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June 14, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
48:13
KEEPING YOUR TIPS Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep854
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Coming up, I'll talk about how the police state has gone global and why I'm joining Tucker Carlson on a lecture tour in Australia to make the case for freedom and against the global elites.
Debbie joins me.
We're going to discuss an ingenious idea for getting waiters and waitresses to vote for Trump.
We're going to talk about Paul Ryan's bizarre critique of MAGA and how Paul Fetterman is becoming more conservative as he gets his mind back.
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 Podcast.
The times are crazy, in a time of confusion, division and lies.
We need a brave voice of reason, understanding and truth.
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podcast.
So, three weeks.
And I'll be back on July 7th.
So, for the next two weeks, my daughter, Danielle D'Souza Gill, will be sitting in for me.
Great lineup of guests.
It's going to be fun, so make sure you tune in.
And then the subsequent week, the first week of July, I think one of those days is off, right?
Fourth of July.
So it's going to be a short week.
But nevertheless, Kyle Serafin will sit in for me that week.
And where am I going to be?
Well...
For about 12 days, Debbie and I are going to Australia.
We've been invited by an Australian billionaire, I believe a former member of parliament.
His name is Clive Palmer.
You can look him up.
You may have heard of him already.
He's a very interesting figure.
In politics and in culture.
In fact, he's building a replica of the Titanic to its actual dimensions.
And people are going to be able to sail the Titanic again, if you can believe it.
So really, this is the kind of guy with big ideas and a big vision.
And he's invited Tucker Carlson and me to come to Australia to join him and another speaker.
And the four of us are going to be doing What's called the Freedom Conference in a number of Australian cities.
We're going to begin actually at the far end of Australia, which is the Gold Coast, the area that is known as Cairns.
We're going to start there.
And that's the first event.
And then we go to Brisbane, which is a little bit south of Cairns.
Then from there we go to Adelaide, I believe.
Then across the country to Perth.
Then back across the country to Canberra, which is the capital.
We're going to do some receptions with members of Parliament, I believe.
And that's the Australian capital, by the way.
And then on from there to Sydney, and the tour ends in Melbourne.
So this is the full kind of The full trek across Australia.
It'll be, I think, very fascinating.
Debbie and I have never been, so it's our idea of Australia is only impressionistic.
And when I was first invited, I thought to myself, well, this is really interesting because You know, what message would I or just even Tucker and I have for Australia?
And then I realized that a lot of times the issues that we talk about, the issues that we discuss on the podcast, for example, we focus on them as American issues, the American dream, the The way in which the Obama legacy, for example, has become more and more corrosive, more and more destructive.
The way in which the Biden regime is using the weaponry of government to go after its critics.
We talk about censorship in America, Missouri versus Biden.
And we tend to think all of this is happening like over here.
Every now and then, we get a glimpse that some of it's happening elsewhere.
Certainly during COVID, we saw that there were stringent mandates in Australia, stringent mandates in Canada, all over Europe.
So that was the first indication that some of this Repression is global.
It's being imposed by a global network of elites.
This isn't just about America.
It involves the World Health Organization.
It involves the World Economic Forum.
So there are international institutions.
Sometimes when I'll post stuff on Twitter, I'll get a notification.
This has been challenged by the German government based upon German censorship laws.
They want to censor your post in Germany.
Now, ever since Elon Musk took over Twitter, took over X, this kind of thing has become a lot less frequent.
But under the old regime at Twitter, there was a lot of Foreign intervention, if you will, even in things that we as Americans were saying.
So the point here is this.
The left is global.
Debbie's been tracking the way, for example, the left is now very connected in the various parts of Central and South America.
And so you've got a left in Brazil, you've got a left in Argentina, a left in Chile, of course a left in Venezuela, in Mexico.
Well, there is a left in Argentina, but it's not a ruling.
Yeah, so no, yeah, Debbie's correcting me.
She's like, the left is not in charge.
That's true.
No, I just meant that there is a powerful, entrenched left now in many, many, perhaps not all parts of the world, but these leftists work across international boundaries.
And in some ways, it's easier for them to do that than for the right.
Why?
Because the left is all about, if you will, an international or global system of government.
Global response to climate change, global response to poverty, global response to epidemics.
The right is somewhat more regional, which is to say nationalistic.
Make America great again, make Argentina great again.
Make Australia great again!
And all of that is a way of saying that we tend to look somewhat inward at the distinctive features of our own experience, and we don't connect it necessarily, even though there are close connections.
I mean, you bring a guy like Javier Millet to America, and he might speak a different language, he might speak in a different accent, he might dress like an Argentine rock star maybe, but nevertheless, if you listen to what he's saying, What he's saying is very resonant for conservatives and republicans and patriots in this country.
We can, if you will, identify with his language completely.
And so, I think Australia, although it is a foreign country, is not so foreign in this respect after all.
And I think what Tucker and I will do, I don't know what Tucker is going to do, but we're putting forward a joint front here.
We're going to make the case for freedom against these global elites, and against the attempt to establish global forms of tyranny.
These global forms of tyranny, by the way, are far more dangerous than the tyranny of the past, because the tyranny of the past was always somewhat local.
At the worst, it's stretched across a whole country, but usually not even over a whole country.
You might remember, if you listen to my talk on Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago, there were opportunities, Solzhenitsyn says, for people who were being sought by the Soviet regime to basically take a train into the countryside and disappear.
They would never find you.
Of course, they didn't have the modern technology to be able to track you and trace you and track you down.
But the point being that even in the time of the Gulag, there were ways and there were places that you could go and escape.
The problem with global tyranny, there's no escape.
And so we need to come together, freedom-loving people across the world, in India, in Europe, in Australia, in Canada, in South America, and here in the United States, and form a a joint front against tyranny.
So this Freedom Conference all across Australia is a valiant effort by Clive Palmer to do that in his home country.
So I'm pleased, as I'm sure Tucker is, to be part of this.
And after that, I'm going to, Debbie and I are going to London.
We're going to do a short family reunion with some relatives from India.
We found over the years that it's a very long way from here to there.
It's a very long way for them to come to America.
So now we've come up with this device that some of the time, let's kind of meet halfway.
So that's what we're going to do.
Meet halfway in London, a few days in London, and then back here in America.
So I will see you I mean, if you follow me on Locals, you're going to be getting reports from me.
I'm going to be posting stuff from Australia so you can follow what I'm up to.
But otherwise, I will see you right back here on the podcast on, is it Monday, July?
No, actually we return on July 7th, so it'll be Monday, July 8th.
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Debbie and I are here for our Friday roundup and we are, well, we're kind of in the packing phase of our Australia trip.
And what I find quite amusing is we arrive and before the tour gets started, Clive Palmer has invited us on his, what is it, his 40 million dollar super yacht.
That's called a super yacht.
And to go into, I guess, to sail around the Great Barrier Reef.
And some place called Green Island.
And also to feed crocodiles and... And snorkel.
Which I will not be doing in the... Have you seen the movie The Reef?
Just saying, okay?
I just won't do it.
Are you saying that the movie is... Well, you also... You once showed me an app that you have that follows shark patterns around the world.
Yeah.
Well, these are sharks that are marked.
So, they mark them and then they follow them.
You mean they put like a chip in them?
They put a chip in them and they follow them.
Yeah.
And they, you know, whether... I mean, and they travel thousands of miles, these sharks.
Well, I remember, what I remember is three areas.
Florida, the Cape area of South Africa, and then the Great Barrier Reef area of Australia.
So, I think for these reasons, you will not be entering the water.
Well, you know, interestingly, Florida's become quite a shark.
A shark tank.
Oh, really?
You know, and not only that, that there've been video of sharks going like on the shallow water where people, people are, oh, I'm just going to stick my feet in.
Well, there's a shark right there.
I mean, it's crazy.
Not even necessarily in deep water.
There have been some, some shark attacks in Florida lately and just shark sightings.
There's just, they're everywhere, but I'm very afraid of sharks.
Well, we're getting ready to take, I think it's fair to say, probably the longest flights we've ever taken.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, because we did the, what is it, 14 hours from Texas to Israel.
That was a long one.
Of course, we've done India, but we haven't done India in a single shot.
Typically, it's one stop, but we're doing the over the Pacific to Sydney, which is what, 20 hours?
Yes, but let me tell you, so India, from Central Time Zone, Is plus 1030, okay?
Israel, Australia is plus 15.
Right.
So it's another five hours.
Further out.
Further.
So, I mean, that's, I'm already sweating, like thinking about it.
Well, I mean, I looked at our ticket and it does have, it says round the world ticket.
Yeah.
Which is because we are going over the Pacific to Australia.
Traveling in Australia, then making our way to London, and then London back to America, to Texas.
So we are in fact circumnavigating the globe.
So let's just say if I skip the Friday roundup after the trip, you'll know why.
Because I'm still asleep, or I don't know, in a daze, I don't know.
Let's talk about this, let's come to politics and talk about this idea that Trump has to exempt waiters and waitresses and basically waitstaff from having to pay taxes on their tips.
What I find amusing is that Scott Pressler, the Scott whom we know, we've had him in Trump Card I believe, Scott came up with this great idea that when you go to restaurants, just write on your bill, vote for Trump if you want to keep your tips.
Keep 100% of your tips.
Very simple and clever idea.
And many of those people are probably not all that political.
But they're mainly concerned with making a living.
And so this is a shrewd way to make a point that makes a difference.
I think we could also do that at the gas pump.
You know, just put a little note on there.
Courtesy of Joe Biden.
Or price increases courtesy of Joe Biden.
Because look, it's the economy and even though Biden blames other people for this economic disaster, it's really his policies.
It's the Democrat policies.
I don't know why, but the left really always screws up economies.
Why is that?
Well, that's because they're...
Think of it this way.
They pay no attention to the profit motive.
They pay no attention to incentives.
When they develop tax policy, if you say to them, hey, confiscatory taxation has a bad effect on people wanting to work.
Regulation has a bad effect on people starting new businesses.
Have a glazed look in their face, like that doesn't even matter.
We're all about social.
I think this is the reason.
Even though Trump seems to be doing quite well right now, he seems to be leading in all the swing states, you said that you are worried that, well, we're worried about a bunch of things, including election fraud, but you are also worried about the about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
and the impact that he might have in the race because you see him as potentially another Perot.
Now, interestingly, Perot was a Republican who still ran as an independent.
RFK Jr.
is a Democrat running as an independent.
Why do you think that he poses the risk of taking more from Trump than he does from Biden?
Well, I think a lot of people are going to disagree with me because they're going to think that it's a Biden, that it's taken away from Biden.
Right.
Here's the problem with that.
As you know, conservatives, Republicans are principled people, right?
For the most part.
Democrats are not.
So what happens is that even though Biden is a disaster for their party, many of them will not abandon Biden.
They will rally around Biden.
They will rally around that Biden-Kamala Harris ticket.
Whereas not everyone is going to rally around a Trump ticket.
And that's my biggest worry because they're going to say, well, you know, Robert Kennedy, he seems like a really, you know, with it guy and he doesn't seem to be ideological.
And he seems to be, he seems to have a lot of the principles and ideals that I have.
So I think I'm going to give that guy a chance.
I'm going to write him in, right?
And then you have somebody like Paul Ryan, who the other day basically said he's going to write someone in.
He's not going to support Trump.
There may be a lot of Paul Ryans on our side.
I don't think that there's a lot of Joe Manchins on their side.
Or even, we'll talk about him later.
What you're really saying is that Democrats function kind of more like a tribe or a gang.
They do, absolutely!
And the Republicans will say things like, because In fairness, if you make a list of the, let's just say, the 20 key issues...
Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
might be a dissident or a heretic or a right-winger on about three of them, but he's not on the other 17.
Now, the three are high-visibility ones, like COVID.
Yeah, but he's not vocal on the 17 that he's not on.
You know what I mean?
He's not talking about abortion rights.
Right.
He's not talking about late-term abortion.
He's not talking about any of those things.
Right.
He's only talking about those three things that matter to most independent voters.
Yeah, very interesting.
All right.
So you would prefer it to be a two-man race.
I would.
Straight Trump versus Biden.
Absolutely.
Because you think that Republicans more than Democrats are likely to waver and say, well, I don't really like either of them, so I'm going to go with the third guy.
Whereas Democrats go, I don't like either of them, but I'm going to stick with my team.
Right, right.
Well, I mean, you know, like I said, I told you I was listening to Paul Ryan on the Cavuto show the other day, and he made me so mad because, first of all, he talks about the principled Republican.
And I want to say, where was the principled Republican in the 2012 election?
Why didn't the principled Republicans win that one?
Well, I mean, you were saying, Ryan is making the point that this kind of MAGA movement is hurting the Republican Party and that we should go back to being traditional Republicans.
And your point is, we tried that with Bob Dole.
We tried that with Romney.
We tried it with McCain.
In a way, we tried it with the Bushes.
Now, let's look at it.
I mean, George H.W.
Bush would never have won if it wasn't for Reagan.
He was carried by Reagan in 88 and he lost in 92.
Correct.
George W. Bush, basically, you know, the 2000 election was like a tennis ball hitting the net and then just falling on one side as opposed to the other.
That election has to be called a draw.
It was a draw.
So the only election, arguably, in 30 years that the so-called traditional Republicans have won is the 2004 election, Bush versus Kerry, and that was in the aftermath of 9-11.
Right.
And if it wasn't for 9-11, it's not even clear Bush would have won that election.
Right.
So this traditional Republican formula is a total dud.
And let's argue that I say it really goes all the way back to Reagan.
You know, that's when people really got excited about a candidate in the Republican Party.
And not since Reagan have we had the enthusiasm that we see for Trump.
Exactly right.
So I'm really afraid that we ourselves are going to essentially lose this this election because of our divisiveness because we don't understand that you know what whether you like Trump or not.
Having another four years of Biden, and that's what it will result.
Essentially, if you don't vote for Trump, that is the end result.
You will have another four years of the Biden administration.
Oh, Biden, actually.
And it will destroy this country.
We will not be able to come back.
We will be Venezuela.
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Guys, with the election coming up, I'd like to invite you to check out my local channel.
It's a great way to support my work.
I post a lot of exclusive content there, including content that's censored on other social media platforms.
On Locals, you get Dinesh Unchained, Dinesh Uncensored.
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On Locals, you can also interact with me directly.
I do a live weekly Q&A every Tuesday.
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We want to talk about this terrible case involving a 76-year-old pro-life woman.
Her name is Paula Harlow.
She's convicted by a D.C.
jury for blocking the doorway to a clinic that does late-term abortions.
And she is given a sentence of two years in prison.
She's in poor health and her husband basically said she's in need of constant medical care.
He's not sure that she would even survive it.
I think the barbarism comes in the way that both the Biden DOJ and the judge respond.
Basically, the Biden DOJ says, I'm now quoting them, the defendant's own medical needs do not and should not prevent this court from imposing a just and sufficient sentence for the defendant's decision to prevent others from accessing the health care that they needed.
Accessing the health care.
that they needed and then the judge in a shockingly twisted and insulting statement says, oh you don't have to worry about your health issues I'm sure you're going to make every effort to remain alive because hey that's one of the tenets of your religion you're a pro-lifer so you're going to try to keep yourself alive and so this is mocking her exactly
And so the severity of the sentence, the sheer inhumanity of it, and then the gleeful imposition of it, these are... I mean, I don't care if it's a judge and a jury and a face act.
This is police state behavior, and it's right here in the United States.
This is not about Trump.
It's not about January 6th.
It shows how ordinary people are finding themselves in its claws.
And it shows about how the abortion issue is such a primal issue for these people.
I mean, think about it.
Was she really blocking the door?
How can a 76-year-old woman block anything?
How could she really be blocking the door?
She was probably praying and singing, which I've seen people do.
People do.
And again, you know, she is trying to Not really prevent this woman from going in and killing her baby, okay?
Let's call it what it is.
She's not preventing her from doing that.
She's simply wanting for the woman to have a change of heart.
She's trying to awaken her conscience.
To awaken her conscience.
And pray that maybe God perhaps softens her heart, right?
One of those things.
But again, we're never going to win this issue until people understand that this is not healthcare.
It is not healthcare.
It is murder.
And until people understand that, No one's going to have sympathy for this woman.
What's interesting is this judge, Judge Cotelli, a very twisted, I mean this is a figure out of some tyrannical society.
She's actually 81 years old.
So she's an old, you know, wizened, angry woman.
Probably loved Margaret Sanger.
Probably one of her... An acolyte.
Probably.
Probably a reincarnation of Sanger.
Judge Sanger.
Oh that's a good one.
But anyway we are just morally revolted by this and I thought we should talk about it.
Let's talk on a little happier and well a little more amusing topic and that is the transformation of one Senator Federman.
That is incredible.
What do you make of it?
Well, I saw an article on the New York Post from this guy named Glenn Reynolds and the headline reads, Mea culpa, Fetterman.
I was wrong about the senator and his illness.
Basically, what he's saying is that Senator Fetterman is kind of taking a little bit of a 180, right?
He's doing a little bit of a 180 with his ideology because, you know, obviously he's a Democrat.
Obviously these Democrats thought that they were going to have this leftist, you know, left-wing guy.
And it turns out that not just with Israel, Is he not left on this issue, because obviously he's repulsed with the Hamas wannabes, or agitators, and he's for Israel.
But there are other things, like for example, he thinks they've gone too far with Trump.
He doesn't seem to hate Trump, which is like, wow!
He also wants to do a lot more on the border.
And he wants to secure the border!
And he's also tough on crime.
So what's happening is with Federman, you're right.
When it first started, I thought to myself, okay, you got Democrats who are very pro-Israel.
So this is nothing more than a pro-Israel left-wing Democrat.
But then I saw Federman make some statement where he says, well, I'm not a progressive.
and you could tell the reporter was a little flustered.
Yeah.
And he goes, oh no, he goes, I used to be, I know I campaigned that way.
He goes, but it's out of hand. It's gone too far.
Yeah.
I'm out.
Yeah.
You know, and he says it in a very blunt way, which is not even, he doesn't even try to appease.
Was he wearing his tie? Because that's hilarious.
Oh my goodness.
I showed Debbie this morning a picture of Federman.
It looks like as he gets his brain back, he's becoming more conservative.
That's perhaps not a surprise.
But here's the other thing.
He's starting to dress better, but he's dressing better by not abandoning his old look.
So in this outfit he has a hoodie on.
Over the hoodie he's wearing a jacket.
And then he has a tie that comes out of the hoodie around the neck and drops over the hoodie to the front.
So he just looks like this kind of hybrid creature.
I think he's just messing with the liberals.
Oh my gosh, I think he just... It's a costume!
Yes, and so this guy, you know, the guy from the Post, at the end, I love this, it says, with the Senate divided, 51-49, that has to give Majority Leader Chuck Schumer heartburn.
Okay, first of all.
And then he says, Is it just a coincidence that Fetterman's views have shifted to the right as his brain has repaired itself?
And then he goes, I'm going to go out on a limb and say no.
It's great.
I mean, it's wonderful, really.
And it's also, you know, like cinema and mansion were kind of that way as well.
We kind of needed another one because this majority that we have in the Senate, even though it's a very narrow majority, It's a very scary one, because... Well, I mean, we don't, we have, we are by one vote in the minority, but we, and you know, in the Senate, you actually need 60 votes to really run the Senate.
So Democrats don't have 60.
This is why nothing legislatively is getting through for Biden.
Biden has had a second term with not a single piece of legislation.
He signed some executive orders.
That's all he can do.
Why?
Because we're not going to advance his agenda in the House and in the Senate they don't have the 60 votes to do it.
So they're stuck.
This is why the Democrats' real goal, I believe, in 24 and down the road, is they want the House, they want the Senate, they want the Presidency, and they want the Court.
If they had all four, they would be in the same position as FDR in the 1930s and 40s.
We know all the damage he did.
He did enormous amount of damage, but these people are far worse.
Because FDR was in many ways also restrained by many things.
So for example, the Southerners, who were Democrats, and in many ways that was part of FDR's racist coalition, but the Southerners are also patriotic.
They're also conservative in many ways.
And FDR realized, if I want to keep the South, I can't go against those people.
I've got to give them a veto power over my policies.
And they did.
So FDR was hemmed in in certain ways by his regional, by his own coalition, whereas the Democrats today wouldn't be.
They'd be marching full speed ahead.
So a one-party state, in my view, in the 21st century, more dangerous than it was.
way more dangerous. In the 20th century. Plus these are just a worse cast of characters.
Yeah, well I mean starting with Obama, who I kind of thought was very similar to FDR and probably would have loved to have done, you know, many terms. Four terms. Four terms.
Well actually I think he is, but you know, that's debatable.
Well I mean you sometimes joke that he's campaigning for a fourth term. Yeah. That the 2024 election would be Obama's fourth term. Well, you know, it's because he didn't do enough damage the first two terms.
and he promised to do a lot of damage.
Well, think about it.
He was elected in 08, but he got a severe pounding in 10.
He then was reelected in 12, but got a massive pounding in 14.
So Obama was always in check with a powerful conservative force in the House and in the Senate.
But you know, we haven't had that with Biden yet.
That's right.
No, I agree.
The leadership on the House and Senate side, I think McConnell can almost be counted out for the count.
I mean, this guy is basically, it's almost like he's washed his hands off of the matter.
And then Mike Johnson is a much weaker figure in the House.
Yeah, so we think about it.
We haven't had that this term, right, this go-round.
If he wins again, I told you that it's going to be very difficult to come out of it.
Very, very difficult to come out of it.
But we can be optimistic and we can think, you know, it's going to be morning in America again.
And fight on, but at some point the odds are stacked against you.
Yeah, and people have to wake up.
Have to wake up.
Because we cannot afford this.
I mean, not only that, but I think simply that if It's a bit like, you know the story in the Bible with Dives and Lazarus, where Dives is in hell and Lazarus is in heaven.
And Dives goes, help me Lazarus!
And basically Lazarus says, look, you know, you had the word, you had the prophets, you had the prophecies, you didn't listen to any of that.
So applying that logic, it seems to me, if people can't look at America today, With what's going on at the border, with inflation, with disastrous economic policies, with crime, with our foreign policy as a wreck.
In other words, if all those things don't convince you that we need to have a change, we need to do things differently.
Well, you know what?
Maybe we're going to have another 9-11 after those eight guys came in through the border.
You're talking about the ISIS guys?
The ISIS guys that came in through the border.
These are the same guys, the same type guys, ISIS-K I think is what they're called.
The ones that wreaked havoc in Russia, you know, that killed all those people.
They were planning something.
You know, eight guys.
Who knows if there's eight more or ten more?
The Biden people are recklessly inviting it.
And if it happens, you'd simply have to say this is the predictable fruit of their policies.
I'm going to finish today my discussion of this very interesting book on the four British folkways that shaped America.
It's written by the historian David Hackett Fisher.
And in his concluding chapter, he has an excellent summary.
So it's a good way for me to wrap up.
He writes at the beginning, many major conflicts in American history have developed primarily from their differences, meaning from the differences in the four folkways.
Every presidential election shows their persistent power in American politics.
The point is that these folkways show a remarkable stubbornness, a continuity, a durability, an ability to continue despite the vicissitudes of time and despite modifications that will naturally occur.
There are obviously places in the country that are a hybrid of one or more of these four folkways.
But one of the points that David Hackett Fisher stresses is that one of the things you learn, one of the things that modern history has now confirmed is that these people who came from different parts of Britain, they came in the same century roughly or within the same hundred years, but they didn't come at the same time.
They came from different regions and they brought with them different customs and mores and different practices.
And these practices, over the years, many historians have tried to sort of reinterpret.
So, for example, a Marxist historian will look at the Puritans and say, well, these are displaced, bourgeois, middle-class people, and we can understand them not in terms of their religion, but really in terms of their social status.
And historian David Hackett Fisher is very dismissive of this kind of nonsense.
And he basically says, one of the things we've essentially validated through careful empirical work in history, is that the Puritans were really Puritan.
And the Cavaliers were real Cavaliers.
They were Anglicans.
They were part of the Royalist coalition in Britain.
They believed in the caste system over there.
They brought some version of it over here.
And similarly, the Quakers believed in the inner light.
They were Religiously motivated, that was their primary reason for coming to America.
So in other words, these somewhat stereotypical portraits of groups, the stereotype of the New Englander that is kind of finicky and has eccentric ways of speaking, not pronouncing the letter R, for example, Harvard.
And then you have the courtly South with its sort of traditions of fine dining and hospitality and chivalry.
And then you have the kind of easygoing Quakers who are non-confrontational.
They, by and large, believe people to be inherently, well, basically good, although capable of evil.
And so, this Midwestern style is observable today, but as the historian Fisher points out, it was observable 200 years ago also.
So let's review.
The history of America is decisively shaped by four great migrations.
These migrations occur between about 1630 and 1750.
So, note, they are before the Declaration of Independence, 1776, they're before the Constitution, 1789.
of Independence 1776, the before the Constitution 1789. The first migration 1629 to 1640 that's the Puritans.
They came first.
And then the second wave came to Virginia.
And this was right after the Puritans.
This was, in fact, during the time of the English Civil War.
Once the Royalists began to lose, the king was executed.
Well, the people who were the party of the king said, all right, we're out of here.
And off they went to Virginia.
The third wave was the Friends Migration.
This was 1675 to 1715.
And they came from the North Midlands of England to the Delaware Valley.
And the fourth migration, 1717 to 1775.
This is the latest.
This is the migration of the Borderland people from Ireland and Scotland and Wales and the borders of England and they moved to the backcountry of America and established, if you will, the culture of the so-called Crackers or the Rednecks.
Now, these four cultures shaped, respectively, the culture of New England, of the South, of the Midwest, and also of Appalachia and the Southwest.
And then we get from historian David Hackett Fisher, a kind of political tour through American history, showing how these different groups were involved in the American founding.
By and large in the American founding, the British, because of course they were imposing, not so much of an actual tyranny, but it was more of a potential tyranny.
And I say that because the British were like, listen, The way that we are ruling America is not that oppressive, but we demand the right to impose additional taxes.
We demand the right to quarter our soldiers in your homes.
We demand the right to make the colonies do whatever we say in all respects.
And the Americans were like, no.
And in that, there was unity across these British cultures.
In other words, the Puritans agreed, no.
The Southerners agreed, no.
The Midwesterners and Quakers agreed, no.
And the Rednecks agreed, no.
Now, interestingly, they all fought the British in different ways.
And the American Revolution had several phases.
You could almost call it the New England phase, the Southern phase, the Midwestern phase, and the Redneck phase.
And it's kind of amusing to see that each of these cultures resisted the British in their own way.
We then trace these four cultures through the 1900s and right up through the Civil War in which a Republican coalition develops that is able to unite the Northeast and the Midwest and some parts of redneck culture against the South.
So, this is really the coalition of the Civil War.
The South is, in a way, on its own.
In fact, you would think that the rednecks would go with the South.
Many of them are, in fact, in the South.
But, like I mentioned, West Virginia broke away from Virginia and stayed loyal to the Union.
And similarly in the border states, while the South was very eager to get border states like Maryland and Kentucky and Missouri to join the Confederacy, in fact they did not.
Lincoln was able to keep them in the Union.
So then we move to the time of FDR and historian David Hackett Fisher shows that what FDR was able to do, basically given the shock of the depression and the financial benefits of the New Deal, is buy off elements of the old Republican coalition.
So what you begin to see FDR is able to hold on to the solid South, which was of course the base of the Confederacy, but FDR is also now able to win over people in the Midwest.
He's able to win over some people from the poorer regions, which are so-called redneck culture.
These are people who now start becoming dependent on the government.
Now their values are anti-government.
But on the other hand, they're starving, they're poor, and so as a result, they're willing to accept government benefits and government largesse.
And so FDR is able to create a working class coalition that is based upon uniting elements of these four cultures and create a decisive electoral majority.
Well, where does this leave us today?
If you want to understand today why woke culture, the culture of telling people what to do, the culture of trying to excommunicate you if you don't go along, where is that situated in America today?
Well, in New England, in the Northeast, and in transplanted regions of the Northeast, like San Francisco and the upper part of the West Coast.
Well, that's Puritan culture.
Now, it's lost its religious accent, but nevertheless, it's just as Puritanical, just as Impositional, just as, if you will, Autocratic in its own way.
And where do you find For example, the base of the Republican Party today.
Well, a lot of it is in the South, some of it is in the Midwest, and increasingly the Republicans are attracting the support of the rednecks.
But here's the problem.
The problem is that the redneck style is kind of offensive both to the Southerners, who are much more courtly and genteel, And it's also offensive to the very easygoing, modest, and it goes against the simplicity and non-confrontational approach of the Quaker-influenced Midwest.
So now you can see why in the Republican Party, you have a lot of the sort of redneck characters very much attracted to Trump, who embodies in some ways the redneck style.
Trump is not entirely a redneck, but nevertheless, he's like one of these chieftains of the old rednecks, people like Sam Houston, people like Andrew Jackson.
These were sort of clan leaders, and they are the descendants of clan leaders in Scotland, clan leaders in England.
And so Trump is that kind of a boss, and so a lot of the rednecks like him.
But for the exact same reason, there are Republicans from the Midwest who are like, well, we don't like his style.
These are the kind of people who say things like, we like Trump's policies, but we don't really like the way he goes about things.
And you find the exact same complaint among some Southerners.
If you go to a place like South Carolina, where Trump is very popular, but nevertheless, there's a kind of genteel South Carolina style that is very different from that of Trump.
To me, the value of this study, this book, this history, is it helps us go beyond simply talking about an American dream, an American culture, an American way of life.
Those of us who have lived in many different parts of the country, and I've lived now, let's see, I came to Arizona, I studied in New England, I then lived in Princeton, I lived in Washington D.C., I've lived in California and New York, now Texas, so you can see the power of these regional ways of life.
And so I hope this book has been helpful in clarifying and italicizing not only the ways in which Americans differ, but how these differences play out in American culture and in American politics.
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