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May 28, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
48:41
JACK FELL DOWN Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep841
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Coming up, I'll reveal how Special Counsel Jack Smith is being outmaneuvered by the Trump team and Judge Eileen Cannon.
I'll also show how the Manhattan DA and the judge, working as a single team, are desperately trying to get a guilty verdict against Trump.
Mark Lauder of the American Foreign Policy Institute joins me.
We're going to talk about Trump's appearance at the Libertarian National Convention.
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in Florida for a gag order on me so I cannot talk about all the crimes he has committed including the illegal, unconstitutional, and unwarranted raid of Mar-a-Lago.
Now what is Trump referring to here? He is referring to Jack Smith upping the ante after it was revealed that there was an authorization to use deadly force in the Mar-a-Lago raid.
Now Trump of course was all over this and highlighted it and complained about it and pointed out that look you've got a facility that is protected by the Secret Service and yet here come the Feds, here comes the FBI with an authorization to use lethal force if necessary.
So, I think to most of us, this seemed like a very reckless, dangerous, with the potential for escalation.
And yet we were assured by the left and by the Democrats, this is standard practice.
This is normal. This is kind of just on the form itself.
But my point, and I emphasized this last week, is that it doesn't matter if it's standard practice.
This is not a standard situation.
Just like for the FBI to show up at the Penn Biden Center or Biden's own house is not a standard situation.
So the question becomes, was there an authorization to use lethal force against Biden when you show up at Biden's house?
And Jackie Heinrich of Fox News says, I'm assured by sources in the FBI that that order was in effect.
But in Trump's case, you have the order in writing.
It's in the documents.
There's an actual form which specifies the order, and no equivalent form has been produced, and I don't believe any equivalent form exists.
For Biden or for anybody else like Mike Pence or anyone else, the FBI by and large treated those guys with great deference, very, quote, helpful, whereas with Trump, it's like, let's bring out the big guns.
Now, Jack Smith has gone to the judge and said that he wants to, I'm quoting, the government moves to modify defendant Donald J. Trump's conditions of release to make clear that he may not make statements that pose a significant imminent and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents participating in the investigation.
Wait, how is Trump and his statements posing a significant, imminent, and foreseeable danger to law enforcement agents?
This is just downright...
I mean, it's prima facie absurd.
Who are these agents and how are they being threatened and by whom?
And what is the connection with anything that Trump has said?
Well, it turns out that Jack Smith thinks that for Trump to raise the issue of lethal force is itself so provocative that it puts the lives of agents in danger. This is really what he's going for.
He says the government's request is necessary because of several intentionally false and inflammatory statements recently made by Trump.
Well, what's inflammatory is the situation.
How is Trump's statement intentionally false?
Was there or was there not a lethal force authorization?
Yes, there was. So, now Jack Smith goes on in the...
In his memo to downplay what the agents actually did or what their involvement was.
Here's Jack Smith talking about it.
He says, FBI agents were carrying, quote, standard issue weapons.
So in other words, they weren't carrying any different weapons than they normally carry.
And, quote, they were attired in business casual with unmarked polo or collared shirts and law enforcement equipment concealed.
So this is Jack Smith saying, well, these people were just going about their normal business.
And yet, here's Trump. Lethal force, lethal force.
And the problem is that this is not the full story.
It is only a small part of the story.
There were 30 FBI agents involved.
The raid lasted for nine hours.
Julie Kelly points out that the agents were instructed to, quote, bring, and now she's quoting, standard issue weapons, ammo, handcuffs.
So, right there. If you want to talk about coming armed, coming with the kind of paraphernalia where we may have to put people in handcuffs.
Melania, resist. Barron, put them in handcuffs.
Bring ammunition if you need it.
The order also said...
That agents should have their badges and credentials concealed.
Now, this is a tricky business because it actually makes the raid more provocative.
If you're approached by somebody who's in full uniform and they say, it's the police, open up, you're more likely to go, okay, I'm going to open up.
But if some guy shows up in a polo shirt, but he's hiding his weapons, he's hiding his badges, you're going to be like...
Well, back off!
And the Secret Service is going to be, you better back off or we'll draw our weapons.
In other words, what I'm getting at is that what Jack Smith is claiming to be a de-escalation actually creates more potential, more possibilities of escalation.
Now what happens here, it goes to Judge Eileen Cannon, whom we're quickly discovering is actually one of the savviest judges.
Savviest not just on the law, but also on the politics of this.
She knows what's really going on.
And so what I think is going to happen is she's going to now turn the tables on Jack Smith.
First of all, she's going to have the Trump people respond.
And the Trump people already have submitted their first response, and it is absolutely crushing.
Let me just point out one tiny detail.
The Trump people in their response say, but the agents appear to have done so.
In other words, have considered the necessity of bringing all this weaponry and with this lethal force authorization.
Why? Based upon documents produced in Discovery in order to search for alleged contraband they pretended was life-threatening in Mar-a-Lago's gym and kitchen.
And then the Trump people attached photos.
So think about this.
The FBI was not claiming that somehow Mar-a-Lago was heavily armed, that there were machine guns lying around or anything like that.
Here's what they said. They said, we're kind of worried that the people at Mar-a-Lago may try to attack us with gym equipment.
Like what? Dumbbells?
Things like that. Or there's perhaps some lethal objects in the kitchen.
Forks? Knives?
Meat cleavers?
What? Does it make any sense to pretend like you're facing mortal danger because, hey, guess what they have in Mar-a-Lago?
Which presumably, this does not exist anywhere else in the country.
They have a gym. They actually have a kitchen.
So I think that this is going to turn into a great circus.
And Judge Eileen Cannon is just going to sit back and enjoy the show.
This is going to, I think, backfire on Jack Smith.
Now, some people on the left say, well, we don't care if Judge Eileen Cannon doesn't make any gag order because then Jack Smith can appeal it to the 11th Circuit.
Well, this is the kind of, I call it magical legal thinking on the left.
The same people who are like, oh yeah, Trump is going to be thrown off the ballot in Colorado and Maine.
Oh yeah, the Supreme Court's going to do this.
Oh yeah, these are people who have been assuring us since day one that they're going to get them on this, they're going to get them on that.
None of it has really panned out their way.
And I predict, at least if my instinct is right, this is not going to either.
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The Trump case in New York is coming to its end, closing statements, jury instructions, and then it's in the hands of the jury.
From what we can see, the judge is doing everything he can to ensure a guilty verdict.
It's almost as if he He's worried the jury isn't going to go along.
So he keeps telling them things like, listen, I'm the one who's going to be explaining the law and you've agreed at the time that you were brought on as jurors that you're going to take the instructions on what the law is from me and me alone.
So in other words, don't listen to the lawyers.
It's not their job to tell you what the law is.
It is my job.
So this is the way in which a judge tries to control the outcome of a trial.
And I think in this case, Judge Merchant is just not even worried about being reversed.
I think he knows that the trial is a joke.
He's a joke. But I think his thought is, so what?
If I can deliver a guilty verdict for the left, I'll be their hero.
Yeah, it may be overturned on appeal later.
But it will be a real body blow to Trump.
A body blow to his campaign.
This is what the Democrats have been praying for.
I'm their only hope.
So I want to be like their great white hope, if you will, in delivering this kind of a knockout punch.
And yet, in order to get a guilty verdict...
There has to be an underlying crime, an underlying felony, not an underlying misdemeanor.
And so just altering tax records doesn't really do the trick.
That's hard enough, by the way, to show because what happens here?
Let's go through what really happened.
A payment was made from Trump to his lawyer, Michael Cohen.
Michael Cohen then turned around and made payments to Stormy Daniels stretched out over many weeks.
This payment that Trump made to Michael Cohen was recorded, not by Trump, but by the accountants, as a, quote, legal expense.
Now I ask you, what was it?
If a payment to a lawyer cannot be listed as a legal expense, it was a legal expense.
Now true, it was a legal expense that was then going to be turned around and paid in installments to Stormy Daniels, but Trump didn't market this way.
He wasn't responsible for doing this.
He actually had no idea how this was all structured.
It was all done by Cohen.
So no evidence has really emerged that Trump was the one who directed this quote misclassification and yet the jury has to believe that he did.
Point one.
Point number two, even if Trump did that, even if he intended to do it, that would be a misdemeanor.
It's not a felony. No prison.
That's not what this case is all about.
This misdemeanor has to lead to a felony.
And what is the felony?
Well, as it turns out, it's really hard to say.
And no proof of any attachment to any other felony has been produced in the case.
And therefore, the judge...
And this is, I think, where the judge is going into territory that is almost automatic grounds for reversal.
The judge is basically saying, there are three possible felonies here.
And frankly, Trump doesn't even have to have committed any of them.
He just has to have the intent to commit.
So in other words, if Trump said, I want to alter these records with the intent to influence campaign finance law, the election law, then federal campaign finance law, then the jury can go, yeah, well, that was a felony.
You didn't do it, but you intended to do it, which is the same as having done it.
This is where the judge is actually trying to go.
So the judge is telling the jury, I'm going to give you three possible felonies.
You don't have to agree on which one he did.
As long as you agree that he did something, it's going to be enough.
Now, Greta Van Susteren, who, as you know, is a longtime—she's a lawyer.
She was a longtime host on CNN. She has actually produced a Supreme Court case that says that this is just not going to fly.
I'm not quoting Richardson v.
United States, 1999.
I'm quoting from the Supreme Court.
The jury must be unanimous as to the series of underlying offenses in a prosecution.
That is, the jury must unanimously agree not just that the defendant committed some series of violations, but also about which specific violations make up that continuing series.
It's not enough to agree, yo, the guy committed some crimes.
I think it's over here, you think it's over there, but we all agree he did something.
No. In order to find someone guilty of a felony, there has to be unanimity.
This is the felony.
We all agree that Trump committed this particular felony.
And yet Judge Merchant is telling the jury the exact opposite.
He's telling the jury, pick from one of three felonies that I'm going to give you.
Well, what are these felonies?
The first one is tax fraud.
So that is a felony.
But it's quite obvious that Trump didn't commit it.
Why? Did he take this payment to Stormy Daniels and deducted off his taxes?
No, he didn't. So where's the tax fraud?
There's no tax fraud because no tax deduction was even taken.
How can you defraud the government of tax revenue when you didn't take the deduction?
Two. State election law violations.
This is extremely vague.
No one has even argued in court that Trump made these violations.
But there are state election laws.
And basically Judge Merchant is saying to the jury, if you think he violated those, well, there you go.
There's your felony for you.
And the third is, of course, federal election laws.
And again, the whole situation is extremely murky.
Did Trump take money from his campaign and use it to pay Stormy Daniels?
In which case you could say, this is a campaign expenditure that is somehow unauthorized.
But Trump didn't do that. Trump actually paid out of his personal funds.
So the peculiar presumption of this case is that had Trump taken money out of his campaign, it would have been okay.
Why? Because a campaign is allowed to use money to sort of suppress bad stories or hostile stories about an election.
But the fact that Trump took money from his own money is somehow an illicit contribution to the campaign by Trump.
But that doesn't make any sense either because Trump is allowed to give unlimited amounts of money to his own campaign.
In fact, Trump largely funded his own campaign in 2016.
There's no limit on how much a candidate can spend on their own campaign.
So you can see here as we go down every road, and I'm trying to find a road where Judge Merchant's instructions make any sense, but there really isn't one.
There is nothing here.
Jonathan Turley commenting on all this said recently, he said, listen, normally it's kind of like a three-legged stool and you try to show in making your closing argument that your client, the defendant, like that one of the legs of the stool was weak and therefore the whole stool kind of falls over because a stool needs three legs to stand on.
And basically what Turley is saying in this case, none of the three legs works at all.
All three legs are flat.
The whole stool is already down on the ground.
There is no stool. It's just basically the top of the flat part of the stool is, boom, on the ground.
There's no case here at all.
And yet the judge doesn't even seem to care.
He is basically rushing headlong with kind of mad, wild-eyed fanaticism.
He's like, get me a verdict.
Get me a verdict one way or the other.
I'm in New York. This should be favorable territory.
I don't care if people see me as an ideologue.
I need to deliver for Biden.
I need to deliver for the left.
And the question you have to ask yourself when you step back is asking, is this the new face of American justice?
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Guys, I'm delighted to welcome back to the podcast Mark Lauder, Chief Communications Officer at AFPI, which of course is the America First Policy Institute, the website americafirstpolicy.com.
Mark was previously Director of Strategic Communications for the Trump-Pence campaign, earlier Press Secretary to Vice President Pence.
You can follow him on x at mark, M-A-R-C. Mark, welcome back.
Great to have you. And as we speak, there is all kinds of drama brewing in New York City.
I saw this morning that Robert De Niro is showing up to tell us that our whole system of government is coming to an end if Trump makes it to the White House.
This is evidently being organized by the Biden campaign.
uh... don't you think that holding a press conference in front of the courthouse with de niro i mean what could be a more naked confession that a democratic president is mobilizing a democrat judge democratic prosecutors probably a democrat leaning jury to get his chief political opponent well that's all i've got left Dinesh to be honest with you I mean, they can't win on the issues.
They can't win on the economy.
They can't win on immigration.
They can't win on, you know, peace around the world because the world is a mess.
People's pocketbooks are a mess.
And Lord knows our border is a mess under Joe Biden.
So the only thing they can try to do is try to make this about lawfare and other nonsensical issues like January 6th.
And having Robert De Niro there today at the courthouse just basically shows you they're out of options.
There were stories over the weekend in the Wall Street Journal.
There were stories this morning in Politico that Democrats are freaking out because Joe Biden isn't able to distract the American people from the issues that matter.
He's getting hammered on those issues because the results are not good.
And so that's what they are left with is just trying to rally Hollywood and try to scare people into voting against Donald Trump because nobody likes what Joe Biden is offering and they don't want four more years of it.
I don't know if we can be oddsmakers about the outcome of this trial.
As I look at it, there seem to be three possible outcomes.
Acquittal, to me, appears remote just because of the composition of the jury.
And so I would give that maybe 8% or 9%.
Then the other two possibilities are a hung jury or a conviction.
And I'm going to give about even odds to those on the grounds that you've got a highly partisan judge that is basically telling the jury, you know, I'm going to explain the law to you and then you just decide what the facts are and apply the criteria as specified by me.
Do you agree with those general odds as I lay them out?
And second...
What do you think the impact is going to be of, let's just say Trump is convicted.
What is going to be the political fallout of that guilty verdict as emblazoned all around the country?
Well, generally, I think the most likely outcome is a hung jury.
For the reasons you enumerated, there's just too much partisanship in Manhattan on that jury, I think, to get an acquittal.
But this case is so weak.
The facts aren't there.
Even liberal legal scholars on some of the mainstream legacy outlets have admitted what a horrible case this is.
I think most likely it will end up in a hung jury and not even a conflicted partisan judge can save them from what a weak case this is.
But if they do score a conviction, obviously it's going to be overturned on appeal.
Most people understand what this is.
This is a partisan witch hunt.
And it's a paperwork trial.
I mean, it's very simply put, Donald Trump paid a lawyer and listed it as legal expenses, and they're saying that broke the law.
That's a pretty easy case for most people to understand.
And they can see just the naked partisanship that's going on in their effort to get Trump.
I mean, another possibility, which I think we should consider, is that if the judge goes the whole hog and jails Trump, I think it is entirely possible that his popularity will soar.
Because even the ordinary guy goes, well, this is too much.
I mean, we're having a democratic election, you've got two candidates, and one side has put the other side behind bars in the duration of the campaign leading up to the To the election.
Do you agree that this could backfire on them big time?
I think it already has backfired.
And if they take that extreme step, I think you're right.
It will backfire even more.
I mean, let's remember, the primary was just about neck and neck between Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis before all of this lawfare started.
But as soon as they started indicting him in New York, in Georgia, you know, with Jack Smith's cases, we saw Donald Trump's popularity soar.
He secured the nomination.
Now he's leading the re-election campaign.
And at no point in 2019 or 2020 was Donald Trump ever beating Joe Biden head-to-head.
He's been leading him every day since September of last year.
And as I've said before, polls do not overestimate Donald Trump's support.
Historically, they have always underestimated Donald Trump's support.
So if he's up 1% right now in the Real Clear Politics average, that's probably 3%, 4%, 5% overall.
Mark, what do you make of Trump's appearance at the Libertarian Convention?
I mean, it's an odd and motley group of people.
And by and large, they're free market oriented, but they tend to be also very left-wing on cultural issues.
And some people booed Trump while he was there.
But it seemed to me that his appearance there was very interesting because he didn't try to make an ideological appeal so much and say, okay, listen, I'm going to go down a checklist.
Here's how I'm with you guys on 8 out of 10 issues.
Rather, he said, look, I'm going to kind of offer you a deal.
If you want libertarians into opposition in government, if you want one of them in the cabinet, if you want me to free a couple of guys that are locked up right now that you believe are unjustly locked up, including Ross Ulbricht, I'll do it.
And why wouldn't you vote for that instead of voting for the good old 3% that you seem to rustle up every four years?
Now, libertarians are supposed to be smart guys, they're supposed to be pragmatists, they're supposed to look at what works.
Do you think that the majority of them will go for this deal?
I mean, I realize they ended up nominating some other guy, but do you think that Trump made a smart move by making this kind of a handshake, deal-maker approach to the libertarian vote?
Absolutely. I think this shows that Donald Trump will go wherever there is the possibility of getting votes, including to traditional areas that are not Republican.
So whether he's going to the Bronx, New Jersey, the Libertarian Party, the Minnesota speech he gave a couple of weeks ago, he's going to go up there because I think what people see right now is you've got so many folks who are angry about the economy, inflation, gas prices, the border, and everything else that's going on.
Donald Trump is blowing apart the Democrat coalition.
And right now, any person that he can elect, because I mean, look, the libertarians aren't going to win.
They're not going to get the votes.
But if he can get a few percentage points here and there, that's enough to put him over the edge.
Same thing goes true with New York, New Jersey, in Minnesota, union workers, Yeah, the union leaders are going to do what they mostly do, endorse Democrats.
But the men and women who actually work in the factories, drive the trucks, they're voting for Donald Trump.
I think the same argument can be made about the Libertarian Party.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they'll still nominate whoever they nominated.
But the people who can actually get out there and vote, if you want to see change, this is the way to do it.
I think it was a brilliant move.
And I think just... Area after area, state after state, demographic after demographic, Donald Trump is showing I'll go anywhere and everywhere because things are so bad under Joe Biden.
People are like, I think I might give this guy a shot.
May not put on a MAGA hat yet, but I'll at least pull the lever and that's the first step.
He was just talking about it.
And he's like, oh yeah, I think Nikki Haley does belong on the team.
He said she's got some really good ideas.
She's a really smart person.
Now, we often think of Trump as a guy who, like, you know, if you get on the wrong side of Trump, you're done.
He's never going to look twice at you again.
And yet we've seen with Ron DeSantis, we've seen with Nikki Haley...
Here's a guy, and Nikki Haley said some very mean-spirited things about Trump, but I think Trump recognizes, you know what, she does have a following.
It's not the majority of the Republican Party, but it is a sliver, it is a significant sliver of the Republican Party.
Let me go, let me be nice to her so I can actually go after her voters.
It's the art of the deal, Dinesh.
I mean, Donald Trump loves a deal, but he loves reconciliation as well.
We saw that happen under Lion Ted Cruz and little Marco Rubio in 2016.
We are now starting to see it happen again, obviously, with Ron DeSantis.
We see it happening with Nikki Haley.
And of course, Nikki Haley has a spot, you know, in a future administration.
It makes sense, but it also makes sense for Donald Trump to signal that he's open to reconciliation.
He's open to talking with her in her team and ultimately, he's ultimately going to try to fight to win her voters over because the choice is clear. Even if you didn't like him for whatever reason you might have had, voting for Donald Trump is a lot different than voting for Joe Biden.
There is no two ways about it.
If you want things done to fix the problems that Joe Biden created, well, four more years of Biden is not the answer.
You got to go with Donald Trump.
Mark, let's look at the broader contours of what's happening in this election and more broadly in American politics.
It used to be said that American politics is like all about the economy.
It's the economy, stupid.
And so that would be the primary factor.
And other issues like foreign policy was sort of a second, unless there was some huge crisis.
And then cultural issues, kind of a distant third.
It looks to me that that is changing and that now your economic condition circumstance may not be a very good predictor of how you're going to vote.
In fact, there are a lot of people, for example, who are more affluent, upper middle class, suburban.
And these are guys who have traditionally been Republican and probably a Republican for economic reasons.
And yet some of those groups are now tilting more to the left.
And then working class guys who have, again, traditionally been part of the FDR coalition, Democrats now moving toward Trump, including minority voters.
What is your big picture diagnosis of what is going to be decisive in this election?
Is it issues? Is it personality?
And if it's issues, which ones?
Well, I think we're witnessing a realignment of the political parties as we speak in real time.
And I do think, to your point, Dinesh, you are seeing working class people, folks, minorities, people of color, leaving the Democrat Party because for the last 40, 50, 60 years, the Democrats have, A, taken them for granted and basically just campaigned on, here's welfare, here's free government money and stuff.
Rather than, what can we do to improve your school so your children have a better lifestyle than you did?
What can we do to make sure you have an equal opportunity to the American dream?
Not an equal outcome, but an equal opportunity to go get it.
And so I think people are now finally starting to turn away from race-based politics or the politics of government handouts, which is the democratic way.
And yes, I think on cultural issues, there is probably a little bit of an affection and personality in the suburbs.
But they're still economic conservatives.
I still think that they are there.
We're seeing the Democrat Party break apart in real time.
But this will be an election about the economy.
And not necessarily the economy as we used to always think about it.
Because for the last 30 years, we've always basically judged the economy on the stock market and the unemployment rate.
This time around, we're in more of a late 70s, early 80s campaign model where it's about affordability.
And can you afford stuff?
Can you buy that first home or a new home?
The answer is no.
And so I still think it's the economy, stupid, or more appropriately, it's affordability, stupid.
And in that case, Donald Trump wins that.
Secondary arguments, immigration, little bit on foreign policy, also play into the hands of the President's We're good to go.
And you don't hear too much on the tax cut front, but what you do hear is about inflation eroding the value of your savings, inflation decreasing your purchasing power, and so it's those types of economic issues which you summarize as affordability.
Guys, I've been talking to Mark Lauder, Chief Communications Officer at the America First Policy, AmericaFirstPolicy.com.
Mark, thank you very much for joining me.
Good to see you, Nash. Guys, I plan to complete today my discussion of the third group of immigrants to America, or settlers I should call them.
And these are the Quakers who settled the areas of Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and then pushed further west and were very influential in establishing the culture of the American Midwest.
I want to talk about the egalitarianism of the Quakers, their particular notion of equality.
Not absolute equality, but equality of a certain type, which is...
today, and second, their unique idea of liberty, an idea of liberty that differs from the liberty of the Puritans who settled in Northeast and the liberty that defined the Cavaliers who – or Royalists who settled the areas of Virginia and established the culture of the American South.
Well, let's talk about egalitarianism.
By and large, in Puritan New England, as well as in the American South, the custom was to give most of the land to the oldest child, primogeniture.
And sometimes there were modified versions of that, but the desire, by and large, to preserve the size of an estate, a plantation, a homestead, the idea was, I don't want to break it up into four parts because I got four kids.
And so the oldest son typically would get the land.
But the Quakers didn't do this.
The Quaker view was all sons should inherit equally.
And if this seems a little bit...
The Quakers also made provision for the daughters.
So daughters didn't inherit land, but they would get a marriage portion, which is kind of, here's your share of the inheritance, you get it when you're married.
And they would also get a share of the personal estate, which means the estate not counting the land.
So this would be possessions, other types of property, and then of course also money.
The Quakers were socially—this is going beyond the family—very much against the kind of stratification, very much against the type of hierarchy that defined particularly Virginia.
So in Virginia, people were not—they didn't use the old royal titles, like you don't have American marquise or counts or earls.
But on the other hand, you had—this is a gentleman— This is a lady.
And you even had the concept of someone being a lord.
In other words, the lord of a plantation, for example.
But the Quakers didn't want any of this.
And in fact, here's a Quaker sermon.
So... They didn't like these sorts of titles, and they didn't even like Sir or Mr.
or Mistress, because even those suggested, quote, status, and for the Quakers, that was a mark of vanity, let's put it that way.
Now, William Penn, who established a community in Pennsylvania, was not an egalitarian.
He did believe that a sort of The aristocratic elite should govern society but he was very much against the sort of symbolism of social titles And the idea was,
yes, the better people in society should rule society, but they should rule it in a sense by dressing the same as everybody else, talking the same as everybody else, being part of the community and not necessarily kind of standing above looking down.
So the image of like the knight on a horse looking down at a peasant, the Quakers are very much against that.
Now, let's talk about the Quaker idea of freedom, because the Quaker idea of freedom is different than the Puritan idea of freedom.
Let's remember the Puritan idea of freedom is leave us alone so that we the Puritans can create our own community.
The Anglican or Royalist idea of freedom is really we are free to, in a sense, subdue So we are top of society, we are free because we're not encumbered in any way, but of course our servants are, our slaves are, and so we become even more protective of our freedom because we're like, wow, we don't want to be one of those guys.
But for the Quakers, it was that no, Freedom is a mutual bond.
It's kind of like, I will agree to give you your freedom if you will agree to give me mine.
So this notion of reciprocal liberty, that's the phrase that the historian David Hackett Fisher uses, and I think it's very apt here.
He says this is the kind of freedom that is embodied in the Liberty Bell, which was, by the way, put there.
The Liberty Bell very much symbolizes the Quaker idea of reciprocal liberty.
Now, of course, the Quakers believed that they were in the right, that their view was the best.
But they also believed that just because our view is the best doesn't mean we should be imposing it on other people.
So the Quakers were very tolerant in the original meaning of the term.
The original meaning of the term tolerance, by the way, does not mean that all ways are equally good or truth is up to you and my truth is up to me.
None of that. Tolerance actually means I believe in truth And I believe that my way is correct.
But nevertheless, I'm willing to hold my nose and put up with your way.
I'm going to extend toleration to you.
But toleration has built into it some implication that I don't agree with you.
Because frankly, if I agreed with you, there's nothing to tolerate.
So... The Quakers were champions of liberty of conscience, including the liberty of people who disagreed with them.
This was kind of unusual, not true of the Puritans, not true of the Anglicans.
Now, why did the Quakers become this way? It's not because the Quakers like thought harder about the issue of liberty and came to the conclusion that either it belongs to everybody or it's not really liberty. None of that. The Quakers really came to this view because they were persecuted pretty relentlessly by both the Puritans and the Anglicans. So they experienced it. William Penn, for example, had been in jail. So he knew that this is kind of what you get when somebody tries
to establish a kind of orthodoxy and then essentially bring out the handcuffs for people who don't go along.
So other Quakers, there were some 15,000 Quakers imprisoned in England, and the Anglican clergy were particular offenders in rounding these people up and locking them up.
But even the Quakers who weren't locked up were often penalized.
Like, for example, if they...
They wouldn't go along with an English war, for example.
They would all be charged a fine, a tithe, or their property was confiscated.
So when the Quakers came to America, they came with the idea that we're going to establish a community not to persecute, excuse me, but rather to let people exercise their own religious freedom.
Now again, for the Quakers, this was primarily Christian freedom.
They're talking about other Christian denominations.
They're not talking about practicing, you know, Islam or Hinduism or anything like that.
And interestingly, the Quakers extend this sort of egalitarian notion, as well as the notion of freedom, they extend it to servants and to slaves.
Now, the original Quakers, the very first Quakers who came, did own slaves.
William Penn owned slaves.
But very early on, in fact, before any other group in America, if you look at a history of the American anti-slavery movement, it begins with the Quakers.
and then later it spreads to the evangelical Christians and it spreads to others, but the Quakers got there first.
And they got there because of their application of the Golden Rule.
You don't want somebody else to enslave you? Well, don't enslave them.
And so this began very early in the 18th century, and really by the 1750s, the Quakers as a group were pretty strongly anti-slavery.
They had a number of the early abolitionists were in fact Quakers and they were able to persuade others So German Anabaptists, others who were in Jersey and Pennsylvania would look to the example of the Quakers and even though they weren't Quaker, they would adopt the anti-slavery stance of the Quakers.
So the Quakers moved incrementally.
Initially it was to restrict the slave trade, not to import any slaves.
Then they began to say that they He supported voluntary manumission, but not just to voluntarily free a slave and let him go.
It was that, you know what?
After you free a slave, you've got to help that guy to get established in society.
And in a sense, some Quakers understood this like, we have to free this guy and we've got to actually pay him for the services that he's done over all these years in which we held him for a slave.
And in fact, a good example, here's Abner Woolman.
Who frees two slaves that his wife had inherited.
But then what he does is he goes to the town commission and he says, listen, I want you to calculate for me the amount that my estate has been increased by their labor.
Tell me what that number is and I will pay them that amount.
I mean, this is amazing. It's not just the guy goes, listen, I'll make a calculation because obviously he can make a calculation that benefits himself.
He goes, no. He goes to town council.
You tell me how much these two guys and their labor over the years has increased the value of my estate.
I'm going to give them that as a startup fund so that they can get a start in life as free men.
So you can see the Quakers here, many ways, a very gentle person.
Pacifist or pacific, anti-war, a very collegial, easy to get along with people, people who try to convince you by example rather than persuasion, and who also generously extend the idea of liberty, liberty of conscience to other Christians, not just to the Quakers, and then actual personal liberty.
So in other words, And anti-slavery, the anti-slavery principle, which becomes really powerful in America in the 18th century, ultimately carries Abraham Lincoln to the presidency.
That principle was inaugurated, was established, was first kindled in America by this odd, affable group of settlers known as the Quakers.
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