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July 10, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
48:48
WHY HE WON’T LEAVE Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep869
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Coming up, I'm glad to be back after, what, three weeks?
And I'm going to be discussing the reasons why Biden won't leave, won't get out of the race, and truth be told, the reasons why we don't want him to leave.
I'll also give you the scoop on my travels with Tucker Carlson in Australia and also my family reunion in London.
And I'll introduce a timely classic, Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery.
Hey, if you're watching on Rumble, 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.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza podcast.
Guys, I'm really thrilled to be back in the saddle.
Been gone for, well, it was gonna be three weeks, but what happened was when I got back, Here comes the hurricane.
Here comes barrel barreling through Texas.
And while it was a tropical storm when it got to us, it did a lot of damage, essentially wiping out power.
My first hurricane, by the way, Debbie sort of was like, Debbie's been through a bunch of them.
I've never seen one.
I experienced Harvey a little bit because it was right around the time that my daughter Danielle got married.
And Debbie, in fact, caught the last flight out of Texas.
So we missed Harvey, but it kept us in California for a whole week.
This wasn't like that.
This was a kind of a furious storm, but it went right through.
But it left It left us without power for two days, and therefore, no podcast Monday, no podcast Tuesday.
I'm going to do a couple of podcasts over the weekend to make up for Monday and Tuesday.
But I hope you enjoyed my daughter, Danielle, who did two weeks on the podcast, and then Kyle Serafin, who did a week substituting for me while I was in Australia and then in London.
I'll talk a little bit later about those two trips.
But I want to talk first today about Biden, and I'm calling this episode, Why He Won't Leave.
Now, Biden seems determined to hang in there, and it may be that they're not going to be able to get him out.
Why?
Because, well, he's got the delegates.
They might have kind of rigged the primary to get him the delegates, but he's now got him.
And it's really kind of up to him.
Now, some people will say, well, it's not up to him.
It's up to, you know, Jill Biden, Dr. Jill Biden.
She's the one who's pulling the strings, at least on a personal level with Joe Biden.
That's probably true.
But they've decided, Jill Biden and Joe Biden have decided, we're not going anywhere.
Biden has been very clear about it.
And this probably means there's not a whole lot that the Democrats can do.
I mean, they need to convince him to leave if he's going to leave.
They're not able to steamroll over him.
And while this could be some sort of a sordid deal that Biden made with the Democrats, I'll be the figurehead and you guys can run the country.
I mean, I can see Biden saying, well, listen, I made that deal and I'm sticking with it.
I'm the figurehead.
You didn't expect me to make the decisions.
You knew I was in this condition.
And on the other hand, you went along with it.
You might even have liked it because that way I'm not calling any shots.
You're calling all the shots.
But I'm not going to back out of the deal now.
I get perks out of it.
I get benefits out of it.
And so I'm going to stick with it.
There's really not a whole lot that you can do about it.
When we think about that debate, and we think about what's happened subsequently, it's pretty striking, isn't it?
I mean, we're seeing a real schism on the left, a schism in the Democratic Party.
And I would say, by and large, you've got the media establishment on the one side.
Basically, they want Biden out.
And then you've got the kind of traditional political establishment that seems to have largely lined up behind Biden.
And by the traditional political establishment, I mean, of course, notably Obama, who came right up front and said, basically, no problem.
Hey, I had a bad debate, too.
This was just a bad day for Biden.
Now, Obama knows that isn't true.
However, I think what's going on is that Obama also knows that he and his guys, the Obama gang, the Obamites, they're running the country.
So they've got a really good deal going.
Remember Obama himself had talked about his third term in which he wouldn't have to do You know, he wouldn't be the front man, but he'd be whispering in the ear of whoever is running, whoever is the front man.
And wow, that's exactly what seems to be going on in the country.
So I think from Obama's point of view, he doesn't want to upset this arrangement.
Basically, for him, Biden is good as a ventriloquist doll.
Now, there may be some risk, and Obama is smart enough to realize there's a big risk in having this kind of bumbling, mumbling buffoon go into the election.
He could lose the election.
He could be putting the control, democratic control, of the country at stake.
But I think Obama is sufficiently narcissistical, sufficiently wants to keep himself in charge, and he's willing to risk it.
Think about it.
If somebody else comes in...
Let's just say, for example, a Gavin Newsom.
Well, Gavin Newsom's going to call his own shots.
He's not going to be listening to Obama.
And so I think the reason for Obama's aggressive intervention on behalf of Biden is exactly that.
But it's not just Obama.
The Clintons have come out in favor of Biden staying in the race.
It seems like Schumer and sort of the Democratic leadership, Hakeem Jeffries, they're all behind Biden.
They're sort of lining up behind him and they're trying to get the media to sort of fall into line, which may actually happen because, you know, we rarely get to see, as I say, these kind of struggles within the Democratic Party, a kind of test of force, a test of will.
Who is stronger?
Is it the Democratic political establishment or is it the media?
Who's calling the shots?
Is the media driving the Democratic Party or is the Democratic Party driving the media?
Well, We're gonna see this play out and we're gonna get some more insight into where the power really lies on the left.
Now let's talk about the media for a little bit.
Jake Tapper in particular.
But I'm thinking also of an academic named Tyler Harper who writes for The Atlantic.
And what I find kind of amusing is that Jake Tapper and Tyler Harper are Shocked, and I mean shocked, at the fact that Biden doesn't know what day it is.
That Biden is out of it.
These guys act like this is news to them.
They never knew.
Now, on the first glance, this seems kind of unbelievable to you or me.
It's like, how could you not know?
Haven't you been watching?
videos all over social media over three years Biden stumbling and misspeaking speaking in kind of absolute gobbledygook this has been something that is that conservatives patriots Republicans are very familiar with.
But I now face an interesting question, which is, could it be that because our side puts out these videos, the other side doesn't believe them?
Even though there's a video, Jake Tapper looks at it and goes, well, the conservatives have probably doctored it or the conservatives are taking advantage of it.
So it's probably not representative of Biden's full speech.
And so could it be that these guys in the media Even though they're in the media, they actually see Biden more than you do or I do, that somehow they lulled themselves into the belief that Biden is just fine.
Yeah, he stutters a bit.
Yeah, he's a little slower than he used to be, but his mind is alert.
He's okay.
Now, the There have been reports subsequently, and it's very interesting that these reports are coming not from Breitbart, they're not coming from the Daily Caller, they're coming from Axios and Politico and the Washington Post, reporting that shows that a small cabal around Biden have been sheltering him, have been hiding him.
And then they go out and they talk to the media, these White House aides, and they say, Biden's fine.
Biden is coherent.
Biden knows what's going on.
Biden has a sort of a comprehensive command of the situation.
He asks penetrating questions.
So it seems that maybe what's going on here is that there are people in the media who Granted, as a result of their own stupidity, their own blindness, they blinded themselves to the degree to which Biden has deteriorated.
Now Trump, of course, has been kind of having fun with all this.
I have to say that by and large Trump has been just letting it play out, which is sort of the smart thing to do.
Trump hasn't been jumping in there and changing the story or making himself the story.
He's just letting Biden's incapacities be on public display for everyone to see.
But Trump did intervene last night at his Miami rally, where, this was, I believe, at the Trump Doral Resort, where he took up Biden's absolutely comical and absurd notion that he, Biden, could beat Trump at golf.
Now, this was a particularly juvenile aspect of the debate, where these two guys start quarreling about golf, But Biden makes it sound like he's a really good golf player.
And Trump, of course, challenges him and basically goes, I'll give him a handicap, I'll give him a lead.
And if he beats me, I'll donate a million dollars to the charity of his choice.
Now, I have to say that Biden's favorite charity is the Biden family, right?
I mean, we all know that.
The favorite charity.
Why don't you make the check out to Hunter Biden?
It's going to come right back to me.
But nevertheless, this golf game is not going to occur.
Biden's not going to take up this challenge.
And I find it interesting that the Biden defense, the people who are trying to assuage the media, are saying, in effect, you know what?
Biden isn't really a non-compost mentis, as they say.
Biden's pretty good from 10 a.m.
to 4 p.m.
In other words, he's good for about six hours a day.
He's not good for the other 18.
Part of the problem with this debate, according to these White House aides, is that it was at nine at night.
Biden was evidently, like, well into his bedtime.
And so, but think about it.
That's, that is not reassuring, is it?
Because what that suggests is that, well, I mean, I suppose it works as long as all national and international crises manage to confine themselves between 10 a.m.
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I'm continuing my discussion of why Biden won't leave. And it seemed after the debate that there was in fact a mounting coalition on the left to push Biden out.
I mentioned earlier this academic named Tyler Harper and this guy was, I won't say leading the charge because I don't think he has the influence to lead the charge, but he was out there very aggressively basically saying, listen, not only should Biden exit the race, He needs to exit the presidency.
In other words, this guy should resign now.
Nobody who is in a mental freeze, brain dead, unable to continue a train of thought, that guy can't be running the country, can't be running the free world.
And so there was this pitch for Biden to get out.
But I think the Democrats looked at it and they said, first of all, think how disastrous it would be for Biden to do that.
Number one, if he gets out of the race, The question is, why isn't he getting out of the presidency?
If he gets out of the presidency, what does that mean?
Kamala Harris becomes the president for the next six months?
She, in a sense, becomes the incumbent and it becomes almost impossible to force her out.
Now, true, you could somehow, Biden could release his delegates.
I mean, it would be chaos to try to bring in somebody else.
And moreover, it would be a public acknowledgement that the Democrats and the left have been lying to the country and to the world about Biden.
For years.
In other words, think of the implications of saying publicly, we have had a shadow presidency.
We've had a ventriloquist doll in the White House.
He hasn't really been the president.
And an unelected junta has been running the country.
I don't think there's any way that the Democrats would ever admit this.
And so I think surveying, even surveying the landscape, even surveying the damage from the debate, they're like, you know what?
We are too far dug in with our lives.
We have to basically keep pushing forward.
It reminds me of a scene in Hamlet, not Hamlet, but Macbeth.
When Macbeth has been drawn into murder, the murder of Duncan, which was commandeered really by Lady Macbeth, his wife.
But then he has to commit other murders.
And at some point, even though his conscience is getting to him, and he thinks, you know, should I go back?
Should I quit?
Should I turn around?
He then goes, nah, he goes, I'm halfway across the river steeped in blood.
It's a shorter distance for me to keep going to the other side than it is for me to go back.
In other words, it's going to be just as hard for me to retreat at this point as it is for me to just keep murdering people even if I come to a bad end.
This, I think, is how the Democrats are thinking.
They're too dug in.
They cannot admit to their lies.
They're going to be like, let's stick with this guy.
Let's pretend like the ventriloquist doll is a real person.
Let's pretend that there's a brain there.
Let's see if we can rig this even further.
Let's rely on the media to cover for us.
We got to bring them around to our side.
So all of this is really going on and of course it's become a not just a national but an international joke.
Why?
Not only because Biden is supposedly good from 10 to 4 p.m.
I'm not even sure he's good from 10 to 4 p.m.
Why should we even believe that?
That is the propaganda being put out by his side.
That's the propaganda that's coming from the left.
That's probably a sunny or rosy view of the situation.
He's probably good from like 11 to 1 or maybe even 11 to noon, if that.
So the 10 to 4 is probably an elasticized, stretched out, exaggerated account of his competence.
But even if it's true, that's his competence now.
Let's remember, what Biden is going for?
Another four years.
He would be 86 years old when he's done.
And probably at that point, He's gonna be completely gone.
Now, there's been some discussion about whether Biden, even now, has creeping Alzheimer's, has Parkinson's disease.
And of course, there's been this very interesting revelation of a neurologist and a kind of a Parkinson's doctor who's been visiting the White House.
Why?
We know why.
We can only think of one reason why.
Could it be that the guy just happens to be, you know, a regular invitee to White House events?
Unlikely.
So even though the doctor is disavowing that Biden has Parkinson's or Biden is physically and mentally impaired, the This reporting raises some very interesting questions about the guy.
Now, there is the possibility, I think at this point unlikely, I would give it maybe a 20% chance, but there are people who are not giving up on the idea that Biden should get out.
I just saw Senator, I think it's Senator Whitehorse, Well, he was doing an interview on CNN, but what he was saying basically is, yeah, he goes, Biden can't beat Trump.
He said, Biden's going to lose.
And he might lose by a landslide.
And if he loses by a landslide, that means the Democrats will most likely lose the House and the Senate.
Which is to say that Trump will be in a situation even better than in 2016.
Now, in 2016, Trump sort of narrowly had the House, he sort of narrowly had the Senate, but not really, because there were enough defecting Republicans that this really wasn't a real Republican majority, but he could have one.
And so there is a serious effort on the part of some people to get rid of Biden.
And then the names we hear are Kamala Harris, which to me is and will be an even easier task for Trump to annihilate Kamala Harris than it would be to annihilate Biden.
So we can take her name off the list.
Newsom.
Again, this is a very difficult path.
Biden would have to acquiesce in it to get Newsom.
I don't actually see it happening.
And the third, unlikeliest of all, even though I keep hearing it all the time, Michelle Obama.
No, I don't think Michelle Obama is going to get into the race.
You've got to realize that Michelle Obama is an unbelievably stupid person.
She is... Well, just go back and look at her college thesis, which I've publicized.
It's available online.
Just Google, just search Michelle Obama College, and you'll see you're dealing with a semi-illiterate.
So Michelle Obama puts on a kind of a show.
She is seen at events.
People think, oh, she's so popular.
She's going to be a formidable candidate.
She's not going to be a formidable candidate.
She probably can't name the capitals of major countries.
She knows that.
She knows she's going to be exposed as a fool.
I mean, it's one thing for Biden to be exposed, because Biden's old.
At least you could say of Biden.
At one time, he actually knew the capital of Russia.
At one time he actually knew that the capital of Germany used to be Bonn in the Soviet days and it's now Berlin.
Michelle Obama doesn't know any of this.
She is not going to be, I don't think, the candidate.
I would be shocked.
Again, I don't claim to be sort of the expert in democratic presidential nominations, but I consider this very unlikely.
And I finally just want to take note of Peter Doocy, who raised a very pungent question with the press secretary, KJP, Karen Jean-Pierre, where he said, hey, if there's a crisis that comes after 4 p.m., like, who do we call?
Do we call, like, Jill Biden?
If Joe is out of commission and KJP kind of took offense and kind of sulked away off the stage.
But these are the questions that you can imagine that ordinary Americans are asking, particularly Americans who don't normally pay attention to politics.
The tragedy and the crisis of Biden is bigger than Biden himself.
It involves, as I say, these unelected gangsters who are running the country.
But for the ordinary American, they don't see it that way.
They just look at this frail, stumbling, incoherent guy whose brain is essentially a fog, and they go, that guy really probably can't run the country. And so I think that the damaging politics for the Democrats is at this very basic and simple level. For this reason, I'm enjoying the current I think it's great for us at this point.
We don't want Biden to get out of the race.
So even though I constantly am piling on Biden, I'm doing so in a manner that isn't aimed ultimately at pushing him out.
We don't want him to leave.
We want him to be the candidate.
And it looks like happily, he will be.
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Like to talk now about the trip that Debbie and I did to Australia, followed by a short family reunion that we did in London.
All of this came about in kind of a strange way.
Debbie got an email.
Actually, it was an email from a guy using a pseudonym a lot of times.
People will do that.
And the email was something very simple like, come to Australia and speak in multiple cities.
We're having a sort of a freedom tour.
And Debbie was like, this is insane.
It's at the other end of the world.
Who is even asking?
Dinesh, you don't really have time to take a week or two weeks off to go do this.
It doesn't really make any sense.
So she's like, do you want me to just toss this?
And I was like, well, let me email the guy.
And so I did just to find out more and I included my number and just five minutes later I get a call.
And it's from this Australian billionaire named Clive Palmer.
Clive Palmer is a prominent figure in Australian politics.
He's in fact the third richest guy in Australia.
He's the founder of a political party there.
And he was himself in politics.
He was himself a prominent member, I believe, of parliament.
And so he's like, Hey Dinesh, I want you to come to Australia.
He goes, I envision a tour.
It's going to be four of us, two from America, two from Australia.
And I want to have you and Tucker Carlson be the two American speakers.
And I was like, well, you know, good luck getting Tucker.
And he's like, no, no, I already got Tucker.
I'm just trying to get you.
And I'm like, well, it's, you know, same with Tucker.
It's going to be very expensive to do that, but not expensive for him.
So he was on board and that's how this really came about.
Now, I already had a week planned in London with my family.
This is my family in India.
We've kind of hit upon this meet halfway in Europe scheme and that is every year, every couple years, we each meet halfway and this way we don't have to make this very long journey.
So I told Clive Palmer, I said, you know, I'm going to have to get out of there by the end of June.
And he said, no problem.
We're going to do a lecture tour of major cities.
The last one is in Melbourne.
Well, they say Melbourne.
Melbourne.
But you can skip that one.
We'll record your talk in Sydney and you can fly out of Sydney and join your family.
No problem.
And so This was great.
Ultimately, Debbie and I look at these air tickets and they're round-the-world tickets.
Wow!
So what does that mean?
Well, think about the globe as a big circle.
We started off in Texas and we flew to Los Angeles.
Then we flew, and that's well, Texas to Los Angeles, maybe three and a half to four hours.
Los Angeles to Sydney.
Long.
17 hours.
And then of course we had the Australia tour, which I'll come back to in a minute.
But we got done in Sydney.
Then we flew from Sydney to London.
But how do you get from Sydney to London?
Well, you fly Sydney to Hong Kong.
9 hours.
And then Hong Kong to London, 14 hours.
And we did that in one shot.
So that was actually the longest trip I've done, and Debbie as well.
Almost 24 hours on the plane.
And it didn't seem to me like it should be that long, but basically Australia is at the bottom of the world, down under so to speak.
London is in the northern tip of the world.
And so you not only have a lot of a lot of horizontal distance to cover, but also vertical distance going from south to north.
So it's essentially, think of it as like the hypotenuse of a triangle.
You're going not only over, but across.
And that's why that was such an, and then of course London back to Texas.
So this is called circumnavigating the globe.
I remember many years ago reading a book by a guy named Phineas Fogg called Around the World in 80 Days.
Fascinating book.
And this guy goes, he goes by boat, he goes by train, he goes all types, using all types of training.
He was actually attempting to get around the world and hit many, many.
Places along the way.
Well, we basically went around the world in 21 days.
Now, the Australia trip was kind of cool.
We started up in the Gold Coast, which is the area of the Great Barrier Reef.
And we spent the first couple of days actually just getting acclimated.
In fact, Clive Palmer took us on his 30 million or 40 million dollar super yacht.
Um, and that was lovely.
And, uh, we also saw crocodiles.
Um, I think the oldest living crocodile, 110 years old.
And, um, we also learned about these crocodiles that they don't really age.
A crocodile in theory can live, I won't say forever, but can live an indefinitely long period of time.
Now in reality, crocodiles can contract diseases, they can of course get bitten and wounded and injured, and so the crocodiles do in fact die, but they usually die due to sickness or injury. They don't die because of old age.
There isn't some sort of a natural, automatic aging process that gets the crocodile. Something else has to get the guy. Anyway, pretty fascinating stuff.
And then began the lecture tour.
Tucker brought his family, his wife and his daughters.
His son wasn't with him.
And so it was Tucker and family, Clive Palmer and family.
There was also an Australian doctor named Melissa McCann, and then Debbie and me.
This was the sort of little travel group.
And our events were, we started out in Cairns.
And we had about 1500 people there.
It was called the Australian Freedom Conference.
People just bought tickets and I'm amazed to see the level of interest in Australia.
Not only that, but the issues that we were talking about from COVID to the rise of the police state, issues of election integrity, Quite clearly, these are of great interest in Australia.
People were fascinated by what's going on in America, but they also saw an applicability to their own situation.
And so this shows me that many of the issues we're dealing with in America are, in fact, worldwide.
I did not expect to have, and particularly with the kind of talks I give, you know, I have one-liners and jokes and so on, and I thought to myself, you know, it's widely, it's often said that humor doesn't really travel.
You can't make a joke in another country and expect people to laugh.
Why?
Because the sort of, the background is different.
But I found this is not true.
I could give pretty much say the same stuff that I would say to a Republican club or to a group of business guys here in America.
Say it in Cairns or in Brisbane or in Adelaide and the audience would respond in the same way.
Obviously I would frame it in more global terms and not just in American terms.
But my point is they identify with it.
They're living through it.
They know exactly what I'm talking about.
And so I think Tucker and I did a very nice complimentary sort of one-two punch from America.
And Tucker, I remember, made a point that I want to share and credit him with saying, namely the point that what the left does is exploit our decency.
They rely on us To be gentle, to be civil, to think that if they say that there's a national emergency, there probably is a real emergency, that we have to do these things to respond.
We think, well, okay, well, let's do them.
Why would they be lying to us?
So our geniality, our cooperativeness, our easygoingness, our desire to live and let live, The left ruthlessly manipulates these things to its own nefarious ends.
Tucker's point being, let's wake up and realize that we're being suckered, we're being had.
Now, for the first couple of events we did, I think we did Cairns first, and then Brisbane, then Adelaide.
And, but I also got to do, in addition to giving my talk, I got to have some public conversations with Tucker, in particular in Adelaide and in Perth.
And we had very lively exchange, just the two of us on stage, huge audiences.
By the way, Adelaide probably 2,500, Brisbane the same, Perth even bigger, maybe 4,000, and Sydney almost 5,000.
And so these are big crowds. Remember, Australia is a country of 25 million people. It's not huge.
And so I had some, had very interesting exchanges with Tucker.
And in fact, afterward, I talked to Tucker and I go, Hey, Tucker, I'm actually making a film for this fall.
And some of the stuff we've been talking about is very timely.
I'd like to use it in the film.
And he's like, Great, I'd be honored.
And so I had a very genial time with Tucker and family, very cordial, very friendly.
You know, you might remember I had a little skirmish with one of Tucker's producers over 2000 meals.
All of that is in the background.
I didn't even bring it up and there's no reason to bring it up.
And I'm happy to say that I think things are on a very even course.
Great trip to Australia.
Debbie, who, you know, tends to dread these things, thinking just because of exhaustion, Debbie goes, I can't enjoy London because I'm going to be like knocked out by the time we're done with Australia.
But no, we kind of managed the time difference really well.
And we had great fun in Australia.
And then we'll have a really good time hanging out with the family in London.
But I'm also really happy to be back.
I'm going to begin today a discussion of a great, truly great book, one that I read a long time ago.
In fact, before I even came to America, I was probably 15 or 16 years old, when I came upon Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery.
Great title, great book.
Published, I believe, 1901.
The edition I'm using is this one.
It's the Barnes & Noble edition, and this is not the one I originally read, of course, but it's a very inexpensive and easy to read edition.
And what I find fascinating is that I discovered Booker T. Washington long before I discovered the race debate, long before I knew very much about blacks and whites.
In fact, I hadn't met any blacks and I met very few whites.
And yet here was a guy in America writing, the period covered by the book is from about 1850, to the early 1900s.
So it's well over a century ago.
A century and a half ago.
And yet it sprung to life for me.
It sprung to life for me in Mumbai, India.
And I understood that what Booker T. Washington was talking about were themes that were truly universal.
His big theme is simply What is the way for people who have been exploited, who are starting life at the bottom?
How do you come up?
How do you better your condition?
How do you take advantage of freedom to achieve The American Dream.
A dream that seems more achievable in America than really anywhere else.
Perhaps achievable in some ways in other places in the world as well, but here you have a black man starting really at the lowliest of conditions.
Booker T. Washington is born a slave, and in the beginning of the book he'll discuss what that was like for him, a slave in Virginia.
And yet Booker T. Washington occupies a kind of ambiguous place in the sort of historiography of American civil rights.
Probably you'd have to say that he is not only ignored, mostly he's ignored.
But to some degree, he's even looked down on.
He's condescended to.
And I'm sorry to say that the introduction to this book, written by an academic, let me look at the guy's name, James Robinson, who teaches politics and race and change in South Africa and the U.S.
Okay, so this guy gives an account of Booker T. Washington in the introduction that I think is very unfair to Washington.
He pretends to be kind of an admirer of Washington.
He praises Washington for overcoming hardship.
He says, to this degree, Washington can be kind of a role model.
But ultimately, he says that Washington is what he calls an accommodationist.
Somebody who makes his peace with the racists in the American South.
Somebody who, in fact, defends segregation.
Somebody who is a sellout, if you will.
He doesn't use the word sellout, but he implies it.
Then he goes on to sort of apologize for Washington by saying, quote, it is unfair to judge Washington's accommodationist views by today's political standards.
Almost implying that, hey, if Washington were To be judged by the standards of today, he would be found inadequate, wanting, fall short, so to speak.
I don't think this is true.
In fact, I'm not a great believer in the argument that we should judge people by historical standards.
Why?
Because the truth of it is, in all times and places, there might be a prevailing standard, but there are also people who dissent against that standard.
And so, for example, if you say, okay, well, in discussing, for example, Thomas Jefferson, he was a man of his time in that, for example, he was a plantation guy, he owned slaves.
Well, wait a minute.
There were Southerners who didn't own slaves.
There were many people in Jefferson's own time who had views very different from the ones that he did.
So, I don't see any reason.
Why we shouldn't be able to apply a kind of a uniform standard.
Now, this is not to say that we don't take into account the conditions that people are dealing with.
And so, for example, a politician will take a position, and that position reflects what is achievable in politics at the time.
Think of, say, Abraham Lincoln, for example, who says, I don't have the desire to introduce social and political equality between the races.
Now, Abraham Lincoln is saying, is disavowing his intention to do something that he could not in any case do.
There was absolutely no political support for social and political equality.
And therefore, Lincoln focuses on something that he can achieve, stopping the extension of slavery.
And then later in his career, opening the door to voting rights and civil rights for
Now, in trying to justify Washington, in this introduction, this fellow Robinson tells us, and this is actually something that is worth noting, that there was a tremendous backlash against blacks after the Civil War.
Now, why is that?
Well, what happened is, of course, After the South was defeated, the Northern Republicans, in a sense, took over the South.
And they took over the South by not only giving blacks the right to vote, but taking away the vote from many whites.
The idea was that these whites had committed treason.
They were rebels against the Union.
They didn't deserve to have the right to vote.
They needed to petition the government to get their voting rights back.
In fact, for their states to be readmitted to the Union.
And so you have the peculiar phenomenon in the South of whites being disenfranchised And blacks being enfranchised.
And not only that, but there were black soldiers in the South who were Northern soldiers from the Union Army enforcing these, enforcing this standard, if you will, double standard, if you want to call it that, in the South.
So you can imagine the degree of smoldering resentment.
And so when we look at institutions like the Ku Klux Klan, the rise of Southern violence, by the way, violence driven primarily by the Democratic Party, but that was in part a response to what the Southerners perceived to be the excesses of Reconstruction.
So, it's against this backdrop that Booker T. Washington is born.
He's born, in fact, in the time of slavery, but as a young boy, slavery will be ended.
And so, he will experience life in America in the immediate post-slavery, post-bellum South.
And he is facing a hostile environment all around him.
In other words, he's facing Southerners, mainly Southern Democrats, who detest blacks.
Some of it, of course, is probably a leftover sentiment from slavery.
But there are many people who noted that the anger toward blacks was greater after emancipation than it was even under slavery.
Slavery was a sort of a system that had been established in which blacks and whites both knew their roles.
There was sort of an established subordination of the blacks to the whites.
But all of this was thrown into upheaval after the Civil War.
And so this is the backdrop of Booker T. Washington.
Now, the James Robinson, who's writing the introduction, makes it sound like, well, we've got to understand that this is why Washington became the guy that he did.
In other words, he became an accommodationist because he didn't have any other choice.
It was, he thought, the best choice available to him.
And so this is an attempt to make a sort of a half-hearted justification for Washington.
As you will see as I go through this book, which is Washington's own story, this is his autobiography, this is his account of his life in his own words, we will see that Washington is a far greater and more admirable figure than James Robinson gives him credit for.
The accommodationism that James Robinson sort of criticizes Washington for is not true accommodation at all.
Washington, in fact, did not, quote, accommodate racism.
Washington basically had a philosophy of doing the best that he could Under difficult circumstances to succeed.
Now we all do that in life, right?
We are dealt a deck of cards.
We are facing a set of circumstances.
And the fact that we try our best in those circumstances to get ahead is not accommodation.
Are you accommodating American society when you try to Save money to add to your kitchen or build out your front yard or save for your kids.
You're not accommodating anything.
You're dealing with the circumstances in front of you.
Washington did that.
You and I have to do that.
Everybody does that.
That's not any kind of sellout.
We're simply responding to the environment that we face.
And so, As we get into this book, I want you to sort of remember this condescending introduction because it does reflect, I would call it, the sort of liberal or progressive scholarly consensus on Booker T. Washington, but it's a consensus that is misguided.
It itself needs to be skeptically scrutinized as we listen straight on.
We don't want to get Booker T. Washington filtered through some other guy.
We want Booker T. Washington to tell us his own story, and that's what he's going to do starting tomorrow.
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