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July 18, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza

43:15

ONE AMERICA Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep876

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	Coming up, I'm going to talk about the theme of national unity.
	What does that mean?
	Who are we unifying with?
	Latest developments in secret service negligence, or is it something else?
	I'll talk about the movement of Elon Musk and a whole group of Silicon Valley tycoons toward the GOP and toward Trump.
	And finally, what about that very interesting call between Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
	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.
	I want to talk in this opening segment about two things.
	One is the latest developments in the Trump attempted assassination concerning the Secret Service.
	The other is a couple of points about the Republican National Committee, the convention, and Trump's upcoming speech, which is said to be focused on the theme of unity.
	I'll come back to that.
	Now, with regard to the Trump assassination attempt, the shooter, I don't want to keep naming the shooter.
	I've named him before, so I don't think I'll name him anymore.
	He apparently had a rangefinder, which is a device to measure distance.
	And why would you want to do that?
	Well, for shooting.
	To be able to figure out how far away exactly is this target?
	How do I get him in range?
	So not only does this guy have a rangefinder, but the authorities, including the Secret Service, knew about this.
	They knew about it before.
	They caught him with the rangefinder three hours before the shooting.
	They did absolutely nothing.
	They spotted him again 30 minutes before the shooting, They did nothing.
	They took a photo of him.
	They did nothing.
	Members of the crowd pointed at him.
	They did nothing.
	So this is where we are with all this.
	So to add to the background of it, things I've talked about before, apparently the Trump people requested further Security support?
	They didn't get it.
	In fact, recently, Kim Cheadle, the head of the Secret Service, was asked, did you provide enhanced support in all the different areas?
	Reconnaissance, people on the ground.
	And she said, well, we provided increased support in some areas.
	And so the journalist, and to give her credit, she's from CNN, she goes, so your answer is no.
	In other words, you did not comply with the request to provide enhanced security across the board.
	And the answer to that is obviously they didn't.
	So you have this 20 year old kid who cased the place, climbed on a roof that was mysteriously left unguarded.
	Turns out to be the best place to take a shot and fired multiple shots at Trump.
	I mean, I guess you can keep calling this incompetence, but I don't really see it.
	It is crossed beyond that, because there's just too many levels of incompetence.
	You know, if you have an Olympic athlete who trips on a track, that can happen.
	That's incompetence.
	But if you have an Olympic athlete who gets a false start somehow, keeps running, trips on the track, falls down, gets out of his lane, starts running in somebody else's lane...
	If you get five or six of these in the same race, you begin to think, you know what?
	There needs to be some other explanation.
	Somebody offered this guy a million dollars to lose the race.
	That's another possibility.
	And so what's the other possibility here?
	The other possibility here is that somebody very powerful in the Biden regime wanted this to happen, enabled it to happen.
	You know, when investigators look for who did a murder, They look at who had the motive.
	Well, here the motive is obvious.
	Getting rid of Biden's main political opponent.
	That's motive.
	You don't need further motive.
	That's a huge motive.
	Who gets to run the country starting in January after the election?
	Huge motive.
	Second of all, opportunity.
	There's huge opportunity.
	Why?
	Because the Biden regime is running the show.
	The Secret Service reports to DHS.
	DHS reports to the Biden administration.
	They control that whole apparatus.
	So Trump's life is, in that sense, in the hands of the Biden regime.
	Think about that.
	So all of this is disturbing on a very serious level and disturbing because if there are people high up who tried it once and failed, There is absolutely no reason to believe they will not try it again.
	That is the unavoidable conclusion if you are going to explore this second possibility.
	And I see no reason not to explore it.
	This is not far-fetched theorizing.
	It is the logical inference.
	There are two possibilities.
	There's the incompetence explanation, and then there is the deliberate explanation.
	And we're looking at the probabilities of each one of them, given the information that we have.
	All right.
	Let's talk about the Republican National Convention.
	I see a little post on MSNBC, notable Republicans not attending the RNC.
	Let's see who they are.
	Paul Ryan, notable Republican.
	Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, Mike Pence, George W. Bush.
	Now, at some level, and by the way, this is being multiplied and magnified by the Lincoln Project and all these dudes, they think that this is highly damaging to the Republicans, that these characters are not there.
	But I don't think it is at all, because it seems to me that what you're seeing is a shift in the party, a good shift, a beneficial shift.
	And any shift of this sort is going to leave some people behind.
	It's going to leave some people out.
	Why?
	Because they don't like the shift.
	They don't go along with it.
	I mean, the old Republican Party, by and large, should take a couple of simple examples, was by and large in favor of foreign wars, Against, you could call it, Reaganite prudence.
	This is something that developed under Bush.
	And I'm sorry to say that the Bushes remade the Republican Party after Reagan, and not in a good way.
	So that's the first thing, and that's being undone.
	The second thing that's being undone is, by and large, the Republican Party was reflexively for capital and against labor.
	So, unions bad, basically business good.
	That's a little bit of a crude oversimplification, because the Republican Party was a free market party, and a free market party and a business party are not exactly the same thing, but the simple truth of it is, by and large, Republicans catered to business over labor.
	That's undeniable, and that goes all the way back to the Roosevelt era, and that's being undone.
	So, a guy like Paul Ryan, who's by and large a pawn of business interests, and has flourished in his own career doing that, is not going to be happy about this.
	So, the point I want to make here is that when we talk about unity, what do we actually mean by unity?
	Does it mean, first of all, talking about the Republican Party, that we're going to find a common denominator of every person who has an R after their name, and that's unity?
	No.
	Republican unity means, by and large, taking the main coalitions or the main constituents of the Republican Party And giving them all and inspiring them to want to vote Republican.
	But at the same time, you want to frame your message in such a way that you get independence, you also lure some Democrats.
	So unity is never a matter.
	And I think Trump understands this very well.
	We'll find out when we watch his speech, when he gives it later this week.
	That unity doesn't actually mean finding the people who want to destroy you and, frankly, finding the people who want to destroy the country and unifying with them.
	Because our agenda and their agenda are incompatible.
	I mean, that was true even in the Reagan era.
	The Reagan era The Reagan agenda and the Carter agenda, or the Reagan agenda and the Mondale agenda, were incompatible, even though the country was closer together at that point.
	By and large, debates were not over ends, they were over means.
	But nevertheless, there was sharp disagreement over means.
	Now, the left and the right disagree over ends, not just means.
	And that means MAGA has got to be Interpreted not as unifying the country per se, but unifying the country against the left.
	This is the key.
	Let's go back to Abraham Lincoln for a moment.
	Lincoln understood that bringing the country together doesn't mean finding a new consensus in which the slave master and the Republicans sit down and, quote, iron out their differences.
	Lincoln understood that unifying the country is unifying the country on a consensus that slavery shall not be allowed to spread.
	That was the Republican platform.
	Lincoln was willing to compromise up to that point, but no further.
	He was implacable beyond that.
	And that's important to realize in any kind of compromise.
	This is also true of normal negotiations.
	You go and you go, okay, I'm going to ask for X, I'll be willing to settle for Y, but I'm not willing to settle for anything below Y. So there you go.
	You draw the line.
	And the meeting of the minds is over that basic starting point.
	I think this is the point that Republicans do seek unity, but not unity at any price, and not a certain kind of weak unity that finds the lowest common denominator, but to unify over the core principles that will save America.
	Frame those principles in as broad a charitable way as you can.
	And then, you campaign on those, and if people oppose you, you run over them.
	And by run over them, you mean you defeat them politically.
	Because you put them outside the mainstream.
	Not just outside the Republican mainstream, outside the American mainstream.
	There are always going to be people outside the American mainstream.
	There weren't in the American Revolution.
	There were a whole bunch of people who were on the side of the Tories, and what happened to them?
	They left the country.
	For the most part, they ran off to Canada.
	Probably one of them is, you know, one of Trudeau's descendants, ancestors.
	So they were outside of the American consensus.
	And the job of the Republicans here is to reframe that consensus.
	Reagan did it in 1980 and 1984.
	It's going to be Trump's mission to do it again.
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	There is a big shift toward Trump that is occurring in Silicon Valley.
	And this is something of huge significance.
	So I want to draw out its implications.
	It's been a matter of some dismay that so many billionaires in our society have thrown in with the Democrats.
	Obviously the most grotesque example is Soros and of course now his son Alex Soros.
	They're probably the single biggest bank roller of left-wing and democratic projects.
	But there are many others.
	Reid Hoffman, for example, the founder of LinkedIn, Mark Cuban, and we could go down the list.
	Some of these people, by the way, showed up at the big Democratic fundraiser that was organized in California by Clooney and a bunch of his buddies.
	Now, For a long time, we haven't had any equivalent on the other side.
	We've had the Koch brothers, but frankly, they've turned out to be duds.
	David Koch, of course, is dead now, but Charles Koch is living in his own world.
	He has become, well, he's been kind of a never-Trumper, so he's got resources.
	30 or 40 billion dollars and he was able to round up a whole bunch of conservatives.
	I mean wonderful people who trusted him with their money and frankly he has wasted that money.
	He has diverted that money into his own pet projects.
	It's an absolute financial tragedy because so often our side gets outspent 3 to 1, 5 to 1, 8 to 1 and at a point you can't win when you're outspent with those kinds of those kinds of odds.
	So we need Massive resources on our side.
	And fortunately, it's Elon Musk who is coming to the rescue.
	I'll talk about Musk first, and then I'll talk more broadly about Silicon Valley, because Musk is sort of leading.
	Musk, along with his friend David Sachs, my friend David Sachs.
	I met David Sachs when he was an undergraduate at Stanford.
	And I met David Sachs and Peter Thiel, and so David Sachs and Peter Thiel have been stalwarts.
	But what seems to have happened is that they have had a big impact on Elon Musk, and collectively Elon Musk and they have had a huge impact on a lot of other Silicon Valley CEOs.
	Elon Musk has come through big time.
	I think we've seen almost in the last couple of years the education of Elon, the political education of Elon Musk.
	Because I think Elon Musk saw himself before, I'm a free speech guy, I'm a centrist.
	And then he realized, well, if you're a centrist, you've got to define what you mean by the center.
	And he realized that the Democratic Party has pushed so far left that they have sort of left the center behind.
	To them, the center is now right wing.
	And Republicans and conservatives are much closer to that traditional center that Elon Musk counts as the center, but he realized, I'm actually more in that camp.
	And so he's essentially, he's come out and embraced Trump, embraced the right.
	And this is causing people on the left to have fits.
	And in fact, it's causing restlessness in the Biden regime, and they're trying to cook up ways to go after Elon Musk.
	Think about it, they're going after him, even though this guy is, from the point of view of the climate, because he makes electric cars, he's doing wonders for the climate, adopting the premise of the left.
	So you would think they would celebrate him as a hero, but the moment that he comes out for free speech, in other words, against the pet censorship projects of the left, the moment he comes out, certainly for Trump, They're done with Elon Musk.
	And Elon Musk is putting in, at least according to reports, $45 million a month into the Trump campaign, into a super PAC that will work on behalf of Trump.
	So I count approximately four months, that's close to $200 million.
	That's double what Miriam Adelson is putting in.
	I think it's probably the single largest contribution on either side.
	And yet Elon Musk can easily afford it.
	I mean, if Soros has $35 billion, which is a giant number, Elon Musk has $200 billion.
	So he's got eight times what Soros has.
	And so he could spend Soros's entire net worth and not even feel it.
	So he's not doing that, but he is putting in a very significant amount of money.
	David Sachs recently posted a sort of roster of Silicon Valley tycoons who have come out for Trump.
	And I'm just gonna read some of these names, because these are really heroes.
	Ben Horowitz, Bill Ackman.
	Remember Bill Ackman?
	This is the guy who's fighting for free speech.
	And Bill Ackman has had himself a very interesting journey that mirrors that of Elon Musk.
	What I like about Bill Ackman is that this is a guy who, he puts his thoughts into long threads on X. And he explains himself.
	He goes, this is what I'm thinking.
	This is how I see it.
	For Ackman, more so than I think for Musk or Sachs, Israel is a critical issue.
	And the rise of anti-Semitism, not just the rise, but the acceptability of anti-Semitism on the left, that has paved the way for Bill Ackman's exit.
	Cameron Winkleboss, Doug Leone, Eugen McCabe, Ken Howery, Kyle Samani, Mark Andreessen, Jacob Helberg, Joe Lonsdale, Palmer Luckey, Peter Thiel, Peter Thiel, by the way, the founder of PayPal, also a big investor in, one of the early investors, pioneer investors in Facebook, Sean Maguire, Trevor Traynor, Tushar Jain, Tyler Winklevoss, and there are others.
	But in fact, one of these guys recently posted and said, for every one of us on this list, there's a whole bunch of other people in Silicon Valley who are perhaps not as blunt or as out of the closet, but they're most certainly supporting Trump because they recognize the stakes.
	And what are the stakes here?
	I think some of the Silicon Valley people who are in with Biden It's because they have developed, they have become part of the regime.
	In other words, they're perfectly happy to take orders from the government.
	Why?
	Because they believe that the government gives them subsidies in exchange.
	And so, for example, listen, you censor for us, and in exchange we'll give you legal exemptions so that nobody can sue you, even if you malign them on your platform.
	So these guys are like, that's a fair deal.
	We're perfectly happy to carry out the... They're basically, as I say, regime apparatchiks.
	And they're willing to do the dirty work of the police state in exchange basically for For monopolies.
	I mean, Google has a monopoly.
	Facebook has a quasi-monopoly.
	YouTube has a partial monopoly.
	Rumble, of course, is giving it some run for its money.
	But it's hard to deny that some of these platforms are de facto monopolies.
	And then when, you know, true, people try to create rivals like Parler, and they go, let's go smash Parler, so that you don't have a viable opposition.
	Now, ever since Elon Musk bought X, That whole scheme has fallen through.
	In other words, you now do have a free speech option.
	And for all the flaws on X and some people, I'm still being banned and there's still some algorithms.
	Well, yeah, but the level of free discussion on X is so exhilarating in contrast with the kind of, I mean, when Trump was shot, almost every headline was Trump Trump led off podium after popping noises.
	Trump falls down and is led off the stage.
	I mean, this is just downright deceit.
	And even, look for the word assassination in the early headlines about this.
	You won't find it.
	Nobody used it.
	In fact, there was a memo that went out that said, don't use it.
	So what we have is coordinated propaganda from the mainstream media, and X is breaking this.
	So here's Elon Musk, and quite apart from the service of buying X and opening up the debate, which has had not only American but worldwide impact, We now have this drift of Silicon Valley.
	It's not entirely surprising.
	Silicon Valley in the beginning had a libertarian streak, but somehow what happened is that the libertarians in Silicon Valley were socially and culturally left-wing, but they were economically leaning right, and they were bought off By the Biden regime and by the government.
	By the government saying, hey listen, you don't have to be so libertarian because if you work with us, we'll work with you.
	And this is, I mean, this goes back to Adam Smith.
	Adam Smith understood there's a temptation on the part of every business to make a deal with the government.
	Businesses to that degree, even though they say they're libertarian, they don't really support free markets.
	They would prefer to have a monopoly, and that's what the government offered them, and so bought off.
	Bought off Mark Zuckerberg, bought off Google, bought off YouTube, bought off Mark Cuban, bought off so many others, but can't buy Elon Musk.
	And I'm really glad to see that there is a defection of important CEOs in Silicon Valley.
	For Trump, he's going to need them.
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	It's D-I-N-E-S-H, Dinesh.
	I'd like to talk about the very interesting conversation between Trump and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	Now, it was reported that the two of them were talking, and it had a fairly extended and pre-scheduled conversation.
	This was before Trump announced his vice presidential candidate.
	And for a moment, I thought, wait a minute, is Trump going to just go out there and name Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? ?
	This would be, well, on the one hand, kind of tantalizing the idea of bringing the, you know, leading name in the Democratic Party over.
	It would obviously bring the Robert F. Kennedy support over to Trump.
	But it's a very risky move because is Trump willing to turn over the MAGA baton to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.?
	What does that do to the future of the Republican Party?
	Is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	now becoming the leader of the Republican Party going forward?
	So for these reasons, I was not a fan, not in favor of something like this.
	And happily, that was not what this was about.
	But Trump was, in fact, trying to build a fence, build a bridge to Kennedy and to Shortly after that, in fact, Trump tweeted out and basically posted, not tweeted, but said on Truth Social, that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	deserves Secret Service protection.
	And in fact, very recently, they have granted it to him.
	And I think Trump's intervention has helped in that regard.
	But the The Kennedy-Trump conversation was recorded at the Kennedy end and accidentally leaked.
	Now, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
	has apologized.
	He's like, something happened on our side.
	I'm to blame.
	I'm very sorry.
	And I take him at his word at that.
	And in fact, interestingly, the conversation doesn't make Trump look bad at all.
	In fact, on the contrary, it makes him look very good.
	But what I want to focus on are just a couple of elements of this conversation, which are extremely amusing.
	And Trump apparently is talking to Kennedy about the assassination attempt.
	And Trump says that, quote, the bullet that struck his right ear Felt like a giant, like the world's largest mosquito.
	This is so classic Trump that, just like, think about it.
	I mean, first of all, what a vivid image.
	It's like the world's biggest mosquito, just, ah!
	You know?
	And probably a very accurate description of what it really felt like.
	Because, and this is, Trump is just so good at this across the board.
	If he goes into a meeting and he comes out of it, he gives you a feeling of what the meeting was like, who the people were in it, what they look like, what they, you know, Trump gives you sort of the, sometimes impromptu and sometimes deliberately, but he gives you the real scoop.
	I mean, here was a little vignette from the Republican National Convention.
	Nikki Haley goes up there and goes, Trump wanted me to speak at the convention.
	And if you cut to Trump, Trump leans over to J.D.
	Vance and says something like, she wanted to speak.
	We agreed, but it was her request to do it.
	A very minor point, because I'm not going to nitpick over whether she wanted to speak first and they granted it, but it's a little nuance.
	And what Trump is getting at is, there's a little difference between We reached out to you to speak versus you called us wanting to speak.
	In other words, Nikki Haley is making herself more important than she needs to.
	She wanted to have a place on the podium and there's nothing wrong with that, but she didn't want to seem like she was subservient, like she made the request.
	So again, what Trump does, he catches stuff like that.
	He is on to stuff like that.
	Another person who is a little less attentive to detail would be like, let it go.
	It's no big deal.
	But for Trump, these kinds of things are important.
	And it looks like there was a rapprochement, a meeting of the minds with Robert F. Kennedy.
	And Robert F. Kennedy said after, look, I'm not going to, it's not I'm going to withdraw from the campaign.
	I'm not quitting to make it a straight Trump-Biden race.
	He's still in it.
	He also says, I'm going to try to meet on the issue of unity with Democrats.
	So Kennedy is playing a little bit of a double game.
	But of course, the question from the beginning has always been this, and that is that if it is a three-man race, who is the Kennedy support going to go to?
	And I think that it's very shrewd and farsighted of Trump to realize, let me see if I can make some headway with Kennedy, because if Kennedy tilts my way, I might be able to get some of his supporters over to my side.
	And of course, Trump, with unerring instinct, realized that Kennedy's been asking for Secret Service protection.
	Biden's been saying no.
	So let's start there.
	Let's push that issue because that's an issue that's going to resonate with Kennedy.
	The thing about Kennedy, and I've said this before on the podcast, is he's really good on a few very important issues.
	So I don't want to minimize This is not a case where, you know, we make a list of 10 issues and Kennedy's good on two and he's bad on eight.
	That's probably true.
	But the two happen to be important issues.
	He's really good on COVID.
	He's really good on censorship.
	And he's pretty good on the issue of the police state.
	So those are all critical issues.
	In fact, I would take those issues over some more minor issues.
	You have other Republicans who may be good on tax cuts or may be good on this or that, but they're bad on these issues.
	And so, these issues are of critical importance because they have to do with the direct assault of the government on our basic liberties.
	So, I'm not one of these guys to bash Kennedy.
	I don't think that he is A Republican.
	I don't think he should be a Republican candidate, but I do think we should go after the Kennedy votes, and it seems like Trump is doing just that.
	After many travails, Booker T. Washington, a young Booker T. Washington, presents himself, arrives at Hampton Institute in Virginia to try to get himself an education, a basic education.
	He has in his pocket exactly 50 cents.
	50 cents.
	And he looks, as he confesses, like a hobo, like a tramp.
	He's just in rags.
	His face is dirty.
	And they look at him, and they're like, you?
	And he goes, yeah, I want to be a student.
	And so the head teacher gives him a task.
	She says, the adjoining recitation room needs to be swept.
	Take a broom, sweep it.
	Now, here's Booker T. Washington, and this is his reaction.
	Not, you might think, not, why should I sweep the room?
	I'm here for an education, not to do menial work.
	He goes, never did I receive an order with more delight.
	Why?
	Because he knows how to do it, and he knows how to do it well.
	I knew that I could sweep.
	For Mrs. Ruffner had thoroughly taught me how to do it.
	He goes, I swept the recitation room three times.
	Then I got a dusting cloth and I dusted it four times.
	All the woodwork around the walls, every bench, table, and desk, I went over four times with my dusting cloth.
	And he said, the teacher comes in and looks around.
	When she was unable to find one bit of dirt on the floor or any particle of dust on any of the furniture, she quietly said, I guess you will do to enter this institution.
	So that was, amazingly enough, Booker T. Washington's admissions exam.
	And here's what he says.
	I was one of the happiest souls on earth.
	The sweeping of that room was my college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction.
	I've passed several examinations since then, but I've always felt that this was the best one I ever passed.
	So he is now enrolled as a student and he has a job to help him pay for his education.
	What's his job?
	Janitor.
	Again.
	He is in no way humiliated.
	He joyfully accepts it, and he's like, all right, I'm going to start making my way up.
	And then, says Booker T. Washington, he had the privilege to meet at Hampton Institute, turns out the fellow who was the founder of the institution, a man named General Samuel C. Armstrong.
	Now, Samuel Armstrong is a northerner, He was a general in the northern side of the war, but as we'll see, he's a very interesting fellow in that he is dedicating himself, yes, to the education of Black and Negro children in the South, but he is also trying to help the South to build back up.
	Let's see what Booker T. Washington says about him.
	He says, he met the greatest, the man who made the greatest and most lasting impression upon him, the noblest, rarest human being that it's been my privilege to meet.
	I refer to the late General Samuel C. Armstrong.
	Now, this is the kind of line that you have to ponder on because Booker T. Washington will meet people in very prominent walks of life.
	Well, he meets Teddy Roosevelt.
	An unquestionably great man.
	And yet, says Booker T. Washington, from his point of view, the greatest man he met is this guy, General Samuel C. Armstrong.
	And he says, by the time he's writing the book, What a statement.
	my fortune to personally meet many of what I call great characters both in Europe and America." He says, but General Armstrong, quote, made the impression upon me of being a perfect man.
	What a statement. I was made to feel there was something about him that was super human. And one might have removed from Hampton all the buildings, classrooms, teachers, industries, and given the men and women there the opportunity of coming into daily contact with General Armstrong, that alone would have been a liberal education.
	So this leads Booker T. Washington to a very interesting observation, which is he says, the older I grow, the more I'm convinced that there's no education you can get from books and costly apparatus that is equal to that which can be gotten from contact with great men and women. Now, I thought about this statement as I first read it, and I thought to myself, do I agree with this?
	I'm I don't think I do, for this reason.
	I think that one of the great advantages of books is that they transport us, not only into other places and times, but they make us wiser than experience can make us.
	Because after all, our experience in life is, by definition, very limited.
	And even our experience through other people, their experience is limited.
	But there's a virtual infinity of experience available to us through books.
	But nevertheless, this is a small disagreement.
	I obviously agree with Booker T. Washington that the experience of being around and knowing a great man is incredibly, not only educational, but also inspiring.
	General Armstrong, by the time Booker T. Washington meets him, is at the very end of his life.
	He's paralyzed.
	And yet, says Booker T. Washington, he's always working.
	And then he says this.
	It says, although he fought the Southern white man in the Civil War, I never heard him utter a bitter word against him afterward.
	So, very surprising and very noble.
	He fights the Civil War, the war is over, and he's like, enough.
	Now, I will devote my energy to build up not only the black man in the South, but to build up the South.
	And he says that this guy, General Armstrong, has such an impact on the students at Hampton that there's nothing that he could ask of any student that the student will not only comply with, but joyfully comply with.
	And he talks about one example of a student who had to wheel the general up a steep slope and was completely drained and exhausted doing it.
	But when he got to the top of the hill, he turns to Booker T. Washington and he says, I am so glad that I have been permitted to do something that was really hard as a favor to the general before he dies.
	This is just great stuff because you see that not only do you have a guy who's a noble fellow, noble not in the sense of being a nobleman, he doesn't have any kind of a title except, well, general, but noble in the sense that he is noble in his conduct.
	Noble in the impact he has on other people, and he's inspiring nobility and effort on the part of others.
	At one point, the dorms get so full and more students are showing up at Hampton, the general goes, well, we don't have any place to put them.
	How about putting people in tents?
	But of course, you don't want to put the new students in tents, so the old students volunteer, Booker T. Washington in front of the line, volunteer to sleep in tents in Virginia in the winter.
	And Booker T says, it wasn't easy.
	He goes, it was intensely cold.
	And he goes, but because of who we were doing it for, General Armstrong, not a single boy uttered a word of complaint.
	Not one.
	He goes, it was enough for us to know we were pleasing General Armstrong, we were making it possible for other students to get an education, and that was sufficient, quote, compensation.
	Bookty Washington also spends a word praising what he calls the Christ-like body of men and women who went into the Negro schools at the close of the war by the hundreds to assist in lifting up my race.
	Now, he's very aware that most of these people, these teachers, are white.
	Some of them are from the North, but not all of them.
	And so Booker T says, the history of the world fails to show a higher, purer, and more unselfish class of men and women than those who found their way into those Negro schools.
	And then Booker T. Washington begins a section, and I'll just touch upon it here and continue tomorrow, about how he had to learn the very basics of life.
	Not the basics of knowledge, not the basics of history, or mathematics, or even civics, the basics of life.
	So listen to this.
	Life at Hampton was a constant revelation to me, was constantly taking me into a new world.
	Now, again, he's not talking about a new world of ideas.
	Listen to this.
	The matter of having meals at regular hours, of eating on a tablecloth, using a napkin, the use of the bathtub and the toothbrush, as well as sheets upon the bed, were all new to me.
	Wow.
	What you have here, and this is, I think, what, when I first read this book, it absolutely touched me, was you have a person beginning with the rudiments of civilization.
	But again, he's ungrudging about it.
	He's uncomplaining about it.
	Why?
	Because he knows.
	that he has to begin from the beginning.
	And that means he has to begin with the simplest, most basic tasks.
	It's almost like taking someone out of a slum or out of an aboriginal world, someone out of the Amazon, and basically saying, this is a knife, this is a fork, this is a bed, and that's where Booker T. Washington.
	Sometimes he says, I feel the most valuable lesson I got at Hampton Institute was the use and value of the bath.
	Taking a bath.
	I learned there for the first time some of its value not just in keeping the body healthy but in inspiring self-respect and promoting virtue.
	Now, because most of us are so accustomed to, we brush our teeth, we take a bath, we don't actually reflect on what does it actually mean to take a bath.
	Why would you take a bath?
	What is the point of it?
	What does it do for you?
	But this Bhaktiwasan, because it's new to him, is approaching with novelty something that everyone else takes for granted.
	He goes, in all my travels in the South, I have always in some way sought my daily bath.
	And then he says, even when he's a guest of people in a single room cabin, in other words, they don't have a bath.
	He goes, I've always tried to slip away to some stream in the woods.
	So he takes an outdoor bath.
	But cleanliness now becomes very important to him, like the first rudiment of civilization.
	Then he goes on.
	For some time, while a student of Hampton, I possessed but a single pair of socks.
	Just one.
	But he goes, but when he had worn these till they became soiled, he would wash them at night, hang them by the fire to dry, so he can wear them again the next morning.
	Again, for Booker T, It's not just a matter of socks.
	It's kind of what the socks represents.
	And to him, it is, you could call it, the elevating call of civilization itself.

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