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April 19, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
50:16
MAGIC MIKE? Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep815
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Coming up, what's in store if Biden is re-elected in November?
A lot of bad things, and one of them that I'm going to focus on, tax increases.
Debbie joins me. We're going to discuss Magic Mike, i.e.
House Speaker Mike Johnson.
We're going to talk about why Trump continues to surge, even as his legal problems continue, and our upcoming filming in Israel.
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What would a second term for Joe Biden look like?
I slightly shudder to even raise the prospect because this is something that we desperately need to avoid.
And the level of destruction done to the country already in the first term is so great, so significant, so evident all around us, that a second term, more of the same, but perhaps even a further escalation It's really very depressing to think about where we would be at the end of that term.
So by 2028, it's hard to see if there would even be very much of the United States or of America in the way that we understand America even left.
And we can track this Biden escalation in many areas.
So political targeting becomes much more rampant.
Ordinary Americans now, not uncommon to have knocks on your door.
Do you own a gun? All right, come with me.
So in other words, political prosecutions are now normalized.
They go beyond Trump or January 6.
They are occurring all over the place.
Why? Because they got away with it the first time.
So why should they stop?
Why would they stop?
They are one way to create a one-party state, which is the goal of the authoritarian left.
But I came across an interesting article in Fox News.
It was written by my friend Grover Norquist, who has been really a fixture in Washington, D.C. I first met Grover.
Gosh, this must have been in the early to mid-80s.
And Grover was, even then, a little bit of a young know-it-all in Washington, D.C. He was involved with reducing taxes in the Reagan years.
And he became a very effective spokesman and advocate and activist.
Four libertarian principles.
Smaller government, less taxes, less regulation, a modest state, very much along the lines that the founders envisioned.
And here is Grover now talking about...
what is on the plate for Biden.
And Grover isn't speculating.
He's not making a chart and just drawing it out.
He's looking at things that leading figures in the Biden regime have advocated, have said.
This is their wishlist.
This is their platform.
This is their agenda.
Now, what's Trump's agenda?
Well, Trump has been less definite, less clear, but it's very obvious that Trump's agenda is to make taxes go down.
Trump said in Charleston, South Carolina, last month, or actually in the middle of February, he said, I will make the Trump tax cuts permanent, and we will cut your taxes even more than that.
Trump hasn't specifically allied himself with a flat tax, the idea of a 10 or 12 or 15% flat tax.
I find that idea not only very attractive, but very politically saleable, in which you essentially tell the American people, let's have a floor.
So if you make, let's say, under $30,000, you don't pay any taxes.
But after that, the flat tax kicks in.
And the flat tax is very simple.
You write down your income.
You take 10% or 12% or 15% of that income and you send it in.
And that can be done on a postcard.
You don't even need a big elaborate machinery of the IRS. You don't need...
I'm sure that the tax compliance industry wouldn't be too happy.
All the accountants and so on who make a living with a very complex system of taxes because it's like, you can't do your own taxes.
We've got to do your taxes for you.
And hey, I don't do my own taxes.
We have accountants.
And when I showed Debbie our taxes the last time, she's like, that looks like it's 100 pages long.
And it pretty much is.
So we need to get away from this tax craziness.
But for Biden, it's the opposite.
He wants taxes to go up and up and up again.
By the way, not just income taxes, but a whole range of taxes.
And Grover has got the goods on it.
He talks about Biden's plan for a $5 billion.
$5 trillion tax increase.
Now, that's a lot of money.
How do you get $5 trillion?
Well, you get it by raising taxes pretty much across the board, everywhere, in all different directions.
And so Biden's plans, and you find them all over the place...
He wants to hike taxes on small business.
He wants to hike taxes on big corporations.
He wants a capital gains tax.
He wants a dividend tax hike.
He wants income taxes to go up.
He wants energy taxes, especially energy deployed to certain things.
And he wants to have a second version of the so-called death tax or the estate tax.
Now, this stuff becomes kind of crazy, and it becomes crazy fast.
Let's look at the corporate tax.
So, the corporate tax today is in a range of 21% to 28%.
And that's a pretty high rate, because a lot of other countries have a corporate tax of 25%.
So, the United States is not at the low end.
China has 25%.
France and the UK have 25%.
But Biden wants to hike it to 28%.
From 21 to 28.
And that would put the U.S. at the top range of corporate taxes.
Now, let's remember that in the United States, there are also state taxes on corporations.
And so, the average state tax is about 4%.
So, you take Biden's proposed 28 and you add 4.
You're now talking about 32% in corporate taxes.
And that would be one of the highest corporate taxes in the world.
Capital gains. Biden wants to kick it up to 44.6%, which would be a preposterously high rate.
And let's remember again that states have their own capital gains taxes.
California, for example, has a 14.4% state capital gains tax.
So you add the 44.6% plus the 14.4%, you get...
Fifty-nine percent.
Fifty-nine percent in corporate, in capital gains taxes.
New York State businesses would pay 53.4 percent.
By the way, when you look at capital gains around the world, the average is about 20 percent.
China has 20 percent.
So, the United States would be putting itself into one of the highest taxed countries in the world and that means also that lots of people begin to look for how to move their businesses elsewhere, how to do business in a more tax-friendly environment.
Now we turn to taxes on unrealized stock gains.
Now this is not really obvious to many people, but right now if you or I buy a stock, let's say an Apple stock or any other stock, and we hold it.
And the stock goes up in value.
We don't pay taxes on that until we sell the stock.
Why? Because we haven't realized the gains.
The gains may exist on paper.
Apple stock has risen 20%.
But that's not money in my pocket because I haven't sold the stock.
And yet, what Biden wants to do is tax the unrealized gains.
And that means that even if you haven't sold a stock or let's say property, you have a piece of land, it goes up in value, you don't pay taxes on the increased value until you sell it.
And then you've realized income and that income becomes taxable.
But on the other hand, if you end up paying taxes on the increased land value, even though you haven't sold, well, this is exactly what the Biden administration wants to do.
What happens with a lot of these taxes is they start out kind of hitting the more affluent, and then pretty soon they're hitting everybody.
This was, by the way, true of the income tax when it began around 1913.
The tax was 7%.
It only applied to millionaires.
But today, the income tax rate has gone up to what?
The high 30s, 38%, thereabouts.
And the lowest rate is 10%.
And that hits well over half the country.
The alternative minimum tax, or so-called AMT, when it was first instituted in 1969, most people didn't even know about it or even feel it because it didn't apply to them.
But now it does.
If you look at your tax return, you may very well, right now, be paying taxes under the AMT, or alternative minimum tax.
I mentioned Biden wants additional taxes on energy.
He wants a carbon tax.
So for Biden, there's no desire to put any break on the spending side.
Spending continues promiscuously, and spending has the political purpose.
Why do you think Biden is, quote, excusing all these student loans?
Because the way he sees it, every time I excuse a student loan, I'm gaining a democratic voter. So he's essentially using other people's money to buy votes.
So taxes are a way of claiming other people's money. And then you use that money, and you act as if you deserve the credit because you're spending the money ultimately to gain something It's a crass political move posing as a form of virtue.
What's the term that they use for these loans?
I'm excusing the loans or I'm...
I'm forgiving the loans.
Think of it. I'm forgiving the loans.
As if Biden is in some divine position of bestowing forgiveness on people.
This is all false magnanimity.
This is all pretend virtue.
But this is what they want to do.
They want to spend the money.
And to do it, they know that they need taxes to pay for it.
And so they're racking up debt on the one side, but they've got lots of plans to To take money directly out of your pocket on the other.
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Debbie and I are here for our Friday Roundup.
And well, we haven't been doing too many of these lately because Debbie's been shuttling back and forth between...
Here in Texas and the Rio Grande Valley visiting her mom.
And in fact, I think, Ani, you're going next week as well.
So you won't be...
I'm actually going next week for two reasons.
To see my mom and also to sing at a funeral, sadly.
I'm singing at a...
Dear friend, dad's funeral.
And he was like a second dad to me, so it's very special.
I find it amazing how people envision their own funerals and then decide, as was in this case, there's a particular song he wants you to sing, and he's like, yes, I want this song, and I want Debbie to sing it.
Yeah. Oh, yeah.
It's very special.
And so I'm going to do it.
I hope I don't, you know, break down.
I'm going to really try, given the circumstances and given just that, you know, I'm also very – I've just been very sad in general about the whole situation.
My mom and then him having – They were both ill together at the same time.
And he's like a year older than my mom.
No, wait, I'm sorry, a month older than my mom.
So they're the same age. Yeah.
So it's very sad.
I know it is the cycle of life and I make peace with that, but it's still very sad.
Yeah. So anyway.
Well, on a more humorous note and to cheer Debbie up, I decided to put on a little bit of the kind of outfit that causes one of her eyebrows to go up like...
What's this? I know.
And you noted today that I was not only wearing green, meaning a green shirt, but I'm also wearing green pants.
And I won't raise my legs, but if you looked out, I'm wearing green socks and also green shoes.
Yeah, you look like the little leprechaun.
Oh, before I forget, because I know I'm going to, happy birthday, Juliana.
Oh, Juliana, but 24.
So, 20, she turns to my baby, turns 24.
I cannot even believe that.
I cannot believe that.
Yeah. Wow. Yep.
So, anyway, but yes, back to your leprechaun outfit.
Well, fortunately, Brian, our producer, doesn't have a green screen.
I know, because you would be...
Otherwise, I would almost vanish.
You would vanish except for your head.
And then maybe a few little stripes because it is kind of black and green.
Yeah, I've got the little navy stripes.
Yeah, but it's really adorable.
And as everybody probably knows where we live, Dinesh does all the grocery shopping.
And so, honey, don't go grocery shopping today.
You think I might be a spectacle?
People think he's wearing a costume.
Maybe they think I'm doing a film shoot.
But hey, we called this episode today Magic Mike.
And it was kind of a joke, but it's a reference to Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House.
In fact, talk about Magic Mike and the sort of peculiar legacy.
I don't know. I don't know if I've ever brought that up or not.
I don't think you have. I mean, this was a sequel, right?
I think it was a sequel. I didn't even know that it existed, so I had no idea what it was, and I said, Magic Mike.
I thought, well, maybe it's a movie about a magician.
That's what it sounds like on the face of it, if you didn't know.
Except that when I get to the theater, I look up and I see that it's only women in the theater.
And I was like, hmm, interesting.
This magician must be kind of cute or something.
So I sat down and, of course, when the movie began, it was very clear what the movie was about.
Namely a male stripper.
The funniest part of all was how mad you got that I went to go see it.
I became a little annoyed.
I was like, hmm. Yeah, but anyway.
But you pleaded innocence. You said I had no idea.
I hated the whole movie.
I had my eyes closed the entire time.
Anyway, that was Magic Mike.
But we're using the term in the context of Magic Mike Johnson.
I know. Who is the furthest thing from...
And I don't know if he's going to like that too much.
Well, let's put it this way.
This guy is no political magician.
And I say that because he is...
confusion among his own base.
Lots of people who supported him and said, hey, we're looking for something a little better than Kevin McCarthy.
You appear to be ideologically sound.
You're obviously a devout Christian.
So we're looking for some welcome shift of leadership.
And yet here's Mike Johnson now and he's talking about bringing an Israel funding bill and a Ukraine funding bill separately for a vote, but nothing on the border.
And this is the very same Mike Johnson who said, we can't solve other people's problems before we solve our own.
I thought it was tied to the border.
I thought that the whole thing was, okay, fine, we'll do Ukraine separate, but we have to tie it to the border.
That was not the case? No, so evidently, Mike Johnson, he's a kind of a...
Sort of a separationist.
And I think his thinking is, we don't want these things to be all lumped together as if they are the same thing.
Not that I disagree with his logic.
In fact, if he said, all right, I've got a Ukraine bill, I've got an Israel bill, I've got a border bill.
All three ready to go. Okay?
And we're going to do them, boom, boom, boom, one after the other.
That's not unreasonable.
Because you don't want to feel, you have one position on the border, you're locked into a position on Ukraine.
But that's how Democrats... That is how Democrats work with the omnibus type of bill.
Yeah, they do it. Sure. Then we'll consider helping other people because let's secure our border before we secure Israel's border and Ukraine border.
Right. Well, you know, I saw his press conference and he basically said, listen, I knew that I was going to come in here and it was going to be a war.
He called it a war, you know, with the Democrats, I guess.
And he said, so I have to be able to get through it and I have to be the commander and all of that.
So I don't think he sees it quite that way.
I think he sees it as, listen, I was put in a leadership position so that I could get things done, right?
Not squelch things, but get things done.
Unfortunately, what he doesn't realize, and most Republicans don't realize, and maybe the American people don't realize, you cannot negotiate with Democrats.
It's impossible, because they are all or nothing, and they are usually very conniving.
So, well, what this means is that getting things done in practice is bowing to their will.
Now, Mike Johnson may go, well, listen, they wanted 90, and I only gave them 50.
But if the net 50 is bad, then you are better off not getting things done than getting things done.
So I think there's this kind of illusion that we've got to, quote, do something.
C.S. Lewis once said that if you're on the wrong road, progress means turning and going back where you came from.
And so, Mike Johnson doesn't seem to recognize this.
He seems to imagine, well, we got this done, we got that done, we got this done.
Even his comments about the FISA reauthorization, in other words, government spying without a warrant on U.S. citizens.
He goes, well, I really thought it was a bad idea until I went in there and they gave me some classified briefings and I came out thinking that it was a good idea.
In other words, to give the intelligence agencies the authorities to spy without a warrant.
So obviously this guy, he's the type of guy who is easily conned by the police state.
And they, of course, use the usual familiar pretext, national security.
And I think they also are very clever because what they do to a guy like Mike Johnson is they say, listen, You know, you can vote against this, but if there's a terrorist attack, it'll be your fault.
It's on you. So then these quaking Republicans go, well, perhaps, I guess I'll go along.
So it's very difficult to respect these people intellectually or morally because, first of all, they're not that smart, and second of all, they lack courage, and that combination is very bad for us.
So this is... It is very unfortunate that at a time when the country is in crisis we have our team of this caliber and the other side so ruthless.
Yeah, I know. I get it.
Yeah. All right.
Let's take a pause.
When we come back, we have a lot more to talk about Trump.
I know you want to try to get in the latest on the Kohlberger, the Brian Kohlberger case.
It's going to be hard. And immigration. But we also want to talk about Chinamen or Chinese making their way into this country through the open border.
And Israel. And if we have time, Israel.
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Debbie and I are back for round two of our Friday Roundup.
And this morning, honey, we were talking about this Judge Juan Merchant in New York saying to Trump that not only can you not go and listen to the Supreme Court hearing on the obstruction of an official proceeding, Section 1512, You can't attend Barron's graduation.
You have to be sitting right here in court.
What's your reaction to that?
Well, my reaction to that is shame on him.
Shame on him.
I think that even a terrorist would get better treatment, right?
And I was telling you that I kind of joked about Koberger and about how his defense is doing all these maneuvers to try to get him...
Motions for delay. Motions for delay.
We need more evidence. We need more discovery.
And the judge is okay with it.
You know, she's fine with it.
And so, because, and I said that the reason the judge is okay with it is she doesn't want anybody to say that his civil rights were stomped on or squelched or whatever.
So, she wants to make sure that it does not go into a mistrial because of that.
Give him every... Every, yeah.
All the rights he needs as, remember, innocent until proven guilty.
Of course. But that doesn't follow with Trump.
At all. It's the opposite. It's the opposite with Trump. So yeah, it's it's horrible It's it you know, hey, I don't you know, I'm a Christian. I don't believe in karma, but boy, I hope that Yeah, it's very bad he's a very bad person just a bad Individual and he's not alone I mean, I think when you what strikes me is when I look at let's say for example, Tanya Chutkin in DC
She's cut from exactly the same cloth.
Or Judge Engeron, the other guy in New York.
Oh, yeah. Moron. Judge Moron.
That guy. I mean, but they're not just moronic.
They're slimy. Well, they're part of the deep state.
They really are.
They're part of the...
Yeah. And of their agenda.
Yeah. And so, but they're using the judicial system as a way to stop people.
I mean, we don't think we have institutionalized, you know, corruption in the judiciary, but I think we do.
Oh, well, we saw that with your case.
We saw that with my case.
What happens with these judges is they, because they are in robes and they have their own courtroom and they use legal language, they create a facade of neutrality.
But their motives are malign.
They know exactly what they're doing.
Very often they are covering up for the lying on the part.
The prosecution in my case, for example, was deliberately making up facts and leaving out critical facts and cases and saying, look, your honor, here's another guy.
He violated the campaign finance law and he got exactly what we want Dinesh to get in terms of prison time.
Now, you look at that guy's case.
Turns out he's a repeat offender.
His case involved hundreds of thousands of dollars.
He had something to gain, so there was a quid pro quo.
And all of that is left out of the briefing.
And the judge knows that.
Yeah, of course. So when you say they're in on it, I think that is very often, not always, but it's very often true.
They're part of the corruption themselves.
Absolutely. So this all shows the rottedness of our institutions.
So that goes to our point, talking about the Democrats and how they just really, I feel, they want to destroy this country.
No better evidence than the fact that we have all of these illegals coming in And they are just, they let them.
They just let them. And now, I don't know if you heard about this, the fact that the Chinese migration has increased 5,000 to 7,000% Well, look, in 2021, there were only 450 Chinese encounters, Chinese who showed up at the border.
But now in last year, the last year of counting, 20,000 Chinese.
Can you imagine? And these are mostly single males, and they're fighting age.
And they are obviously, or at least many of them, have ties with the CCP. Because you made the point, you can't just leave China.
No. Oh, I'm going to the United States.
They control the movements of their own people.
They also monitor their own people abroad.
So, for example, there are these, you've heard about these Chinese so-called police stations in Europe and the United States, where they try to police their own Chinese population overseas.
Yeah. So this is a very dangerous development.
And again, you know, the latest development with Mayorkas is that they don't want to, the Senate refuses to even hear the impeachment.
So the House has voted for the impeachment.
It's legally obligatory for them to have a trial, but they're like, let's table it.
Yeah, no, and for good reason, because if they didn't table it, then it would come out and the American people would see what they have done, what this administration has done to dismantle this country.
And look... If you are on the fence and you think, oh, you know, I don't want to vote for Trump, so I'm just going to stay home, you know what that's going to do.
That vote that you didn't do is going to go for Biden.
Not only is he going to raise taxes to the point of people wanting to move out of this country, okay, that's going to happen.
Because no person in their right mind is going to want to give half of their income to taxes.
I mean, and honey, you know that I'm already ready to move to the Cook Islands, okay?
Just saying. But nobody's going to want to, right?
So people are going to leave like they did in Venezuela.
Remember I always said all of the wealthier people left the country.
And the productive people will leave. They all left.
And so everybody then became equally miserable.
That's how it's going to be.
That is how socialism works in that sense, right?
So not only are you going to have that, but then you're going to have all of these illegals Just changing the whole fabric of the country.
And wasn't it Obama that said he was going to change America?
He was going to, what did he say?
Fundamentally remake America.
Yeah, and so since this would be actually Obama's fourth term, it would be a dream come true for him, right?
Because I always say that even though Biden seems to be the guy in control, he's actually not, I believe.
So you're saying Biden 1 is Obama's term 3, and Biden's re-election would be Obama's fourth term.
Which would make Obama sort of give him an FDR type of reign over the country.
Absolutely. Finish destroying it once and for all.
Right. Very, very creepy.
Because I think looking at it historically, it's probably fair to say that the Reagan era, and this was the success of Reagan, right?
In two terms, Reagan created an environment that lasted, starting from 1980, probably all the way to Obama.
Even both Bushes were, in a sense, carried by Reagan.
But Obama began the unwinding of Reaganism.
But if, as you say, it's not just two terms, but four terms, think of all the damage that you can do.
Well, you know, like, with Jimmy Carter, what got him, obviously, was the foreign policy aspect and the domestic, right?
Disasters, both of them.
And here comes Reagan.
Right. Crises on both fronts.
Crises on both fronts.
If they cannot see that, then I think that we do deserve to be dissolved as Americans.
In other words, you're saying we're too far gone at that point.
If the American people look around and they see what they see and they go, we want more of it, your point is, well, we can't help you.
Because all we can do, and in fact a podcast like this, is to highlight the consequences of the policies and to lay them out there and say why they're bad and why they're destructive.
And if someone listens to it and goes, I want that.
I like it. I like living in dilapidated cities.
And there are people who do like it.
And we were talking to a friend of ours, very involved in our films, about California.
And he was saying, look, you've got to realize that a place like San Francisco is now being run by a lot of thugs out of surrounding places like Oakland.
These are people who are community college graduates or these are people who have spent time in prison.
These are complete losers.
But suddenly they're on the San Francisco City Council and they are running a trillion dollar economy and they don't care if office buildings are sitting vacant.
So they are like maggots feeding off of a carcass.
They're still collecting a paycheck. They're still collecting paychecks.
They're still making important decisions.
They are still running the place.
And so for them, it doesn't matter if the city is in decline, if the residents are leaving, because it's like, you leave.
Because the more you leave, the more our voters remain.
The more the dependent people remain, our iron grip becomes tighter.
As I said, equally miserable.
Equally miserable. But the elites, they're not.
They're not. They're really not.
We only have a little time left.
Let's talk briefly about the fact that we are planning a trip to Israel shortly to do some filming there for a film we're very excited about that covers Israel, covers anti-Semitism, covers terrorism, also covers biblical archaeology.
So this is something we've wanted to do.
This is a great time to do it in a sense.
But it's also a little tricky.
In fact, as we speak, I think the Ben Gurion Airport is closed.
But I think it's scheduled to open on May 1st.
I hope so. I hope so.
We are scheduled to go the early part of May.
So, I hope so.
And, you know, I always say, I know how that story is going to end.
But... Do I want to be?
Do you want to be part of the plot?
Not necessarily. Rockets up in the air?
Not necessarily. Yeah, no.
God will protect us.
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think sometimes it is, from a movie point of view, helpful to be in the center of things because you're at Israel at a very poignant time.
The country, in fact, they have coming up their Independence Day and their Memorial Day.
Yeah.
Yeah. Independence Day and Memorial Day belong together.
I mean, look at the coins they have from 2,000 years ago.
What does it say?
They have endured this since their existence.
But again, this whole notion of these...
Colleges being seized by these terrorists, because I call them terrorists, okay?
If they're calling for the destruction of Israel, they are terrorists.
Don't get me wrong. Absolute terrorists.
I mean, that's their intention. That's their intention.
So, but for them to say that this land, this little slither of land does not belong to Israel, they obviously don't know history.
They obviously don't.
And like you say before, it's not even just the history, but it's the acquisitions, the wars that the Israelis have won to acquire the land that was theirs in the first place.
Well, I was making the point that the Muslims might say, well, yeah, the Jews, they left and then we conquered that territory by force.
And so it is ours by right of conquest.
But by that logic, the Jews can then turn around and say, well, yeah, but then we defeated you in the 48 war and in the 67 war and in the Yom Kippur war.
So three times we have whipped your butt.
And so the right of conquest now belongs to us.
So by the exact same logic that justifies Islamic occupation of that land, the Jews go, well, now we're doing it to you.
Slavery, says Lincoln, is founded in the selfishness of man's nature, opposition to it in his love of justice.
These principles are an eternal antagonism, and when brought into collision so fiercely as slavery extension brings them, shocks and throws and convulsions must ceaselessly follow.
So for Lincoln, the slavery debate is part of a bigger debate.
It's a debate between justice and injustice.
And Lincoln is saying that while justice must sometimes compromise with injustice, must meet injustice halfway, so to speak, that's why we have slavery in the country at all, nevertheless, justice wants to win out and prevent injustice from spreading.
So, for Lincoln, the Republican Party exists to prevent slavery from going into the new territories.
He wants to contain it.
He wants to corral it.
Remember after World War II when George Kennan, the State Department diplomat, advanced a theory of containment.
His theory was that, look, we are not going to go to war against the Soviet Union to destroy communism.
What we're going to do is build a cordon around it, prevent communism from spreading, choke it off, if you will, from the natural fuel of expansion.
And if we do this...
Communism will begin to shrink, to weaken, to contract, maybe in the end to collapse.
And this is exactly not only Lincoln's view, but the view of the Republican Party towards slavery.
Let's contain it in the expectation that if we do that, it will shrink, it will shrivel, it may ultimately collapse.
Now, Douglass, expressing the view of the South, says in the Ottawa debate, and I'm now going to quote him,"...I do not believe that the Almighty ever intended the Negro to be the equal of the white man." If he did, he has been a long time demonstrating that fact.
Here's a little bit of sarcasm by Douglass.
Hey, if Africa was supposed to be the equal of Europe, ha ha ha, why haven't we seen it?
Why are the Africans in so many ways so primitive that they are comparable to the Europeans of a thousand years ago?
Here is, Douglass continues,"...for thousands of years the Negro has been a race upon the earth, and during all that time, in all latitudes and climates, wherever he has wandered or been taken, he has been inferior to the race which he has there met.
He belongs to an inferior race and must always occupy an inferior position." Now, Douglass here is making a rationale for, you could almost call it, classical racism.
And today we recoil at the term racism.
Racism is indefensible.
But you have to remember that in Douglass' time, racism was a position.
It was an argument.
And notice that Douglass isn't...
An anti-racist argument.
The anti-racist argument went like this.
It said, well, yeah, we know that Africa is behind Europe, behind in exploration, in inventions, in discoveries, perhaps in literature and cultural achievements, but that is due to the climate.
Africa is in a very hot latitude and as a result it is the climate that explains why some people are in a sense more advanced than others.
And Douglass goes, that's ridiculous.
He goes, by and large, when you find Africans, when you find Negroes, in his words, you find them anywhere, in any climate, in any latitude.
They are still behind the other groups that are there.
They are inferior.
And this is Douglass' argument.
Now... The grain of truth in Douglass' argument must be acknowledged, because when we talk about the rights of man, we talk about all men are created equal, we have to admit that all men are created equal, although it is a universalist claim, was not universally accepted.
Was not universally believed.
Was not universally advanced.
In fact, this claim was advanced only in the West.
Only in the people who were the products of Athens and Jerusalem and the Enlightenment.
The Great American Revolution was a Western achievement.
And there is an element of tragedy in that the peoples outside the West...
Although they would later claim these same rights, and they had every right to, because notice that the Declaration doesn't say all Americans are created equal.
It says all men. But nevertheless, they were not the authors of this document.
They didn't think of it.
They didn't advance it.
There was no cultural basis for it in their own societies.
Now, I believe I quoted many episodes ago a famous line from John Stuart Mill.
Let's remember John Stuart Mill is the liberal, the writer of On Liberty.
And nevertheless, this is John Stuart Mill from 1859.
Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement.
Now, this is a little bit of a shocking phrase.
Despotism is sometimes justified, he says.
It's a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians.
But then he adds a second part, which is very interesting.
Provided the end be their improvement.
In other words, you're allowed to have a despotic, authoritarian system of government over barbarians, but the goal must be to make them less barbarian.
It must be to bring them into the orbit of civilization.
Now why would Mills say this?
Why shouldn't barbarians have liberty?
The answer is pretty simple.
liberty is a part of a mechanism for enabling free people to live well together.
And this requires a certain level of cultural development, a certain level of literacy, a certain level of ability to communicate one with the other, to have legitimate political debates.
So let's say for example we are part of a human tribe and we settle all our differences with blows.
That's who we are.
That's what we do.
Can we possibly live in a society envisioned by the American founding?
Can we possibly have separation of powers, checks and balances, a judicial review?
No, because we want none of that.
We are not, in fact, we haven't thought of any of that.
We don't want it.
We're not even really capable of it.
So until there has been enough.
Education, enlightenment, refinement, to which those kinds of institutions are conceivable, not only conceivable, but we actually can build them and have them and live with them.
We are not really eligible, if you will, for freedom.
This is the surprising point being made by Mill.
Not everybody is eligible for freedom.
Now, interestingly, John Stuart Mill, when he says this, is saying something to which Abraham Lincoln would completely agree.
Not only that, but I would go further and say that this was the point of view that was in general advanced by the Greek philosopher Aristotle.
Aristotle defended slavery.
But when you listen to Aristotle, it's very clear that Aristotle is talking about two types of slavery.
He talks about natural slavery and conventional slavery.
What is natural slavery?
For Aristotle, natural slavery is the slavery of the person...
The person who is enslaved is not capable of exercising liberty as a full-grown human being.
So think of somebody who is like a mental incompetent, or think of somebody who is so defective that they are simply incapable of living in society, following rules, abiding by laws.
Somebody who is of that Aristotle says that kind of person is a natural slave, and what he means is somebody else has to rule that person, and again, Aristotle believes it should be, as Mill says, for their benefit, for their own benefit.
They can't do it themselves.
Now, there is also, says Aristotle, what he calls conventional slavery.
What is conventional slavery?
Well, my tribe raids your tribe and takes 17 captives.
They then become enslaved.
Now, they're not mentally deficient.
They're capable of ruling themselves.
In fact, they were part of a tribe, and yet they are enslaved for the sole reason that they were overpowered by my tribe— And reduced to slavery.
So they are slaves not by nature, says Aristotle, but by convention.
Now even though Aristotle is making a kind of qualified defense of slavery, you can also see the anti-slavery argument that is concealed in Aristotle.
Why? Because the anti-slavery argument is that, hey listen...
Conventional slavery is unjust because conventional slavery is nothing more than one person or one group physically overpowering another and reducing it to captivity.
There's nothing just about that.
That's simply the law of the jungle.
That's simply using force against somebody else.
So, this Aristotelian idea...
That slavery might be justified in extreme cases where you've got people who are somehow incapable of looking after themselves.
Nevertheless, for Aristotle, most of slavery, which is conventional slavery, which is slavery that is basically created by one army capturing another, one society overrunning another, that conventional slavery cannot be defended as just.
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