-Trumpers are funding these people by promising them cushy jobs...
All of this I consider to be well within the realm of possibility.
I mean, think of a congressman, a guy who makes, what, $179,000 a year.
He's been making that for, let's say, for the past 10 or 15 years.
And somebody comes to him and says, hey, listen, if you quit now, I will arrange that you will get a job as the president of a non-profit foundation or you'll be on the board of my company.
I'll pay you a million dollars a year.
This will be a five million dollar payout, let's say, over the next five years.
I mean, you can see why that would be a pretty lucrative incentive for someone to go, okay, well, you know what?
I was kind of thinking of getting out anyway.
I'll do it now.
And so for that amount of money, And remember, I'm tempted to call it a bribe, but it's a legal bribe.
You're allowed to tell someone, hey, listen, if you quit now, I'll hire you to come work for my company.
So this is some very low-down, dirty politics going on.
And again, I don't know who, I don't know how much, but I do blame the people doing it.
They made a pact with their constituents that they would serve out their term.
They are clearly not doing that.
I also blame the GOP leadership.
Why did you kick out Santos?
The fact that you threw out Santos, it's all because you're so high and mighty.
Oh no, we can't have someone who's a kind of impersonator and a fraud and a liar.
The Democrats haven't thrown out Menendez.
They're hanging on to Menendez for dear life because they know that that preserves their Senate majority.
They don't care if he had gold bars in his house and he was taking money from the Egyptians and whoever else.
Their point is he's a valuable vote.
So you can see here the Democrats are being more serious about this than the Republicans.
And the Republicans in some ways are the authors of their own woes and their own potential destruction.
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There's a very strange battle going on between Candace Owens on the one side and Daily Wire and some Daily Wire activists on the other side.
And the issue is antisemitism.
Now, antisemitism is a very relevant issue, and it is one that has large implications in the world.
We're seeing a new type of antisemitism in society.
different than traditional anti-semitism.
So traditional antisemitism, well, initially there was a sort of theological thrust to antisemitism.
This is the idea that the Jews are responsible for killing Christ.
And so there was a certain venom or bitterness toward the Jews, but it had a theological root.
This was the anti-Semitism, for example, of the Middle Ages and the late Middle Ages.
This was the reason, for example, or part of the reason, that Jews were thrown out of Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492, the year that Columbus left for America.
Anti-Semitism became more secular, but in the early 20th century it took the shape of a caricaturing of Jews as being a kind of polluting element in society.
as being the quintessential capitalists, as being all concerned about money.
This was the Nazi view, for example, of the Jews.
And so, antisemitism was coming from that direction.
Antisemitism today mainly comes from DEI. It mainly comes from the idea that Israel is a colonial or settler state.
Israel has, quote, occupied the region which really belongs to someone else.
Israel is the victimizer and the Palestinians are the victim.
So it is this You know, it is this anti-colonial ideology embraced by Obama.
It's a theme of Obama's dreams from my father.
But, of course, anti-colonialism has been around since it's been a movement across the world after World War II, very powerful in the 1960s.
And this is the new face of anti-Semitism.
But here we have this skirmish going on between...
Between Candace on the one side and Jeremy Boring, who's the CEO of Daily Wire, on the other.
And it devolves into things like Candace posted at one point, Christ is King!
leading to a massive debate about whether that's anti-Semitic.
Now, obviously, Christians believe that Christ is King.
And Jews don't.
I mean, we know this.
And Judaism is sort of a religion of law.
And Christianity is a religion of a savior.
I mean, look at the name Christianity.
It encompasses the name Christ.
So Christ is king. But the argument of the Daily Wireites, if I could use that phrase, is that You can say Christ is King in one way and you're not anti-Semitic.
You're just affirming that Christ is King and that's fine.
But you can deploy it in a context and in a manner that becomes anti-Semitic because it's not something that you've said particularly before.
You're saying it now, and you're saying it now to somehow separate off the Christians from the Jews.
So you've got this kind of, this is all going on, and to me, it is a distraction from something that is Much bigger that is occurring right in front of us that concerns Israel.
This is what we need to be focused on instead of, you know, the hiring policies of the Daily Wire.
I mean, the hiring policies of the Daily Wire are somewhat...
Not contradictory, because everybody knows the Daily Wire is essentially a...
I mean, it's a pro-Israel operation.
It is. Not to say that no dissent is permitted, but by and large, you kind of have to be...
It's kind of like what NBC was saying about hiring its commentators.
Like, well, we're not against hiring Republicans.
Well, okay, but the Republican has to be anti-Trump.
The Republican has to be for Biden.
So every Republican who's a commentator on NBC or MSNBC has to prove their bona fides by bashing Trump.
And they even say, if you won't bash Trump, then that's a sign that you're a cultist.
You can't be an NBC. So similarly at the Daily Wire, they have the same view of Israel.
Now, what Candace is doing, as she's pointing out, and I think in this she is correct, that Daily Wire does cancel people who don't fit in with their ideology.
Now, they have every right to do that.
Daily Wire is not the government.
They're not bound by the First Amendment.
They can hire people that subscribe to policies that they like.
They can totally do that.
But Daily Wire positionally, rhetorically, politically is like, we're against cancel culture.
At one point, Jeremy Boring even said, well, Candace, she can say whatever she wants.
We've hired her. We have a contract with her.
She's not me. She's not Ben Shapiro.
So she can have her views.
And I think that's clearly not the case.
And that's what this dispute is about.
It's kind of ultimately a dispute over who gets to work at Daily Wire, and is it a fact that this is for the Daily Wire people, a make-or-break issue?
They don't want to have a prominent person like Candace dissent so dramatically from their position on this issue.
But the point I'm making here is that That there is right now an effort to isolate Israel in the world.
There was a very cunning ceasefire resolution put forward by the United Nations.
And the resolution was designed in a way that you could...
It's hard to oppose because it said that we need a ceasefire, an immediate ceasefire.
And it separately said we also...
Demand the unconditional release of the hostages.
But the key thing that it didn't say is it didn't connect the two.
It didn't say that we want a ceasefire that is conditioned on the release of the hostages.
And the Biden administration was either fooled by this or they were on board with it, but they have signed on to this resolution, and so Israel is kind of isolated.
For the first time, in a very dramatic way, the United States goes against Israel and sides with countries like Russia and China and Iran, which, of course, are celebrating recently the One of the leading figures in Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, he's in Iran.
Israel has failed and they have no more support in the world.
Now, this guy could not have said this prior to the Biden administration's Switching sides, if you will, and now moving into the Hamas camp.
This, by the way, the groundwork for this was carefully laid when Schumer came out and essentially blasted Netanyahu, blasted the Israeli right, called...
I mean, think of it, some New Yorkers calling for elections in Israel.
And so the United States, which has been a bulwark for Israel...
At times when Israel has been relatively isolated, the United States now adds to the isolation.
The Biden administration is moving against Israel.
So while all this important stuff is going on, we have a sideshow debate about whether it is anti-Semitic in certain contexts to say that Christ is king.
And I think for me it symbolizes the way in which on the right...
We sometimes get into these side battles, which are amusing, entertaining, perhaps informative in a certain way, interesting if you have all the time in the world, but when there are big things going on that can get sidelined, that we neglect because we're focused on the sideshow over here, it's not a good thing.
So this is a very important year, and I only mention all of this to make the larger point, That there's a lot at stake in 2024, both in America and in the world.
Let's try to keep our eye on the ball.
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Guys, I'm really delighted to welcome to the podcast a new guest, Isabella DeLuca.
She's a conservative influencer.
She's a former congressional intern.
And she has found herself now ensnared in this January 6th nonsense, charged with four misdemeanor counts, recently arrested, if you can believe, what, three years after the original incident.
You can follow her on X. She has a huge social media following.
It's Isabella M. DeLuca, D-E-L-U-C-A, so at Isabella M. DeLuca.
And she also has a GiveSendGo, which I would urge you to visit.
It's GiveSendGo.com slash Isabella, two L's, Isabella DeLuca.
So GiveSendGo.com, Isabella DeLuca.
Isabella, welcome.
Thanks for joining me.
I really appreciate it.
We've crossed paths, as you know, just a couple of times, typically at movie premieres and things like that.
We haven't actually gotten a chance to really chat.
And I'm not sure if my audience knows a lot about you, so I thought I would just start Well, I mean, first of all, my absolute, you know, not just condolences, but horror at this January 6th nonsense, and we will get to that.
But let me start by just asking you to tell people about yourself...
You know, we're in an age where a lot of young people seem to incline to the left.
You clearly didn't do that.
So talk about where you grew up and how and what got you interested in conservative politics.
Well, thank you so much, Dinesh, for having me.
Yeah, so I grew up in a conservative household.
Both my parents have been married for 25 years now.
So conservatism was something that was a part of my life.
Christianity was something that was a huge part of my life.
We went to church every week.
When it came time to kind of decide my path for college, I went with nursing.
And so I was in nursing for two years.
And it was at a point where I started to see such a divide between the left and the right and the hostility towards Donald Trump and his presidency.
And I really decided to do my research on to what his policies were, what he stood for, Once I started doing my research, I realized that we had a huge problem within our own generation, specifically Gen Z, where you had an entire young generation being completely brainwashed by their universities, by their schools, by social media.
That was when I decided to get into politics.
When I started, I knew absolutely no one.
I started off going to Turning Point USA events by myself, started going to Leadership Institute, doing some of their workshops.
And started posting my opinions online.
And that's kind of how I got my start, worked my way up, started a Turning Point USA chapter at two universities that I attended, became an ambassador, and so kind of just worked my way up from there.
And here we are. Over time, you have built a really big social media following.
I've seen a couple of times you've gotten into some very amusing social media skirmishes.
At one point, almost unbelievably, I think you...
Didn't you post just a photo of you baking a cake?
And people went nuts and they were like...
They started blasting you as if to say you were doing something extremely salacious and revealing.
Where all you have is you very modestly dressed, stirring a pot and making a cake.
Let's try to analyze that for a moment because what do you think was going on there?
Do you think that people are just on a hair trigger on social media?
Do you think that they find someone young and attractive?
They're like, let's pull this person down.
What's going on? Yeah, I mean, you know, the rite within its own sphere can be a bit of a shark tank sometimes with all these different, like, groups in between.
You know, you have the red pill movement, the trad movement.
So it can be a lot and can be overwhelming.
I posted a video of myself baking from, it was from October, the video.
And it kind of resurfaced, I want to say, back December, January.
Yeah. Completely blew up, blew up out of proportion.
Basically the whole premise of the argument that people were making is that I was not a Christian and I was not a conservative because my t-shirt was too tight and apparently having big boobs and baking is a crime now.
They definitely made it seem that the video was like pornographic and that I was doing something very promiscuous and scandalous.
It was just an innocent baking video.
I love baking. I've made other videos before but for some reason this is a video that decided to blow up.
I think that sometimes...
I think that if I wasn't completely attractive, that it wouldn't have blown up and people wouldn't be so angry about it.
But I think the fact that I'm a woman, I'm young, I'm conservative, I'm blonde, I'm attractive to some degree, I think it makes people upset.
And there's something in your temperament that doesn't, like, run away from this, because there are people who, you know, faced with this kind of storm of criticism, particularly in the public sphere, would cower back, would be, but you'll be like, hey, my next baking video's coming up shortly.
So, in other words, you seem to, well, it's a little bit of a Trumpian streak that you have as well.
Would you say that's right, or how would you analyze yourself?
I've been doing social media for so long that, you know, you can't make everyone happy.
And I've realized that if you kind of cower and, you know, are depressed about every single bad comment that's made towards you, you're going to have a very miserable life.
And so I honestly, I thought this whole cake was super funny, as much hate as I received from it.
I honestly feel like you have to play offense with these people sometimes and not play defense.
And so I had fun with it as much as I could.
You know, it seems odd for me to be pressing a topic like this, but to me, it illustrates actually a point that is not unimportant.
And that is that, as conservatives in this fight, we cannot approach this in a kind of hang-dog, depressed way.
Because then it wears you out.
And there are people who will say to me, oh, Dinesh, I'm so worn out, I'm so tired of fighting.
And I'm like, well, that's because you're not enjoying it.
You know, if you enjoy the fight...
Then it's something that sustains you, energizes you.
You actually are not phased by the fact that you're being blasted by some creep on the left.
And so I think that is an important, you're illustrating by example, an important characteristic that we need.
Let's turn to the business about January 6th.
Now, first of all, Insanely, it looks like they're trying to expand the net, catch everybody they can, people for doing real trivialities.
And I know that because you have a case, you can't talk about the facts of the case.
So we don't actually need to do that.
But let's talk about, I mean, the people who went to D.C. on January 6th.
They... Didn't go there to overthrow the government, to capsize democracy.
Why did they go and why did you go?
What was the motive for going to D.C. at all?
I mean, you know, a lot of people went to D.C. to hear Donald Trump speak.
You know, I really don't remember January 6 all too well, just because it was so long ago.
Yeah, so the truth is that I think a lot of people went there ultimately to hear Donald Trump speak.
And, you know, everything is close in the vicinity of others.
I know that people were parading and going over down to the Capitol building.
But to, you know, this narrative that's been painted, I think, by the left-wing media for the last three years, that people essentially went down to D.C. to To overthrow the government, to steal people's votes is just utterly insane, and it's beyond a stretch.
These charges, Isabella, seem to me just downright preposterous, although preposterous in a familiar way.
You know, being in a restricted area, whoop-dee-doo, you know, disorderly conduct.
I'm assuming you didn't do anything all that disorderly, like you didn't pull down the paintings or vandalize the building.
They claim that you touched a table, a table that was subsequently used, not by you, but by someone else, to either push or shove at a policeman.
In any event, you have no responsibility for what they did.
So, do you feel like your life has taken a surreal turn in the sense that you are now suddenly facing these criminal charges and you're being arrested and you have a hearing before a judge?
I mean, what does that feel like to be a 20-something in that situation?
Yeah, I mean, it's kind of insane to think that, you know, this is all happening now over something that I allegedly did over three years ago.
I was not expecting to be arrested.
I was not expecting to have my apartment raided.
I was not expecting to have my devices seized.
You know, like I haven't had any of my phones.
So it's definitely been a shock for me.
Ultimately, I do have peace of mind and, you know, a peace that surpasses all understanding in the sense that, you know, I'm innocent.
I did nothing wrong.
I didn't call for violence.
I didn't hurt anybody. So a lot of the claims that they're making, you know, even if you read the actual complaint, is just such a stretch.
And I think that what they're doing to myself, as well as a lot of other J6ers, that they're trying to charge people with as many things as they possibly can.
You read the complaint.
They had subpoenaed my bank records.
They had been in my social media accounts for over two years.
I mean, out of this whole experience, I think the most shocking part for me was the amount of violation of my privacy that I'd received over misdemeanors.
I've never been arrested.
I don't have a criminal record.
In the time between J6 and now, I've completed two congressional internships, one of them being on Capitol Hill.
And so it's just such a breach of privacy.
And, you know, I think that a lot of people think that they have privacy or if they use end-to-end encryption they have in privacy.
The truth is we have zero privacy in this country.
And I feel like I don't recognize the country that I grew up in whatsoever.
I mean, the government does, when it gets the appropriate warrants and so on, they do have the illegal right to look at these things.
But I think what you're saying, and I couldn't agree more, is that you didn't rob a bank.
You're not suspected of being an ISIS terrorist or in league with ISIS. So, in other words, a lot of the tools that were given to the US government, some of them, by the way, in the aftermath of 9-11, were aimed at catching really bad guys who are out to harm us and endanger our lives.
It seems like these tools are now being redeployed against political opponents.
And it just seems that it shows the extremism of the left, that they would go after somebody like you, because they're willing to ruin your life, or at least try to, over something that, even if you did everything that they say that you did, is a complete triviality.
Do you feel a sense of helplessness that the whole power of the US government, with its seemingly infinite resources, is being deployed against you?
And second, related to that, you know, we love our country.
We're both patriots.
I, as an immigrant, you as someone born in America.
Does this do something to your patriotism?
Because it's like, I love my country, but look what my country now is doing to me.
You know, United States of America versus Isabella DeLuca.
That's an odd phrase to hear and see, isn't it?
Yeah, it was definitely weird for me to see the United States government or United States versus Isabella DeLuca on a piece of paper.
Ultimately, I love my country.
I grew up here.
It's sad to see what it's become.
But that definitely doesn't change my patriotism or my love for my country at all.
I do. Sorry, one more thing.
When you released your police state film, one of the good points that I've been seeing with a lot of these J6 cases is that a lot of the techniques and tactics that were initially put into place after 9-11 that were used to protect Americans have now been used to completely weaponize Americans.
Yeah, absolutely. Guys, listen, you need to support Isabella DeLuca.
Here's her Give, Send, Go.
Give, Send, Go dot com slash Isabella DeLuca.
D-E-L-U-C-A. Follow her next at Isabella M. DeLuca.
Isabella, thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you, Dinesh. I'm going to complete today my discussion of Lincoln's temperance address.
And one of the key ideas that Lincoln is trying to convey, he doesn't do it all that explicitly, but there's a reason for that.
He's speaking to an audience and he is trying to correct some of the prejudices of that same audience.
So this is a conundrum of leadership.
You're supposed to be the leader.
But on the other hand, you cannot run too far afoul from the beliefs of the people who are supposed to follow you.
They need to build trust in you.
They need to believe that you are going to carry forward their cause.
And Lincoln is going to carry forward their cause, but not in their way, but more in his way.
So what does this actually mean?
The temperance movement was a moral reform movement.
It was also a legal reform movement.
In other words, they wanted to outlaw alcohol.
Ultimately, I mentioned that prohibition, which was enacted later, became a sort of reflection of what these temperance people were all about.
And while Lincoln is in favor of the moral reform, he is not in favor of the legal reform.
He is not in favor of outlawing alcohol, and he's going to give very—he'll speak in general terms, but he'll give the reason for why he makes that key distinction.
Even in the moral reform, Lincoln believes that there's a way to do it.
And the way to do it is not for people who are teetotalers or anti-alcohol to pour the alcohol into the street, to treat the alcoholic as a moral degenerate who should be excommunicated from society, to denounce this person and batter them.
Lincoln's view is the opposite, that the way to actually produce reform is through example.
So he praises the Washingtonians.
The Washingtonians are the reformed drunks that are in the audience.
So what does he say about them?
He says the following, When one who has long been known as a victim of intemperance, in other words the alcoholic, bursts the fetters that have bound him, appears before his neighbors clothed in his right mind, clothed and in his right mind a redeemed specimen of lost humanity, and stands up with tears of joy trembling in his eyes to tell of the miseries once endured, now to be endured no more forever,
he goes on to say, however simple his language, there's a logic and eloquence that few with human feelings can resist.
Nor can his sincerity in any way be doubted, or his sympathy for those he would persuade to imitate his example be denied." So Lincoln is saying, look, if you have had your life changed and you are now a teetotaler, you used to be a drinker, you can say, you have extreme credibility to say, this is how alcohol destroyed my life.
This is how I'm doing better now.
And you might consider following my example.
And Lincoln goes, more power to that guy.
He's encouraging that guy.
Now why is he not encouraging the other guy, which is to say the teetotaler who actually never touched a drink, but is wagging his or her finger at the drunk and basically saying, you're horrible, you're evil, you need to be removed from society.
Now here's what Lincoln says.
He says of the Washingtonians, you know that the drunkards are not demons.
Not even the worst of men.
He goes, they know, meaning the Washingtonians know, that generally they are kind, generous, and charitable, even beyond the example of their more staid and sober neighbors.
They are practical philanthropists and they glow with a generous and brotherly zeal that mere theorists are incapable of feeling.
So here is Lincoln kind of praising the drunkard.
He says, look, the drunkard is not like the slave owner.
The drunkard is not corruptly stealing somebody else's labor.
He might be wasting his own salary and he might be making himself useless to his family.
So those things cannot be ignored.
However, look at these guys.
A lot of them are actually decent guys.
They're guys you don't mind hanging out with.
Yeah, they've had too much to drink, but having too much to drink makes them extremely affable and cheerful.
They're large-hearted and generous that give you the shirt off their back.
He goes, you cannot treat these people as if they are sort of in league with the devil.
They're not. They do need to be reformed, but there is a way to reform them.
He says, The system of consigning the habitual drunkard to hopeless ruin should be repudiated.
He says, And he says that they don't treat alcoholism as the unpardonable sin.
They treat it ultimately as something that you can be redeemed from.
So here's what Lincoln is doing.
He's praising his audience.
Now, he knows that in his audience are many people who are of the type that he is repudiating.
In other words, there are many people in the audience who are not reformed drunkards.
These are people who are part of the temperance movement and they want to fix other people's bad behavior.
Lincoln doesn't like the way that they're going about it.
But the way he deals with it is he doesn't say, there are some of you who don't agree with me, and I'm going to chastise you.
In other words, he uses the example of, let's say, the carrot instead of the stick.
And the way he does it is he praises the audience.
He goes, you in the audience are not like some of the other temperance reformers.
You've got it right.
You adopt the approach of...
Citing your own examples about how your life has been transformed.
It's like someone who's giving Christian testimony.
And it's a very good analogy because Lincoln's kind of saying the same thing.
Don't go around battering other people and demanding that they become Christians or anathemize them, tell them about how they're all going to hell.
Lincoln's point is not only is that not a way to treat fellow citizens, but it is also not going to be effective.
Who's going to listen and go, you know, I think you're absolutely right.
I'm horrible. Lincoln's point is no.
The way to do it is you stand up and you give a testimony, the way people do very often in evangelical churches.
They go, my life was a mess, and then I found Christ, and look at me now.
I'm doing great. I've restored my marriage.
I've rebuilt my relationships with my children.
I've got a stable job again.
And people go, wow.
I want to follow that example.
So Lincoln is encouraging temperance as a moral reform movement, but he is not encouraging it so much as a legal movement.
So here we see the difference between the temperance movement and anti-slavery from Lincoln's point of view.
Because Lincoln would admit completely that the anti-slavery cause...
Is not only a moral cause, but also a legal cause.
And I'm using the term legal here not just to mean a cause that you produce in court, but I mean legal having to do with passing laws and executive decisions.
So Lincoln does believe that slavery is different than alcoholism.
Now why is it different? Well, I think the obvious reason is that slavery involves stealing the labor and trampling on the rights of somebody else.
And this is the key point.
If all men are created equal, which is sort of the radiating central thought of Lincoln's philosophy— Ultimately, you can say that that was the guiding light of the Declaration of Independence informed everything that Lincoln said and did.
And we see glimpses of it even here in the early Lincoln.
And we see it even in a context that's not directly related to slavery.
Although, let's remember, slavery is always in the back of Lincoln's mind.
Why? Because his goal...
Why is he speaking? Why is he even here?
Well, his goal is ultimately to convince these temperance people...
That they need to focus their legal and political energies on the slavery problem, not on the temperance problem.
Deal with the temperance problem in another way, but laws and pouring the alcohol through the streets and making it unavailable is not the way.
It's partly because what Lincoln says about alcohol, and again, he follows this kind of delicate way of ascribing his own views to other people.
He said, So here's Lincoln basically saying, listen, alcohol isn't bad.
By the way, these are debates that, for example, evangelicals have all the time when they talk about alcohol and scripture.
Is alcohol bad in itself?
Well, if so, why did Jesus turn water into wine?
So, is alcohol bad?
Or rather, is it the case that there's nothing wrong with alcohol per se.
It is how it is used or how it is abused.
That is Lincoln's position, very clearly.
So, Lincoln's point is you don't want to outlaw something That could very well be a good thing, that has good uses.
It's kind of like saying, look, a knife can be used to cut potatoes and also be used to stab people.
Well, you don't want to outlaw knives.
Why? Because by outlawing knives, you not only outlaw the stabbings, but you also outlaw the good uses of a knife.
So what you want to do if you have a law at all, first of all, is confine it only to the bad thing.
But second of all, you might be better, at least in the case of alcoholism, to try to bring about an inner change of heart through example and through persuasion.
And this is where Lincoln is going with this.
So the speech taken as a whole is a...
An affirmation of temperance, not just the temperance of abstaining from alcohol, but also the temperance of the way that one goes about producing any kind of moral reform in society.
Much better to do it by example, much better to do it by treating an Treating the guy that you're trying to convince, not as a congenital or natural enemy, but as a potential friend.
Hey listen, I'm your friend, I want what is best for you, and I want you to take my counsel, my exhortation, my advice in the spirit of somebody who cares about you and wants your life to be better.
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