All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 6, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
45:22
DOWNWARD SPIRAL Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep890
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Coming up, I'll talk about Kamala Harris's choice of Tim Walz as her VP pick.
Also, public policy expert Kevin Freeman joins me.
He's host of Economic War Room.
We're going to talk about the implications of debt, interest rates, and a plummeting stock market.
What should you do?
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.
This is the Dinesh D'Souza Podcast.
I'd like to talk about Kamala Harris' VP pick, the choice of the Minnesota governor, Tim Walz.
Tim Walz.
Debbie's take on him, A, is he's a yawner, and B, he's a commie.
And there's an element of truth to both.
I gotta say, for starters, that Debbie showed me a picture of this guy, and she's like, you know he's your age.
And I was like, Wait, show me again?
And I look at the guy... No, he's younger than you, honey, not your age.
He's younger than me, Debbie says.
He's actually 60.
And honestly, when I looked at his picture, he looks like he could be my dad.
He looks 80.
Maybe even my grandfather.
He's unbelievably... He's had a hard life, honey.
I would have put him in his 70s for sure.
Is it his hard life or is it just that he, or is it just that it's a life of depravity?
Maybe, I don't know.
Who knows what it is?
Maybe a lot of drinking and eating.
In any event, in any event, it's Tim Walz.
And the choice is a little bit of a surprise because there had been some reports And these reports are more in the nature of leaks and maybe some of it just idle speculation, but a lot of people thought that the Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, was going to be the nominee.
And this was more than just a kind of general We think it's going to be Shapiro because Shapiro seemed like he was acting like it was going to be him.
And by this I mean that I think Shapiro is very well aware that there is a kind of anti-Israel sentiment that has become very powerful in the Democratic Party.
Israel is kind of on the outs.
And so Shapiro was starting to make kind of anti-Israel noises.
Very odd.
I mean you have a Jewish guy whose tradition was been pro-Israel suddenly backing away from Israel.
Somebody on social media in a very kind of harsh way said it's basically like You know, Josh Shapiro is, like, undoing his circumcision.
He's, like, reattaching his foreskin, you know?
And then once Kamala Harris picked Tim Walz, they're like, okay, well, poor Josh Shapiro, he, you know, reattached his foreskin, and now what?
Because he's not the choice.
And it may be that Kamala Harris just decided that, you know what, I'm not going to pick a Jew because it's going to be too controversial, too divisive within the Democratic Party.
It may be that she was really thinking about Shapiro, and this had been communicated to Shapiro's people.
And Shapiro, of course, obligingly began to kind of move in the direction not only of Kamala, who is anti-Israel, but also the left wing of the Democratic Party on this issue.
And then Kamala decided, or Kamala and her team, the sort of democratic strategists decided, yeah, you know what, nah, let's just go with this guy, Walz.
Now, Walz is from Minnesota, and Minnesota is certainly a must-win state for the Democrats, but you would think that the Democrats would win Minnesota, that they would be able to take Minnesota by and large for granted.
If they can't take Minnesota for granted, they are in absolutely dire straits for November.
So I don't think it makes sense to think of the selection of Tim Walz as merely a way to try to secure Minnesota.
Admittedly, the way things are going, there is a problem, and that is that a number of the states The blue walled states, the states the Democrats need to win are either tipping Trump's way or they're right in the middle.
They could go either way.
And so the Democrats, I mean, they can't win the election if they don't win Pennsylvania, if they don't win Michigan, if they don't win Wisconsin.
They need those states.
And they would obviously like to get Arizona, they'd like to get North Carolina, they are going to try to get Georgia.
So there are states, there are some vulnerabilities on the Republican side as well, but these are must-win states for the Democrats.
And so I think here's what's going on with Tim Walz.
You know there is some commentary on social media today mostly to the effect that this guy is is very far left.
He's a bad choice.
He is in fact the guy who permitted all that rioting and burning and looting that occurred in Minnesota in 2020.
So here you have a kind of Peculiar partnership between Waltz and Kamala Harris because think about it.
What did she do?
She's the one who helped to raise bail money for the rioters.
So here you have Waltz enabling the rioting and Kamala Harris going, hey pitch in so we can bail these guys out.
It's a kind of a nasty partnership of thuggery between a sitting governor of a state whose job is to protect the citizens.
He doesn't do that.
And her job is to respond responsibly to the situation.
And what does she do?
She's raising bail money for rioters.
Now, you know, we know that there's going to be an effort to try to cover her tracks.
What, what, what?
Really?
She did what?
Oh, no, no, no.
There was some misunderstanding about that.
Fact-checkers coming out and saying, she didn't really do that.
I saw a fact-checker trying to throw smoke and mirrors by saying, in effect, she didn't donate money herself to the rider.
In other words, what he was getting at is she merely raised money from others.
But that's the part he was trying to hide.
And so he pretended like the issue was, did she herself give money?
And then he goes, there's no evidence that she did.
Therefore, fact check false.
This is how these guys operate.
This is their standard operating procedure.
Now...
I just saw in Compact Magazine Saurabh Amari's article on Tim Walz and I want to go through a couple of points that he makes because they are worth considering.
He says, first of all, that this is not as bad or as dumb a choice as many people think.
Why?
Because he says, look, this is going to be a populist fight.
between the Democrats and the Republicans.
It's very clear what the Republicans are trying to do in this election.
They're trying to make the Republican Party the party of the working class.
The white working class, yes, but also the black working class and the Hispanic working class.
The Republicans don't need to win the black working class or the Hispanic working class, but they need to make inroads.
And so this working class theme, which was in some ways also the basis of Trump picking JD Vance, and Sourabh Amari says the Democrats need to fight on this ground.
They just cannot afford to let the Republicans be the party of populism.
Admittedly, on CNN and MSNBC, they sit around talking about, well, populism's very dangerous, populism's a really bad idea.
Well, when you think of what populism is, it is listening to ordinary citizens whose voices otherwise don't matter.
I mean, that's almost a kind of operational definition of populism.
And how can that be bad?
And it can't be bad in an election year.
So, the Democrats have realized this, says Saurabh Amari, and he goes, look, they found a guy, and he is a leftist, but he is a leftist with a populist thrust, with a populist rhetoric.
There was an interesting clip on social media where Waltz was talking about, well, basically he was asked about socialism, and he responds by talking about, quote, neighborliness, neighborliness.
So this is a very sly way of acting as if redistributing income is nothing more than, say, lending your neighbor a cup of sugar.
Because neighborliness is based upon reciprocity.
And socialism isn't.
Socialism is, let's bring down the rich and give to the poor, let's redistribute income.
It's based upon a sense of entitlement, but one thing it is not based upon is a sense of reciprocal responsibilities, let alone, it's not based upon any idea of friendship.
Which is the basis of all neighborliness.
The reason I help my neighbor and not some stranger who lives eight blocks down the road is because I have a certain connection with my neighbor.
I say hello to him every day.
We chat across the fence.
And so the friendship that goes with neighborliness is the basis for the magnanimity and the cordiality that exists with a neighbor.
But what Waltz does is, and this is really what all socialists do, they re-describe socialism in a traditional language to make it seem un-socialist.
And this is why this guy might be a fairly sneaky character to have with Kamala on the ticket.
I'll say more about Vance's positions, more about, sorry, not about Vance, about Tim Walz's positions, and what effect he might have on Kamala Harris tomorrow or the next day.
But what I want to say here is that we should, again, just as we don't underestimate Kamala Harris, that was a message I stressed yesterday and the day before, I don't think we should underestimate this dude either.
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the increasing cost of health insurance?
Have you had enough of not having control over your healthcare dollars?
Introducing ShareRite.
It's healthcare done the right way.
At ShareRite, you're not just a number, you're part of a caring community.
Forget about paying excessive premiums.
With ShareRite, you stand to save 30-50% compared to health insurance.
So think about what you could do with all those savings.
But it's more than just savings.
ShareRite ensures you have access to the care you deserve precisely when you need it, from routine checkups to unexpected emergencies.
With ShareRite, your healthcare is their top priority.
Priority.
Empower yourself today by taking control of your healthcare costs.
How do you do it?
Visit ShareRight.org to learn more, see how much you can save.
To learn more, see how much you can say.
Visit shareright.org for healthcare done the right way.
In these crazy times, there's peace of mind, insecurity.
Security for our country, security for our leaders, security for our families.
But think about this.
You're not financially secure if all your eggs are in one basket.
Gold and silver are an excellent way to diversify your savings.
They can be a hedge against inflation.
They're a physical asset that's in high demand globally from the wealthy to central banks.
And through my friends at Birch Gold Group, you can own physical gold and silver in a tax-sheltered retirement account.
That's right.
You can diversify an old IRA or 401k for no money out of pocket into an IRA in gold and silver.
This is one thing you can do to secure your family savings.
How do you get started?
Text Dinesh to 989898.
Receive a free no-obligation information kit.
Learn the role precious metals can play in your overall savings strategy.
Again, Text Dinesh to 989898.
With an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, thousands of happy customers, you can trust Birch Gold like Debbie and I do.
Text Dinesh to 989898.
Guys, I'm delighted to welcome to the podcast Kevin Freeman.
He is the host of Economic War Room with Kevin Freeman on Blaze TV.
He's also host of Pirate Money Radio on American Family Radio, the website economicwarroom.com, and you can follow him on X at SecretWeaponUSA.
Kevin, thanks for joining me.
I appreciate it.
We seem to be experiencing some economic turmoil in the stock market and I wonder if that is just one of those blips on the landscape or if it is an indicator, in your opinion, of some larger malaise that we need to be aware of.
What do you think?
Well, Dinesh, I appreciate you asking.
The stock market decline was severe.
On the Dow Jones Industrial Average, it dropped about 2,500 points over a few days, and it's since rebounded about 500 points as we're recording this.
It could be a blip.
We see these blips occasionally in the stock market, but even if it turns out to have been a blip, it doesn't deny the economic realities that we're facing.
We have a national debt that's top $35 trillion.
We have a radical Biden administration with Harris saying the same thing.
She's going to eliminate the Trump tax cuts.
And that would be catastrophic because the tax cut on corporations has dropped severely under Trump, allowing companies to bring their businesses back here and manufacture things here.
If they raise those back to 35%, it'll be among the highest corporate tax rates in the world, which of course will drive industry overseas.
It'll drive manufacturing and profits overseas.
It will definitely hurt the stock market.
So in anticipation, the market may be, it may be a Harris trade that people are afraid that if she gets elected, that the economy will go the wrong direction. It's been going the wrong direction.
We have massive inflation, but even worse if they let the Trump tax cuts expire.
You know, people sometimes express a great deal of shock and distress when there's an economic convulsion or if things turn downwards.
I must say I'm a little surprised that it hasn't happened quicker or we haven't felt more severe effects already because The way I understand it, if you had, you know, if you think of America as a single large family, let's say made up of 350 million members, and you take the debt, the national debt, and you just distribute it over the 300 million people, it's a pretty big number.
That's imposing a pretty hefty liability on, let's just say, the ordinary citizen.
And yet, we've coasted along for years and even decades with high degrees of debt.
I'm talking about national debt here, not individual or personal debt.
And we haven't seen any kind of real catastrophe.
I wonder if that's lulled people into a sense that, hey, the debt is just a number.
Who cares?
The 35 trillion, so what?
Maybe it's 50 trillion.
What difference does it make?
Because it doesn't seem to have made that big of a difference already.
Yeah, well, the debt was $95,000 per citizen a little over a year ago.
It's $104,000 per citizen.
That means every man, every woman, every child, everyone in a nursing home, every individual, their share of the national debt is $104,000.
But the reason it's not impacted us yet is the same reason that people that get these teaser credit cards with these big credit lines And they never feel it until they reach the max of the credit line and they don't get an extension.
And then all of a sudden it's panic.
And then add to that the panic that happens when the 0% or 2% interest rate goes away and gets replaced with a 25% interest rate.
That's the kind of panic the American people are going to feel very soon.
They haven't felt it yet because the government put $10 trillion into the economy in the last few years, just since COVID.
That's $10 trillion of debt.
We've gone from $25 trillion to $35 trillion.
Well, $10 trillion is a lot of money.
But we're beginning to spend it out, and then you drive through the hamburger joint, which I did last night, and I said I'd like a cheeseburger and an order of onion rings, and it was $13.57.
In Texas!
This isn't Hollywood Boulevard.
This is Texas!
For one cheeseburger, no drink, and onion rings.
This is what's so crazy.
I used to be able to feed my family at that same restaurant just maybe 10 years ago for $13.57.
Now it's just for one person.
People are beginning to feel it, and when they realize their credit line's about to be cut off, at that point, there's going to be panic.
Somebody made the observation on social media, and it did strike me.
They commented that the stock market, in a sense, is belatedly reflecting what a lot of ordinary families that aren't heavily invested in the stock market are already experiencing.
In other words, people are experiencing higher prices at the gas pump, higher prices in the grocery store.
Difficulty in obtaining things that they need.
They're feeling this, but maybe the typical stock market guy doesn't feel it because if gas goes up, you know, 30 cents or 25 cents, it's no big deal.
But on the other hand, if you look at your portfolio and it starts dropping 10, 15 or 20 percent, Then you begin to realize, wait a minute, I don't think I can retire at 65 the way I thought or even 70.
So your life plans now begin to change.
Do you think that it's part of what may be going on here is that you may say Wall Street is now taking the pain the same as Main Street?
Maybe.
I think a lot of that is true in that the average Wall Street person hasn't felt the pain of Main Street.
They're separated.
They think of themselves as globalists.
But what's really hit them the past few days is if you're on Wall Street, you're a hedge fund, you would use what's known as the carry trade.
You'd go into Japan.
You'd borrow at very low interest rates, and the Japanese yen was losing ground against the dollar.
It was depreciating against the dollar.
And so you'd borrow, and then when you paid back, the yen was cheaper, so you could pay it back more easily.
So they just kept borrowing and investing in higher return items, like NVIDIA, which was going up because of the AI boom, or just the U.S.
stock market in general.
What happened is the yen reversed.
Just because people started talking about, hey, we may lower interest rates in the Federal Reserve here in America, and all of a sudden the yen became a little more attractive on a relative basis to the U.S.
dollar, so the yen strengthens a little bit.
And the net result of it is that people had to start panicking and selling things to cover their margin calls, because they did all this on debt and leverage and so forth.
So think of the Wall Street person, in a sense, as the guy that's been on a hot streak in Vegas, and he's been rolling and drinking and winning and winning and winning, and all of a sudden he's placing bigger and bigger bets, and it doesn't come up his way one time.
There's a panic.
Where am I going to come up with this money?
That's what happened.
And now, today, in fact, as we're recording this, we're seeing the market rebound a little bit.
Because the Japanese yen has weakened a little bit and the net result of it is we've gone from a risk off, I don't need any risk in my portfolio, to people looking for bargains and looking for opportunities.
I don't know what it predicts for the next three months or six months, but I can tell you we have a dire future to face unless we quickly reverse the Biden policies of over-regulation, increasing taxes, and woke corporations and we get back to American business.
Let me frame a question and we'll take a pause and when we come back I'm going to have you answer it.
And that is, what is the way out of this?
In other words, is it reasonable to say, because it looks like you've got two parties competing now in November, neither of them are talking about, as far as I can see, significant government spending cuts.
It looks like one party, the Republicans, are by and large going to hold a line, and the other party wants to spend a lot more.
And so, I say to myself, if you're facing a difficult situation as a family, and let's just say you got a dad and a mom, and the dad goes, let's hold the line!
The mom goes, well, let's spend a whole bunch of money!
Well, the truth of it is, neither of them are actually getting to the root of the problem, which is that your Spending and your earnings are out of whack.
You're spending a lot more than you're bringing in and this has to stop.
So my question to you is, do you think that there's some way to kind of grow our way out of this problem?
Or is it the case that we're going to take a lot of pain no matter which party wins?
And it may just be a matter of whether the pain comes a lot sooner or a lot later, but it's coming anyway.
Let's take a pause and when we come back I'm gonna Have Kevin Freeman answer that question.
You asked and MyPillow listened.
They're finally bringing you the most requested offer ever.
Right now, you can get the queen-size premium MyPillow for just $19.98.
Wow.
MyPillow is made with patented adjustable fill.
It adjusts to your exact individual needs regardless of your sleep position.
It helps keep your neck aligned and holds its shape all night long so you get the best sleep of your life.
But that's not all.
You can also get MyPillow six-piece kitchen or bath towel sets for just $25, the brand new mattress topper for as low as $69.98, and their famous MyPillow bed sheets for as low as $25.
And there's so much more.
Lots of deals.
Call 800-876-0227.
The number again, 800-876-0227.
Or you can go to mypillow.com.
When you use promo code Dinesh, you get big discounts on all the MyPillow products, including The premium queen-size MyPillow, just $19.98.
That's the lowest price ever, so don't delay.
Order today.
Go to MyPillow.com, but make sure to use the promo code D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
Guys, in this big election year with a new movie coming out, I'd like to invite you to join my Locals channel.
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.
You can also interact with me directly.
I do a live weekly Q&A every Tuesday, tonight, 8 p.m.
Eastern, no topic is off-limits.
I've also uploaded some cool films to Locals, documentaries, feature films.
2,000 Meals is up there, the latest film called Police State, and the new film coming out will also be eventually up on Locals.
Hey, if you're an annual subscriber, you can stream and watch this movie content for free.
It's included with your subscription.
So check out the channel.
It's dinesh.locals.com.
I'd love to have you along for this great ride.
Again, it's dinesh.locals.com.
Guys, I'm back with Kevin Freeman.
He is the host of Economic War Room on Blaze TV, also the host of Pirate Money Radio on American Family Radio, the website economicwarroom.com.
Kevin, I was asking you about Whether or not either of the two parties is really proposing a way out of this.
What do you think we need to do to really get to deal with this problem as a country?
Well, the most important thing we can do, you mentioned growth.
Can we grow our way out of it?
There's a point of no return where it's impossible to do that.
I don't know if we're there yet or not, but we certainly can't ramp up spending, move to socialist policies, raise taxes.
All of those would be disastrous.
stepping on the accelerator when you see the sign that says bridge is out.
The Trump policies are going to be to reduce regulation.
We know that.
The Trump policies would be to maintain the tax cuts.
That would allow the growth that we need, potentially.
But the U.S. dollar is under severe strain regardless.
We've been the reserve currency of the world for over 50 years, since the Bretton Woods, and we've done it without any gold backing to the currency.
Richard Nixon took us off the gold backing in 1971, and the dollar's lost 90% of its purchasing power.
The only reason we've been able to finance a $35 trillion debt is because foreigners were willing to hold U.S. Treasury bonds and Treasury bills as the reserve asset of the world, including Saudi Arabia.
They said all oil would be priced in dollars.
This is the petrodollar arrangement, and we'll reinvest what we earn back in Treasury bonds.
That's changing.
The BRICS nations, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, and probably 28 others that represent over half the world's economy, if you add them all in, and 80% of the world's population, they've said we no longer need dollars.
So what's the way out of it?
I think the way out of it is state-based transactional gold and silver.
I think the states can go to Article I, Section 10 of the Constitution, and they can make it possible for people to hold their savings in the forms of gold and silver and transact in them.
At the federal level, if we follow the Trump policies, we have a much better chance of avoiding catastrophe.
We're going to have to hit the brakes soon.
The easiest way to do it at the federal level is to restrain spending relative to the growth of the economy.
We've done the opposite.
We've allowed the spending to exceed the economics.
We've got to reverse that.
In other words, back to your family analogy, the income earners have got to get big raises and they've got to cut back on what they're spending money on.
If we don't do that very soon, other nations of the world will turn against the dollar in a dramatic fashion and we'll find ourselves in a very serious position like Weimar Germany did when they spent more than they brought in and their currency collapsed.
Yes, it's possible.
I don't know if it's too late.
or Argentina. In other words, Argentina, which had terrible policies, elected a conservative and they began to have a turnaround and saw inflation rates come down and the Argentine economy has improved. So yes, it's possible. I don't know if it's too late. I hope not.
I take it from what you just said just a minute or two ago that you think that it is prudent or and wise for states, but also for ordinary citizens to try to diminish their kind of heavy reliance on the US dollar.
dollar.
In other words, we all live by the dollar.
We obviously spend dollars everywhere we go.
We earn in dollars.
But by and large, our money is also invested in dollars.
And are you saying that there are ways for families that have money to save or maybe have retirement accounts and so on to think about ways to diversify away from the dollar just so that we're somewhat insulated if the dollar takes a nosedive?
We are working on legislation.
We have 25, 26, 27 states that are looking at Article 1, Section 10 of the Constitution, which says a state can make nothing other than gold and silver coins tender within that state.
Now, originally, the term dollar came from a Spanish milled dollar.
That was the English name for it.
It was also known as a piece of eight.
It was .7734 troy ounces of fine silver.
The founders did not ever want us to have paper money that was unbacked.
They said it was unjust.
They said it would ruin commerce.
I mean, we've got a whole list of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, all hated paper dollars.
In fact, Jefferson said paper is poverty.
So we are working with 27 states to enact legislation that would allow people to put gold and silver on deposit in a depository held in the state and then spend it using a debit card.
The technology exists today.
You can get it in commercial applications, but it's not legal tender.
If we made it legal tender and applied that technology, then families would have an opt-out.
They could hold some of their money in the form of gold or silver, and from 1924 to the present, gold has held its value and the paper dollar has lost.
For example, gold was $20 an ounce in 1924.
It's $2,400 an ounce today.
A $20 bill has lost 99% of its purchasing power since 1924.
$1,200 an ounce today a $20 bill has lost 99% of its purchasing power since 1924 so we see exact opposite directions So yes, I want American families to have an option with their money The Constitution allows it.
The states can make it happen.
What do you think, Kevin, about a lot of people are also turning an eye toward Bitcoin, cryptocurrency.
I saw that Trump just a couple of days ago made some favorable comments about Bitcoin and about cryptocurrency.
And I take it that the main driving force here is simply the idea of creating a currency.
Now, it may seem to be utterly fictional.
Where exactly is this currency?
But nevertheless, it's no less fictional than the paper dollar, because that's a fiction as well.
That's worthless in and of itself.
It acquires its value simply in trading.
And so, do you think that maybe Bitcoin or cryptocurrency, is that potentially a wave of the future?
Because I know there is a skeptical community that goes, hey, listen, don't do that because that's going to be totally worthless in a few years.
What is your take on alternative currencies like Bitcoin?
Well, I wrote an entire chapter in my book, Pirate Money, about Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.
I think the technology is amazing.
I love the privacy potential that it provides, and I love the fact that Bitcoin, for example, is limited to only 21 million ever being produced, which means that we won't have a rapid money supply problem.
It won't be oversupplied.
Federal government has their take.
They want to ban Bitcoin, and not Trump, but the current They won't admit it, but that's what they really want to do, and then they want to replace it with central bank digital currency, which has the technology, yes, but doesn't have any of the privacy and wouldn't have any of the limitation and supply.
I promote gold and silver in the book Pirate Money because the Constitution doesn't say a state can make Bitcoin legal tender.
It says the state can make gold and silver legal tender.
And I want a government, I think governments can create money, I like private money as well, but I want a government available money that is sound, that is constitutional, that allows and protects my privacy and protects me against inflation.
That's why we talk about pirate money, which is transactional gold and silver, or Silver Spanish mill dollars, also known as pieces of eight, and gold doubloons, also known, you know, as pirate money, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Hey, isn't it true also that, you know, when you mentioned the central bank digital currency, that quite apart from the fact that it gives them unlimited spend, the government unlimited spending power, because in a sense they control the so-called CBDCs, but even more than that, they not only control the money,
But they control the people that are allocated that money and we become dependent on the government to a terrifying degree so that if we get off the track or we're dissidents, they could punish us in all kinds of ways that China has already figured out how to do.
Exactly.
It's like the social credit scores.
August Karsten from the Bank for International Settlements said it very plainly.
He said this gives us absolute control and the technology to enforce it.
They can control what you eat because you can't buy a cheeseburger, you can buy a bug burger.
They control where you travel.
They can control how you spend money.
They can control where you give money.
They can control whether you're the right person to receive money.
So, yes, absolute control.
This is the intended purpose of Central Bank Digital Currency, according to the Bank for International Settlements, according to President Biden's Executive Order 14067 of March 2022, according to the IMF, and according to the World Economic Forum.
That is the intended purpose.
Scary stuff.
Guys, I've been talking to Kevin Freeman.
He's host of Economic War Room.
It's on Blaze TV.
He's also host of Pirate Money Radio on the American Family Radio.
The website EconomicWarRoom.com.
Follow him on social media on X, at SecretWeaponUSA.
Kevin, thank you very much for joining me.
Thank you, Dinesh.
I am in Chapter 5 of Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery, and this chapter is called The Reconstruction Period.
Now, reconstruction refers to the rebuilding, the reconstruction of America, but specifically of the American South after the Civil War.
And Booker T. Washington is writing from the point of view of a now free black man.
I say now free because he was born a slave, but he's now a free man in the late 1860s and 1870s.
And he has a very good perspective on what is happening on the ground in the South.
And he says a lot of blacks became teachers or preachers.
Now, he says this was, you know, and he writes both sympathetically and with a kind of sharp sense of humor about this because, think about it, he says first of all, many became teachers who could do little more than write their names.
So can you imagine going into a classroom and the teacher can barely write his or her own name?
And this is the person who's supposed to instruct you.
He goes on to say there was a fellow who comes into his neighborhood and he proposes that he be enlisted as a teacher.
And somebody asks him whether the earth is flat or whether the earth is round.
And the guy goes, he's not really sure, but he says he's happy to teach you either way.
So he's kind of saying, well listen, you tell me what you want me to teach.
If you want me to teach The Earth is Flat, I'll teach that.
And so Booker T here is, with a little bit of irony, giving you the idea that this is not, in a sense, real education.
There's a kind of a comic element to this.
And then he goes on to talk about the comic element in the ministry.
And this is now, some people might be tempted to take this as a little irreverent, but I don't think he means it that way.
Gotta remember that he's writing from a Christian point of view, but I think from a Christian point of view that is also intelligent.
Here's what he says.
He goes, he goes, it's very surprising that you have all these blacks who suddenly are, quote, called to preach, called to preach.
And he goes, I'm now quoting him, in the earlier days of freedom, almost every colored man who learned to read would receive a, quote, called to preach within a few days after he began reading.
He says, usually the call came when the individual was sitting in church.
Without warning, the one who was called would fall upon the floor as if struck by a bullet and would lie there for hours, speechless and motionless.
Then the news would spread throughout the neighborhood that this individual had received a, quote, call.
And then he says that if the individual sort of resists this, he would, quote, fall or be made to fall a second or third time.
In the end, he always yielded to the call.
And then Booker T says, I began to wonder, and this is, again, I think he's being a little ironic here, although it's hard to tell because his sense of irony is very soft and it's also very kind.
He's not really ridiculing or deriding these people.
I think he's just Expressing a little bit of skepticism, maybe even sarcasm, is it really true that all these guys are receiving a divine call to the priesthood or to become preachers?
And he goes, well, it crossed my mind, you know, I've never been called.
He goes, he goes, quote, for some reason, my call never came.
Now, Booker T. Washington immediately, having done this, begins to pull back from this.
And by that I mean, he says, look, he says, this happened at the very immediate aftermath of slavery, and he says, I'm happy to say that this kind of thing where every second guy who learns how to read is now called to be a preacher, he goes, you don't have that quite as much anymore. And he says, secondly, that more and more people are now going into what he calls the industrial occupations. So in other words,
they're actually becoming bricklayers, or they're becoming masons, or they're becoming Pullman porters, or they're becoming doormen in hotels.
So Booker T. Washington is very aware that blacks starting out from nothing need to learn how to do the things that make The modern world move and they have to do things from the ground up.
In other words, you build one thing on top of the other.
You can't, for example, become a mathematician before you know how to add or before you know how to do simple algebra and simple geometry.
So that's his point.
He's sometimes taken by people to say, well, you don't need to learn the higher math.
Whereas his point is you cannot learn the higher math if you haven't learned the lower math.
In other words, you can't go from P to Z without going from A to P. You've got to go step by step.
This is a very insightful section we're about to delve into and very surprising coming from someone writing in 1901 and reflecting back on the 1870s and 1880s because the size of the federal government at that time is really small.
And yet, here's Booker T. Washington.
During the whole of the Reconstruction period, our people throughout the South looked to the federal government for everything, much as a child looks to its mother.
Now, this is very telling because I think it points to a problem that will afflict the black community for the next 150 years, right down to the present day.
The dependency on the federal government.
Right away, Booker T. Washington says, this was not unnatural.
In other words, it's understandable how this came about.
Why?
Because he says, quote, the central government gave them freedom.
And he says also, he says, I had the feeling, even as a youth and later in manhood, that there was something cruelly wrong in the central government to fail to make some provision for the general education of our people to better prepare us for the duties of citizenship.
Notice that Booker T. Washington is nowhere saying he wants handouts, he wants, you know, monthly provisions of income, he wants free housing, none of that.
He says, listen, we're coming out of slavery with nothing.
There's only one thing that we kind of want, and that is a basic education.
And if you can help us with that, we will then use that to our betterment and to our benefit.
But again, having made this criticism, and it's a mild criticism of the government, he again backs off from it a little bit and says, you know, he goes, it's easy to find fault.
He says there was a lot of confusion that happened after the Civil War, and he says maybe what the government did was the only thing that they could do.
So here you have a very wise approach by Booker T. Washington because it's very easy to sit back and go, the government should have done this, the government should have done that.
And his point is, what was it in the power of the government to do after slavery?
I mean, think about the bitter feelings in the South against the North in the aftermath of the Civil War.
Think about the fact that the Republicans in the North were trying to basically rule the South.
It's almost like trying to ride a horse against its will, and the South as a whole was sort of bucking against this.
And Booker T is very well aware of this.
So he's saying, look, in this awkward circumstance, there's only so much you can sort of get the horse to do.
And he says, I felt that the reconstruction policy so far as it related to my race was in large measure on a false foundation, was artificial and forced.
So here is a black man making a critique Interestingly enough, of Northern Republicans about the way that they are ruling the South, even though the black man is himself a Republican.
So, let's listen to what he's saying.
He says, there was an element in the North which wanted to punish the Southern white men by forcing the Negro into positions over the heads of Southern whites.
I felt that the Negro would be the one to suffer for this in the end.
I mean, if you want to give a 1870s prophecy prize, you gotta give it to Booker T. Washington.
What's he saying?
He's saying in 1901, when there is essentially no Ku Klux Klan, no lynchings, no blacks hanging from trees, he's saying, listen, the fact that the North is trying to, you may say, wrestle the South into submission, taking away the votes from Southern white men, admittedly Democrats,
And giving the vote to black men, north and south, and sending northern soldiers to rule over the southern whites, he goes, they're not going to put up with this forever.
And the moment that they get power back, the moment they control their own communities and states, they will take it out on the blacks.
And this is exactly what happened.
This is really why there was a massive resurgence of the Klan, and of racism, and of Jim Crow, and of segregation, and of racial terrorism in the early part of the 20th century.
Booker T. Washington saw it coming.
▲
Export Selection