All Episodes
Previous Next
April 26, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
46:58
WHO’S ON FIRST Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep820
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Coming up, I'll reveal some good news from the World Health Organization, which has repealed some of the worst elements of its so-called proposed global pandemic treaty.
I'll consider the existence of an anti-Trump cabal of legal and media experts to raise the question, are the conspiracy theorists right?
And Mark Lauder of the America First Policy Institute joins me.
We're going to talk about Trump's second-term policy agenda.
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.
America needs this voice.
The times are crazy. In a time of confusion, division, and lies, we need a brave voice of reason, understanding, and truth.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
I want to talk about some good news.
Coming out of the WHO. Now, the WHO, I'm not talking about the Rock Group.
I playfully titled today's podcast, Who's On First?
But no, I'm referring to the World Health Organization.
And you may be surprised that I'm talking about good news coming out of the World Health Organization.
And I suppose I should clarify that the good news I'm talking about is just that The bad news that seemed to be coming down the pike looks like it has been blocked, looks like it has been pushed back.
So by way of background, the World Health Organization got a massive expansion of its powers under COVID because people would turn to the WHO and go, what do you think about this?
And this kind of went to their heads.
And so the activists at the WHO, at the World Health Organization, began to conceive of an international or global pandemic treaty that other nations or all nations would sign on to, would agree to, that would give the World Health Organization unprecedented powers to manage really the global economy in the name of health. And this actually
wasn't just about pandemics. I mean, pandemics was the launching pad, was the pretext the World Health Organization wanted to be able to like define a pandemic, do things in anticipation even of a pandemic that isn't here, but go beyond that to be able to diagnose the health effects of other events occurring in the world.
So, for example, famines or hurricanes or...
Climate change.
The World Health Organization draft pandemic treaty gave the organization unprecedented and a huge power to essentially call for measures to be undertaken on a worldwide basis.
It required almost the countries of the world to agree in advance that they would be part of this network.
There was not an explicit repudiation of national sovereignty, but the implication that the WHO, the World Health Organization, they're going to be driving the chariot.
And so it's everybody else's job to funnel information to the World Health Organization and let the World Health Organization make these health decisions for, really, for the whole world.
Included in this was a frightening regime of, quote, fighting disinformation or fighting misinformation.
All essentially an effort to legitimize a global regime of censorship.
Probably censorship even more extensive than there was under COVID. So you might be saying, well, Dinesh, all of this sounds horrible.
What's the good news that you promised us?
Well, the good news is that there was...
A massive pushback against all this by prominent epidemiologists, by prominent scholars, and just by people like you and me making fun of this treaty, ridiculing it, declaring that we would not be bound by it, demanding that our leaders do not give up any of our national sovereignty.
On these issues, particularly when you keep in mind the fact that governments, including the World Health Organization, were sources of misinformation, were telling people to do things for which there was not adequate scientific authority, were saying,
quote, follow the science and then making unscientific proclamations, were intimating that if you took the vaccine, you couldn't get COVID or transmit COVID. So, One dubious assertion on top of another, the insistence that COVID had its origins in a wet market as opposed to being concocted in a lab.
All of this terrible record of lies piled up by governmental agencies, including figures at the World Health Organization.
So Thanks to the pushback, which is to say thanks to you and me and many others.
And it shows you that change doesn't come about without this kind of pushback, without It's not that the WHO, the World Health Organization, looked at the proposed pandemic treaty and go, oops, you know what, upon further reflection, we were mistaken about this and that and this and that.
No, it took external pressure for the WHO to change its mind.
And so, at least as of now, look, these things aren't final.
But in the new draft version of the pandemic treaty, we find a lot of changes.
Let me go through some of those.
Number one, the recommendations of the World Health Organization are now clearly specified to be non-binding.
So member states could follow them or not follow them at will.
That's a good thing. Number two, The pandemic treaty had removed any references to human rights, fundamental freedoms, human dignity.
Remember, these are ways of pushing back against things that they want to do.
Hey, listen, you're trying to censor me, but no, I have a right to free speech.
So that language of rights and freedoms is now back in the new version.
Three, provisions that would have allowed the World Health Organization to intervene even if there was, quote, a potential health emergency, that's been dropped.
So now an epidemic or a pandemic has to be happening or likely to happen.
It can't just be, hey, in preparation for a pandemic, we ask you, we're demanding that you do the following eight things.
No, there's not going to be this international coordination unless we're dealing with an actual pandemic.
Proposals to construct a global censorship and information control operation have been dropped.
That's probably the best news of all.
The advocacy of censorship, at least for now, and at least in this draft, is removed.
Then they talk about the fact that the scope of the WHO's authority is narrowed.
It's narrowed to actual health emergencies and pandemics, and the references to food supply, the references to natural disasters, the references to climate change have now been removed.
The focus is on the spread of disease.
Then it makes it very clear that the member states and not the WHO are responsible for implementing these regulations and the whole idea that the WHO is going to be kind of telling the member states what to do and driving compliance for the whole process.
This appears to have been either pulled back or watered down.
And finally, they've dropped compliance.
Provisions about digital health passports or required technology transfers among countries.
Countries have to divert a certain amount of their natural resources to preventing and fighting epidemics.
So this kind of global authoritarianism, which is part of the global elitism We're good to go.
To actual pressure coming from institutions, from countries, and from voices around the world.
So things could change.
Things may go back in a bad direction.
But as of now, it looks like this pandemic treaty has, if it hasn't been dropped, eliminated.
And probably some planning is useful for future pandemics.
Nevertheless, it is now a It is a thin version of the earlier treaty, which was a real mess, really alarming, many aspects of it, and it looks like some of those worst aspects are now happily gone.
The hardest part about weight loss?
Just getting started.
And there's no better time than right now to call our friends at PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition to start your journey to a healthier you.
As I hear from many of you about how PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition has changed your lives, I know each of us has our own reason for starting.
I started because I was feeling a little sluggish, a little tired all the time.
Debbie tried everything else, nothing would work.
So we just needed some help.
I heard from one listener who went for his yearly physical, was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, the medicine was making him sick, so he decided to do PhD weight loss and nutrition instead.
He has completely reversed his diagnosis.
Debbie talked to a lady who, just like her, couldn't get the menopause weight to go away, and Dr.
Ashley and her team helped her lose the weight and keep it off.
The best thing about this program is the Keeping It Off.
They have an 85% success rate of their clients maintaining their weight loss for life.
They provide elevated maintenance support for you through the PhD alumni community.
This alumni community will provide you with the support you need to keep this weight off forever.
Get started. Call PhD Weight Loss and Nutrition, 864-644-1900.
You can also go online at myphdweightloss.com.
The number again to call, 864-644-1900.
You've probably heard Mike Lindell and MyPillow no longer have the support of their box stores or shopping channels the way they used to.
They've been part of this terrible cancel culture, and so they want to pass the savings directly onto you by having a $25 extravaganza.
Now, when Mike started MyPillow, it was just a one product company, just the pillow.
But with the help of his dedicated employees, Mike now has hundreds of products, some of which you may not even know about.
To get the word out, I want to invite my viewers and listeners to check out the $25 extravaganza two-pack multi-use MyPillows, just $25.
MyPillow sandals, $25.
Six-pack towel sets, $25.
Brand new four-pack dish towels, you guessed it, just $25.
And for the first time ever, the premium MyPillows with the all-new Giza fabric, just $25.
By the way, orders over $75 will get free shipping as well.
So, What an offer.
It won't last long. Take advantage of it.
Call 800-876-0227.
The number again, 800-876-0227.
Or go to MyPillow.com to get the discounts, to get the free shipping.
You've got to use the promo code.
It's D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
I want to talk about an article in Politico that seems to corroborate that at least on this one point that I'm going to talk about, the conspiracy theorists are, once again, correct.
So the conspiracy theory we're talking about here is the theory that there is active...
Collaboration among anti-Trump legal forces in all different spheres, the legal community, the media, current and former government officials, they all...
Collude together to try to get Trump on the legal front.
And Trump, of course, suspects this and has said as much.
And this article in Politico seems to suggest that Trump has a point and conservatives who allege these conspiracies have a point.
Now, to some degree, we've long known that the left works in concert, but working in concert is not the same thing as working in actual conspiracy.
Concert would be a bunch of people, and think, for example, about, let's say, the Daily Caller, Breitbart, Newsmax, Turning Point, the Heritage Foundation.
They work in concert, and by concert I mean they're working together toward the same end.
They sometimes work in collaboration.
A speaker at the Heritage Foundation may speak at a turning point event, things like that.
But there's no conspiracy.
It's not as if all these organizations are part of a single network.
So a conspiracy would imply direct engagement.
And what this article in Politico says, here's the title, Inside the Off-the-Record Calls Held by Anti-Trump Legal Pundits.
And it turns out that a whole bunch of prominent lawyers, media figures, think tankers, current and former government officials are part of a network that has regular off-the-record, which is to say secretive, Zoom calls and phone calls to discuss legal strategy.
Who are we talking about?
I'll name a few of the figures.
Norm Eisen, who's a senior Obama official and CNN legal analyst.
Bill Kristol, the neocon, now never Trumper.
Lawrence Tribe, the left-wing legal scholar at Harvard Law School.
John Dean, by the way, former White House counsel under Nixon, who's now very much a part of the left.
George Conway, Kellyanne Conway's husband, never Trump attorney.
Andrew Weissman, longtime federal prosecutor.
He was part of the whole Mueller campaign.
Trump-Russia investigation.
He's now a legal analyst of MSNBC, Jeffrey Toobin.
This is the guy who was...
Well, you know Jeffrey Toobin, legal pundit.
And these guys are not only cooperating and talking and sort of colluding with each other on these regular meetings, but they loop in people.
They looped in the January 6th committee.
So you have January 6th committee people briefing these lawyers on what they're finding out, what they're What the new information is, ways in which they can go after Trump or Trumpsters.
When you had the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit, her lawyer Roberta Kaplan joined the group to talk about her strategy for going after Trump in court.
J. Michael Luttig, another never-Trump former judge, he came on to talk to the group about how the legal basis for throwing Trump off the ballot, remember the attempt made, the Colorado case that went up before the Supreme Court, one of the great advocates for using the insurgency clause of the 14th Amendment to get Trump off the ballot, precisely this J. Michael Luttig, he was part of these phone calls.
Who is a left-winger, makes the point that as, I'm trying to see if it's a male or female writer, and Kush Cardori, well, I can't tell from the name, but in any event, the writer says, I learned that some members of the group were understandably anxious about its publication, about the publication of this article.
Why? Because, quote, Trump has claimed that there is a legal conspiracy against him.
And there is a risk that news of a group such as this could give Trump and his allies an attractive target.
It's another way of saying, you know, the conspiracy theorists are kind of right on this one.
He's quoting someone who's in the group.
It runs the risk of creating the impression that there is an agreement or cooperation or conspiracy across mainstream media entities.
I mean, if you're wondering how you get news stories that appear on places like CNN, MSNBC, it all looks like the same people are saying the same things.
The headlines are repeated from one media outlet to another.
Well, here's the answer.
Very often, these media figures and these legal experts who are brought in are all part of the same Zoom call.
They've been talking to each other that day or that week.
They've been talking, this argument's going to work.
That's not going to work. This is how we can get him.
No, we better stay away from that one.
That's really, that's too far-fetched.
So this is the anti-Trump team working in concert with each other toward the end of getting Trump.
So when Trump says they're out to get me, when Republicans say they're out to get us, here is one nugget of proof that our fears are justified.
If you'd like to support my work, guys, I'd like to invite you to check out my Locals channel. It's a way to get to know me better personally, and I also post a lot of exclusive content on Locals, including content that's censored on other social media platforms.
On Locals, you get Dinesh Unchained, Dinesh Uncensored. You can also interact with me directly. I do a live weekly Q&A every Tuesday. No topic is off limits.
I've also got a movie page up on Locals.
I've uploaded some very cool films.
2000 Mules is up there.
And also my latest film, Police Date.
If you're an annual subscriber, this movie content, you can stream and watch it for free.
It's included with your subscription.
So check out the channel.
It's dinesh.locals.com.
I'd love to have you along for this great ride again.
It's dinesh.locals.com.
Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast Mark Lauder.
He's Chief Communications Officer at the America First Policy Institute, AFPI, the website americafirstpolicy.com.
You can follow him on x at mark, M-A-R-C underscore L-O-T-T-E-R. By the way, he was Director of Strategic Communications for the Trump-Pence 2020 campaign.
He was also Special Assistant at Thank you for joining me.
A farcical trial going on in New York, a trial that has gagged Trump, prevented him from speaking out, and on pain of being locked up, the judge has the authority to find that he violated the gag order, throw him in jail.
What is your reaction to this stuff going on?
This is great to be with you, Dinesh.
It really is the epitome of the weaponization of government.
I mean, let's cut this case to what it truly is.
This is a misdemeanor bookkeeping issue with the statute of limitations long since expired, but they're now trying to allege it as part of a conspiracy to violate a federal law.
That the federal government said that Donald Trump didn't violate.
I mean, that's really what we are talking about.
And then when you add to the facts, again, this judge in this case, he's literally threatened to throw Donald Trump in Rikers Island into jail for going to his son's high school graduation.
Yet, in Manhattan, in the same jurisdiction, you could be a Biden illegal, beat up a bunch of NYPD officers, and get out of jail scot-free with no bail, run around the country on the taxpayer's dime, and there's basically no repercussions for your actions.
I mean, that right there says two systems of justice.
It doesn't take much to prove it beyond that.
Mark, how is this stuff intended to go forward?
I mean, you've got a left-wing judge, this one merchant fellow.
Is the idea here that we try to round up a blue jury in a blue state, we hope that no Trumpsters get on the jury, so that no matter how preposterous the case, nevertheless, we're just looking for...
I mean, this is the left's point of view.
They're just looking for a conviction, a guilty verdict that they can emblazon across every headline.
All of this aimed, of course, at trying to torpedo Trump's candidacy this year in the 2024 presidential election.
Is that really what's going on?
I think that's the icing on the cake for them.
I honestly believe if they could get that, that would be their holy grail.
What they really want to do is just force him to stay locked in New York City for the next six to eight weeks and smear him with anything and everything they can come up with and force him to endure it so it keeps him off the campaign trail.
Meanwhile, Joe Biden is going out there lying to people about driving an 18-wheeler and all this other nonsense.
He can go out and campaign while Donald Trump is forced to stay locked in a courtroom.
That's their ultimate goal.
If they get a conviction, that's even better.
But I think even most legal scholars, even liberal ones, know this thing's never going to stand up on appeal.
At the same time, while what you say is true, and I think the Republican base fully sees it for what it is, there does seem to me to be a very muted response from Republicans in Congress and in the Senate saying,
You'd think that within an election year, when there's this obvious effort to tie Trump down financially, tie him down in terms of his time, that you would have every Republican senator raging about this and drawing attention to it.
And yet it almost seems like the Republicans, I don't know, are they in a muted stupor?
Is it that they...
They want to stay out of this?
Are they worried that they'll be dragged into it themselves?
How do you explain the, not the action, but the inaction of the GOP as a whole while these outrageous developments are going on?
In a way, I actually think this may actually be more helpful to the president than if they were all piling on in support of him, because right now they're out there talking about the real issues.
They're talking about immigration.
They're talking about inflation.
They're talking about the things in their districts that the president would be talking about if he was able to be there.
And so in a way, I think this just keeps that drumbeat going.
The benefit that Donald Trump has is he doesn't have to convince the American people that he's right.
They already know he's right.
They know they were better off, that things were cheaper, the border was more secure, the world was not at war when he was in the Oval Office, as compared to the mess that we have going on right now.
So as long as those House members, those Senate members can continue to go out there, talk about those real life issues, Donald Trump and his legal team will take care of this, I have no doubt about that.
They're gonna keep that drumbeat going of those real issues.
And I think once we get through all of this nonsense, regardless of what happens in New York, the American people are gonna sit there and go, Okay, you charged Donald Trump with these things.
The Biden family should be charged with a bunch of things.
I don't care about any of it.
I just want people to lower my gas prices, lower my grocery prices, secure the southern border, and get some kind of peace and stability restored again around the world.
Do you think that of all the issues that the border is the most significant one and also you were just mentioning to me a moment ago that you've been doing some research into sort of historical trends with regards to people coming to America and you made a very interesting observation.
Well, thanks, Sidesha.
I mean, obviously, I think immigration is going to be probably the second most important issue.
In some places, it may be number one.
I think the economy is always, and inflation is always going to probably trump that.
But it's going to be very high up there.
And this is a really interesting note.
So far this year, in the last three years, Joe Biden has allowed about 11.5 million illegal immigrants into our country.
11.5 million over three years.
You think about it, during what they called the Great Migration, from the early 1890s to the early 1950s, there was 60 years, 12 million people came into Ellis Island.
They signed the book.
It's a national historic landmark.
People go visit to see where their great-grandparents and grandparents and parents came in there, signed the book, legally built all these great immigrant communities across so many American cities.
And in three years, three and a half years, Joe Biden has allowed nearly as many illegal immigrants into our country, unvetted, as came through legally during the Great Migration.
I mean, I'm still in somewhat disbelief that this has even been allowed to happen because it just seems like such a flagrant violation of our existing immigration laws.
Do you agree that in a second Trump term, it is not going to be sufficient simply to seal the border and build the wall?
There has to be something done to reverse the This massive influx of illegals who are now in the country and roaming around with all kinds of schemes afoot for how do we get these people's driver's licenses.
And as you know, many of them are already getting government benefits.
And I'm sure we're not far away from how do we get these guys to be able to somehow get at least local voting rights and voting privileges.
So it's a big mess.
And do you agree that in a second term...
Deportation has to be on the table.
Yes, deportation is not a dirty word.
In fact, it's required by our law.
And there are many standards, and we have an entire division of the federal government that does just that.
They deport people who are here and shouldn't be.
So that shouldn't be considered a dirty word.
It should be considered a standard operating procedure.
And I know the president has talked about having the largest deportation effort ever undertaken in our country's history to deal with the unprecedented, historic, illegal immigrant crisis caused by Joe Biden.
So I think we have to do all the above to your exact point.
You've got so many jurisdictions out there that are requiring people to give you their driver's license.
By the way, Joe Biden is ordering federal and state agencies, primarily welfare agencies, to now register people to vote.
Well, federal law says you can't ask somebody if they're a US citizen or to prove if they're a US citizen before they register to vote.
So you know that they're going to try to get these people On the voter rolls so they can start voting.
They will be counted in the new census in 2030.
So that threatens to upend the way our Congress is currently made up.
So now you're going to get New York and California, get all of these extra congressional seats because of people who aren't even eligible to be here.
That's all part and parcel to what this plan is.
And if we don't do something about it, Let alone the crimes obviously we see committed.
Then we're not going to have a country because now it's just going to be a free-for-all and anyone who wants to come here, whether you're legal, not legal, a terrorist, a criminal, or you have the great intent and you're seeking the American dream, all of you are going to be allowed here and we're going to have no idea what's going on.
Mark, you know, when you mentioned the fact that people know how Trump governed, I think this actually greatly undercuts some of the accusations that he's an authoritarian and so on, because what authoritarian things did Trump do between 2016 and 2020?
As far as I can see, nothing.
And so that charge is not likely to stick very well.
But there are people who look at the first Trump term, conservatives.
And highlight two points.
Number one, they say that Trump seems to have greatly underestimated the malevolence and the depth of corruption of the deep state or the police state.
And number two, Trump's response to COVID, now admittedly in an environment where not a lot was known about this new pandemic, nevertheless Trump took positions on COVID that maybe he regrets in retrospect.
My question is, do you think that Trump will have drawn lessons from the first term and from the subsequent lawfare that has been now directed not just against him but against others on the right so that the mistakes of the first term won't be repeated in the second?
Absolutely. I don't think without a doubt that there will be changes in the second term.
In fact, I walked into the White House on January 20th, 2017 with President Trump and Vice President Pence on their very first day.
And when you look and compare the first days of the Trump administration to the first days of the Biden administration, it's so stark.
You know, we had about 500 people that went into federal government service We're good to go.
What? But how do you get it done?
Whether it's executive action, whether it is proposed executive orders or legislation, having all of that stuff ready to go, and it will still be the president who decides what to do, what policies to pursue.
But if you have a buffet of options going, oh, you want to do that?
We've got something ready for you.
It's fully researched.
It's got the data behind it.
Here, let's get that ready.
That's what Democrats have been very good at doing for the last 40, 50 years.
Republicans by and large have not been good about doing that through any Republican administration.
That's something we've got to change.
And I know that's something that will change in Trump 2.0 because all of that work has been taking place for years.
It continues. And all we're waiting now for is the results of the election and then the president to say, I want to do this on day one.
And you'll have the paperwork ready to go to say, here it is.
This is what you want.
If that's what you want, let's go get it done.
I mean, this, I think, is a critical point you're making, which is that typically Republicans will just put someone at the top of a bureaucracy, but there's such a deep infestation below that, that a lot of those guys are kind of running amok and doing their own thing and acting like there isn't a Republican administration in charge.
I think you're saying that there's now a strong, not just a desire, but there's institutional planning so that it'll be different and that there will be an effort to burrow down into the Department of Health and Human Services, into the structure of the DOJ and the FBI. In other words, the cleanup will begin at the ground floor.
You're absolutely right.
That's one of the great things about the America First Policy Institute.
So we have eight former cabinet level officials from the Trump administration, 20 White House senior staff, 50 senior administration officials.
These are the people who are actually in the agencies in the White House right next to Donald Trump and his appointed leaders.
And what they're doing right now is building a roadmap.
Not of who should get new jobs.
That's the president's decision, not the who.
But what jobs need to be filled?
Because, you know, when you look at these various agencies and you look at the flow chart and where jobs are, it's not always just the top 10 jobs that are the most important jobs.
You literally have a job maybe three or four levels over here, which is overseas government bureaucrats, and that's where they like to gum up the works.
So if you get someone over that group or that group, you can stop the deep state, the police state, the bureaucrats from gumming up the works, doing shoddy work products, and really delaying the president.
So we'll save it for other folks to figure out who should be doing it, but we're using our expertise from inside those agencies to say, you gotta get somebody appointed to that job on day one, because that's where the pinhead bureaucrats go to just let things die and let things slow down when you know President Trump.
he's usually going at about 120 miles an hour at all times.
Good stuff, Mark. That's all very good to hear.
Guys, the website, AmericaFirstPolicy.com.
I've been talking to Mark Lauder.
He's Chief Communications Officer at the America First Policy Institute.
Mark, a real pleasure.
Thank you for joining me.
Thank you, Dinesh. I intend today to complete my discussion of Abraham Lincoln, my study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, and my discussion of Harry Jaffa's book, Crisis of the House Divided.
And Jaffa, in his final chapter, summing up, writes this, Lincoln understood the task of statesmanship to know what is good or right.
To know how much of that good is attainable and to act to secure that much good, but not to abandon the attainable good by grasping for more.
There's a lot here, so let's slow it down.
Number one, to know what is good or right.
This for Lincoln is fundamental because in discussing these issues of slavery, for Lincoln it's not just a matter of economics.
It's not just a matter of coming up with some formula.
Let every state and territory decide for itself.
Lincoln says slavery is primarily a moral issue.
There is the moral question of are you entitled to confiscate the hard-earned fruits of somebody else's labor?
Not only that, are you in a position where you can own another human being?
You can't look at it without, by removing, if you will, the lens of morality.
So to know what is good or right, knowledge is a critical task of statesmanship.
You have to think it through.
You have to understand what principles are at stake.
But then we move to number two.
Which is the movement from theoretical understanding or knowledge to practice.
And here, says Jaffa...
In other words...
What are the political realities that you're dealing with in a democratic society?
Remember, we're not living in an authoritarian society, in a monarchy, for example.
In a monarchy, you can say, alright, I'm going to decide what's good.
And I'm going to decide what is sort of bearable or tolerable to the people that I'm ruling over.
But I don't need to consult them.
I don't need to ask what they think about the matter.
Who cares? I think this is good and right.
I'm going to just make it a law and make it happen.
In a democratic society, it doesn't work that way.
Because not only do you have to be elected, but you need to be re-elected to be able to maintain and consolidate your gains.
Otherwise, if you run recklessly against the values and opinions and convictions of the voters, they will throw you out the next time around, and then somebody else will come in and undo all the good things that you've done.
So you've always got to keep in mind, this is the good thing that I'm trying to accomplish.
How much of it can I get done now in this context?
Now, so in other words, Jaffa's conclusion, very important.
Do not abandon the attainable by trying to get more and ending up with nothing.
This is worth keeping in mind when we consider debates and there's a kind of obvious applicability to the abortion debate.
Abortion is wrong.
It is really always wrong.
There's probably no real justification for it in terms of moral theory, except when the life of the mother is threatened.
And there shouldn't really be abortions in any other circumstances.
And yet, this is not something that the American people are, as of now, on board with.
The American people don't like abortion.
There are reservations about abortion.
But a lot of Americans, probably a majority, think abortion should be legal in some circumstances.
So right here we see we have a chance to apply the wisdom of Lincoln.
In other words, statesmanship is the task of knowing what is good or right.
That's important. Start there.
And this is really what the pro-life movement is emphasizing.
But then we come to the second part, which is what Trump is emphasizing.
To know how much of that good is attainable.
Now, I think in Trump's judgment, what he's saying is that we have decentralized this issue.
We have done what the pro-life movement has been calling for for decades, sending it back to the states.
Now let's make progress in the states in, again, achieving as much of anti-abortion legislation as will be endured or tolerated or accepted.
This is the consent of the governed by the people in those states.
This is not to say that we don't need further measures further down the road, but it is to say that we are not further down the road yet.
So, This is important when we consider some of the things that Lincoln said, things like that seem to suggest he didn't support intermarriage between the races, or when Lincoln said, I'm not in favor of social equality between blacks and whites.
I think what Lincoln is getting at here is what he—I'm quite convinced, and we know from private examples, that Lincoln is actually okay with interracial marriage.
There was a prominent Republican who had actually freed a slave that had been inherited by him, and then when his wife died, essentially He didn't marry her, but he lived with her as his wife over a very long period of time, and Lincoln praised that guy as a kind of model of Republican virtue.
Now, Lincoln obviously knew the circumstances, and Lincoln did not say, oh my gosh, but it's a serious blight upon this guy that he's taken up with this black woman.
None of that. Lincoln saw him on the whole as being someone to admire.
And similarly, I don't think that Lincoln had any objections to civic equality or to blacks having the right to vote.
None of that. But Lincoln realized that in 1860 or in 1858 when campaigning against Douglass and then in 1860 while campaigning for the presidency...
That these claims are much further than the American people are willing to go.
And so not only was Lincoln not going there, not only did Lincoln focus on the point of unification for the Republican Party, namely stopping the extension of slavery, but Lincoln denied that he wanted to go in that direction.
Now, Harry Jaffa considers when is it right for a statesman to do this, to, in a sense, engage in a kind of verbal dodge or even inconsistency.
And Jaffa says that it is okay to do that, to hold back where you really want to go, because as long as you make sure that you're not doing it in a way that later will provide an obstacle for moving in that direction.
Here's a very interesting exchange between Lincoln and Sam and Chase.
Chase is a Republican senator from Ohio.
And Chase was very close to being an abolitionist.
And Chase had engineered in the Republican State Convention in Ohio a plank Which called for, quote, a repeal of the atrocious Fugitive Slave Law.
Now the Fugitive Slave Law that he's talking about is the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
It had been the result of a very elaborate negotiation back and forth It was a modification of the old Missouri Compromise, but it represented where the abolitionists wanted to go, essentially to throw out any fugitive slave protections so slave owners who went into free states would have no protection for their slaves at all or for their slave property at all.
Here's Lincoln writing to Chase in June of 1859.
He says...
I enter upon no argument one way or another.
But I assure you the cause of republicanism is hopeless in Illinois if it can be in any way made responsible for that plank.
So this is the heart of what Jaffa is talking about.
Lincoln is really saying, look, I don't want to argue with you about the merits of the Fugitive Slave Clause.
I'm quite sure Lincoln thought, we don't need Fugitive Slave Clause.
This would be good, in theory, as a matter of wisdom, not to have them at all.
But Lincoln is saying that's not the politics of Illinois.
The people of Illinois are sort of moderates on this issue.
They are okay with the compromise of 1850.
It is the overthrow of that compromise by Douglass through the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
That's what the Republicans are objecting to.
So if you now come along and say you want to throw out the compromise of 1850 or a significant part of it, the fugitive slave part of it, then Basically, he says Republicanism, the new Republican Party, is dead in Illinois.
In other words, do you want the Republicans to win the 1860 election?
Yes or no? And if you do, we cannot go trying to take this debate further than the people of Illinois are willing to go along with us.
So, This, I think, is the essence of Republican, and I use Republican here in the small r sense, Republican statesmanship.
And I think what we've seen here in this study of Lincoln is a constant desire to be right and sound on the issue of principle.
But nevertheless, to also recognize the applicability of principles to a given situation.
In some ways, that's what we deal with as conservatives.
The principles are enduring, but you always have to ask, how much of this principle can I realize?
Can I make practical?
Can I sort of bring to fruition?
▲
Export Selection