All Episodes
Previous Next
Aug. 19, 2024 - Dinesh D'Souza
45:52
THE COMMIE PLAYBOOK Dinesh D’Souza Podcast Ep899
| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Coming up, I'll make the case against the wage and price controls that Kamala Harris is proposing as a way of dealing with so-called price gouging.
And entrepreneur and author Chris Widener joins me.
We're going to talk about issues of the day, also preview his new upcoming book, The Coming American Revival.
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.
Donald Trump recently put out a meme which has Kamala Harris standing at the Democratic National Convention, at least a silhouette of her, with a hammer and sickle.
And the message here is that these people are Communists!
They're commies!
And they are not even all that bashful about it.
Now Kamala Harris, as I mentioned before, denies.
I'm not a communist.
I'm not a socialist.
But you have to look at what she is doing and what she is proposing to do.
If you saw my film Police State, you know that a number of these communist police state tactics are aggressively promoted by Democrats across the board.
And we don't have to do the full checklist, but think about it.
You have systematic surveillance, you have ideological indoctrination in schools and the media.
You have regimes of censorship, you have criminalization of political differences, going after the political leader of the opposition party, all of this, even attempted assassination.
This is right out of the communist playbook.
How did Stalin get rid of Trotsky?
The answer is assassination.
So assassination is an approved method in the communist, you may say, playbook.
And with Kamala Harris, her latest idea, which is apparently her big idea, this is her only new idea.
She's got some ideas that aren't new.
For example, here's her idea.
Let's have no taxes on restaurant tips.
Does that sound a little familiar?
Well, it should.
Trump came up with that idea weeks ago, and because Kamala Harris realized that that idea is actually making headway with people, she goes, I endorse that too!
But there's nothing new here, and quite frankly, if she thought it was a good idea, why haven't they tried to implement it over the past four years?
But her big idea, this is the idea I want to focus on, and it's the idea that perhaps bears the closest obvious resemblance to a commie playbook, is the idea of wage and price controls.
Now, wage and price controls are nothing more Or nothing less than a government order, an edict, to set prices in certain industries.
Obviously, in a communist society, they set wage and price controls for everything.
So, the price of computers, of apartments, of an automobile, of food, makes no difference.
The state runs the system, the state sets prices.
But Kamala Harris says, I'm not doing that.
What I want is to have a wage and price control system that is for sort of necessities, which is to say food and groceries.
And she says that the reason this is needed is to curb, quote, excessive prices and excessive corporate profits.
Let's start by thinking about just those two terms.
What is an excessive price?
How do you know if the price of something is excessive or not?
By and large, things cost more when lots of people want them.
That's demand.
And things cost more when the things themselves are kind of rare.
Why is it, for example, that diamonds cost more than silver?
Well, the answer is that diamonds are more rare than silver.
People value diamonds more, so the combination of the rarity of the product and the demand drives the price up.
That is how things work in a normal market.
But the same token, ask yourself, what is the meaning of the term excessive corporate profits?
Is there a certain kind of agreed upon amount that corporations can or should make?
If you start a business, do you start a business and go, well, listen, I'm going to try to make between 8 and 10 percent.
That is a kind of OK profit.
But if I'm making, say, 20 percent, that is an excess profit and I need to be stopped by someone in doing that.
No one thinks like this.
This is not really how markets work.
It's very difficult to even define what excessive profits even means.
And the way that you keep excessive profits down is through competition.
So, let's consider a thought experiment.
And that is, McDonald's decides to do price gouging.
This is one of Kamala Harris's favorite terms, price gouging.
Let's see how some price gouging could work.
McDonald's says from now on we are going to charge $100 for a Big Mac.
We're gonna really gouge the customer!
Can they do that?
No.
Would they dream of doing it?
No.
Why not?
Because the moment they do that, nobody would buy a Big Mac.
You just go, hey, I'll go to Wendy's.
I'll go to Jack in the Box.
I'll go to Whataburger.
So...
McDonald's doesn't need a government edict.
You can't charge that much for a burger because the market takes care of it.
So, price gouging can't work in a normal market situation.
It can only work when there are monopolies, when somebody dominates or controls the market.
Now, we do have monopolies in our society, and what's very interesting is that very often Democrats create those monopolies, or they allow them to exist.
So, for example, let's consider the monopoly of the digital platforms in doing censorship.
The Democrats could push for breaking up these platforms, having competition between the platforms.
Let's make sure there are several competitors to Google, effective competition to Amazon, good competitors for, let's say, Facebook.
They don't do any of that.
Why?
Because these monopolies are rigging the game in their favor.
So they allow the quote gouging and the gouging here is not at the level of prices per se but it's at the level of the control of knowledge of information.
But let's look at where some examples of where we do see price gouging.
Have you ever gone to a baseball game or a football game?
You notice that inside of that arena If you get a hamburger, it's like 20 bucks.
Fries are like $14.
The drink is like $8.
And you're like, I'm being gouged.
You are being gouged.
But how is that gouging even possible?
The answer is that the people who control that arena have given a kind of monopoly concession to a particular vendor.
They basically said, you're going to be the only guy selling burgers inside of the stadium.
And so you can charge as much as people are willing to pay.
They're hungry, they want to eat something, they want to eat while they're watching the game, they want to pop in some fries while they're watching, and so charge what you can get away with.
There is gouging, but the gouging is created by the monopolistic, the artificial monopoly condition that is created by that stadium in that situation.
The same is true in an airport.
You might notice if you sit down to have a meal in an airport, it's Kind of expensive.
Now, it's not as expensive as it used to be.
Why?
Because there are now more restaurants and airports, so there's even some competition within those restaurants.
So they can't gouge you too much, but they do gouge you a little because you're stuck in the airport.
You can't just go, I'll step outside and get a burger, or I'll step outside and get a beer, because there's no place to go.
You're their prisoner, so to speak.
So there are conditions, and if so, the Democrats go, well, listen, we're going to tackle these special conditions where there's price gouging.
But no, they think that there's price gouging in groceries because corporations make too much profit.
So let's turn for a moment to see how much profit that is.
As it turns out, the average profits in an American industry, in typical American businesses, whether selling retail products, or selling pipes, or selling cars, the average profit made by an American company is somewhere between seven and ten percent.
It's in that range.
And by the way, you can see this to be true, because if you invest in these companies, you'll notice that your portfolio let's say diversified portfolio of stocks is going to go up 7 to 10 percent roughly in a year. We're not talking about if there's a major recession, but under normal conditions that's about what you'll see your portfolio increasing. So that's about the profitability of American companies.
Now in the grocery industry the profitability is much much lower.
I'm now quoting from Catherine Rample in the Washington Post.
She points out that profit margins for supermarkets are 1.6%.
Think about that.
If you buy something for $1.16, The profit margin of that item is the $0.16.
The actual cost of the item to the grocery store is $1.
So they're making $0.16.
Does that seem to you to be like excessive profits requiring government intervention?
This is all nonsense.
Now, really what Kamala Harris is trying to do, and I'll pick this up in the next segment, is cover for the effects of their own bad policies.
Their own bad policies, their own printing money, their own irresponsibility creates inflation.
That causes prices to go up.
The prices are not going up because of villainous corporations.
They're going up because of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
And instead of taking the blame for it themselves, she's pretending like corporate greed is the problem.
Let's go after that.
So you could almost say that having caused the problem, she is now proposing to apply a bandage that is not really a bandage at all.
In these crazy times, there's peace of mind in security.
Security for our country, security for our leaders, security for our families, and of course, financial security.
But think about this.
You're not financially secure if all your eggs are in just one basket.
Now, 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's savings.
How do you start?
Text Dinesh to 989898.
Get a free, no-obligation information kit.
Learn the role that precious metals can play in your overall savings strategy.
Again, Are you feeling overwhelmed by the increasing cost of health insurance?
Have you had enough of not having control over your health care dollars?
Introducing ShareRite.
Again, text Dinesh to 989898.
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the increasing cost of health insurance?
Have you had enough of not having control over your health care dollars?
Introducing ShareRight. It's health care done the right way.
At ShareRite, you're not just a number, you're part of a caring community.
And forget about paying excessive premiums.
With ShareRite, you stand to save 30 to 50 percent 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 health care is their top priority.
Priority.
So empower yourself today by taking control of your healthcare costs.
Visit ShareRight.org slash Dinesh.
To learn more, see how much you can save, visit ShareRight.org slash Dinesh.
That's ShareRight.org slash Dinesh for healthcare done the right way.
I mentioned in the last segment Catherine Rampel's article in the Washington Post, which has a really good title.
When your opponent calls you communist, maybe you don't propose price controls.
Catherine Rampel knows that price controls, this is like a defining element.
Of socialism and of communism.
And here you have somebody, by the way, who's not a conservative.
More of a political moderate to left.
And yet even she realizes that there's a certain insane radicalism about this.
She goes, I'm not reading a few lines.
It's hard to exaggerate how bad this policy is.
She goes, supply and demand would no longer determine prices or profit levels.
Far off Washington bureaucrats would.
The FTC would be able to tell, say, a Kroger in Ohio, the acceptable price it can charge for milk.
Now this is a key point because I raised earlier the question when Kamala Harris talks about excessive prices and excessive profits.
Well who gets to say if something is excessive?
And the answer, her answer, is I do.
The government does.
So now how will the government decide that?
Well the answer is pretty simple.
The government is now going to go to Costco, they're going to go to Vons, they're going to go to Safeway, to Kroger, and say basically, give us your accounts.
Give us all your internal data about costs and margins and contracts, future pricing strategies.
We're going to look this over and second guess you.
So you might say, all right, here's something that costs us, let's say, $3.
We're going to charge $3.25.
We're going to come in and say, no, no, no, no, you can't charge $3.25.
That's excessive.
That shows corporate greed.
How about if you price it at $3.10?
So what you're creating, and you can just see this, is a nightmare scenario in which the public sector now begins to stick its It's nose into the private sector and government, which is not really very good at this.
Government is not very good at economics.
Government doesn't even know how to make a profit.
The government never makes a profit.
Basically, all government-run industries lose oceans of money.
They're always trying to... The post office loses money, so they want to raise the price of stamps.
Amtrak loses money, so they want to raise the price of tickets.
So, that's all that they know how to do.
They get money through, quote, taxes, And they spend often much more than they take in.
Now, no corporation can function that way.
If Safeway kept spending more than they take in, they'd go out of business.
So they rely on keeping their costs down, buying products for as little as they can, selling them for a little more, and they can't sell them for a lot more because somebody else will come in and take their business.
This is what makes markets work very well.
And so, What you have with Kamala Harris and Joe Biden, this is, we're talking here about the, not the sins of an individual, but the sins of a whole team.
They have not only no understanding of markets, they don't care about markets.
They don't care about this at all.
And so, it's almost like saying, you've heard the phrase that you're killing the goose that makes the golden eggs.
America has worked as a country because we make a lot of golden eggs.
And we make a lot of golden eggs because we've got very good systems in place.
Economic systems, legal systems, political systems, judicial systems.
And these systems create not only efficiency on the one hand, but justice on the other.
And you notice how these systems are all one by one breaking down.
And they're breaking down, unfortunately, kind of at the same time.
Now, a society, it's kind of like a car.
You know, if one thing breaks down, first of all, the car still runs.
I mean, I've got a very nice car, but right now my lights are on that tells me that my tires need to be checked.
But I look at the so-called misalignment, and one is at 33, one's at 34, one's at 35, so something seems slightly off.
I'm like, you know, when I take it in for a checkup, I'll have them fix that.
But, of course, imagine if that light comes on and then there's another light that comes on that says, for example, that there's a problem with the muffler.
And there's another light that comes on that says there's a problem with... Then I basically realize that my car is going into dysfunctional breakdown.
I'm actually going into a very bad situation.
Very bad for my prosperity.
Very bad for my mobility.
Very bad for my safety.
This is kind of what's happening to America is our legal system is breaking down and becoming ultimately a system of vendetta, of political vendetta.
By the way, vendetta coming from one side.
Our civil liberties are breaking down with censorship and surveillance.
Our economy, which has been holding together fairly well, but it's under constant stress from government overspending.
That's really the main problem that we're facing when we talk about things like our national debt.
How do we get a national debt?
Do we get a national debt because the ordinary American is being irresponsible?
Well, that's a separate problem.
There are people who run too much credit card debt.
There are people who personally borrow more than they should.
But you know what?
When people do stupid stuff like that, they pay the price.
You borrow too much in your home and you can't make your mortgage?
Guess what?
There's a correction to that problem.
It's not a pleasant one, but somebody will come and take your house.
And then you'll be like, whoops, I better learn my lesson because I can't keep doing this.
Otherwise, someone's gonna come and take my house again.
Well, That's going to happen at some point to the United States of America.
Someone will come and take the house or the house itself will begin to start crumbling.
And so the point here is that for most Americans, I don't know if there are people watching this election and they think it's some sort of a parlor game where it's It's like, oh, well, those guys say this, and you know, yeah, it'd be nice to have to pay a little bit less for broccoli.
But what you're dealing with are people who are interfering with the fundamental mechanisms that make our society function, make our society efficient.
Communist societies break down all over the world for a reason.
Here's Xi Van Fleet, the Chinese Immigrant.
I grew up in Mao's planned economy where the government controlled prices, rationed supplies, and she goes on, this is just a beautiful post where she talks about how the whole society begins to break down.
Now what happens in communist societies is black markets creep up where sort of people secretly trade with each other at quote market prices.
Why?
Because You can set a price, but ultimately it's supply and demand that affects how many of those commodities exist and whether people can get them or not.
If you decide, for example, that something very valuable... Let's say the government says that diamonds from now on can only be sold for $10.
Will diamonds become less valuable?
No.
Will more diamonds automatically be produced so that you can sell them for $10?
No.
You have exactly the same number of diamonds.
They're just as rare.
People want them just as much.
People are willing to pay a lot more than $10, but they can only officially sell them for $10.
So what do they do?
They secretly sell them for $10,000.
And there are people who go, yeah, I'll buy them, but we can't do this officially.
I'll have to meet you in a street corner, or we'll have to do this under the table.
This is how black market economies develop in controlled societies.
And this, you can see, is the direction in which the Democrats want to take us.
I think it's a very frightening and dangerous direction.
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 only $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.
Deals everywhere get their six-piece kitchen or bath towel sets for just $25.
The brand new mattress topper as low as $69.98.
The famous MyPillow bed sheets for as low as $25 and so much more.
Here's the number to call 800-876-0227.
The number again 800-876-0227 or 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 for just 1998.
That's the lowest price ever, so don't delay.
Order today.
Go to MyPillow.com.
Don't forget to use the promo code.
It's D-I-N-E-S-H Dinesh.
Guys, with the big election coming up and a new movie coming out, if you'd like to support my work, here's how you can do it.
Subscribe to 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, 8 p.m.
Eastern.
No topic is off-limits.
I've also uploaded some cool films to Locals.
It's Dinesh's movie page.
2000 Meals is up there.
The film that came out last year, Police State, and of course the new film coming out in September.
If you're an annual subscriber, you can stream and watch this content for free.
The movie content, I mean.
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 delighted to welcome to the podcast our friend Chris Weidner.
He's recognized as one of the top personal development influencers in the world.
He's been named one of the top ten sales speakers in the world by Success Magazine.
He's also been recognized by Inc.
Magazine.
He's written 24 books.
He is the CEO of the Red Referral Network, the website, by the way, redreferralnetwork.com.
And Chris also has an upcoming book called The Coming American Revival, which he just sent to me.
I'm looking forward to reading.
Chris, welcome.
Thank you for joining me.
As always, we are at the very beginning of the Democratic National Convention, and I thought I'd start by asking you for some thoughts as this spectacle unfolds in Chicago.
Well, thanks for having me on, Dinesh.
I appreciate it.
You know, I've been wondering, are they going to go full-blown, radical, LGBTQ, Palestine, or are they going to hide all of that and try to look normal for the rest of us?
So that's going to be, I think, one of the most interesting things this week is to see, or how they conflict.
Because you've got people really passionate about sort of the whack-a-doodle left, and then you've got all these sort of, you know, the old blue, what do they call them, blue dog Democrats who are kind of going, what in the world happened to our party?
So it'll be really interesting, I think.
I'm looking forward to seeing it.
I mean, just from the early indications, and I want to mention two, I saw a post by Planned Parenthood that said that they are going to take a large mobile unit to offer free vasectomies and free abortions on site.
So in other words, I mean, you can kill your kid right there and for free.
So this is apparently one of the essential services they feel like they're providing to Democrats who show up at the convention.
The other thing I saw today was that the Democratic National Committee issued a sort of a pious, they called it a Land Ownership Acknowledgement.
And it was essentially a public declaration that all the land on which the convention was being held really belongs to the Indians.
It was originally taken from the Indians, so they said, you know, and I think what's funny about this is they never say, okay, well, we're going to give the land back.
Their point is, we're going to do a sort of an acknowledgment, a public apology, if you will, but then we're going to keep right on going as if, you know, we fought you, we won, and that's that.
So I think right there you see the radical element But you also see the effort to sort of hide the radicalism.
Which way do you think they're going to go as this unfolds?
Are they going to be able to keep the radicals well behaved or are people going to see essentially a Moulin Rouge democratic convention?
Well, first of all, let's just say nothing reeks of desperation more than getting an abortion in the back of a truck on a Chicago street, right?
But they view this as normal.
Like, hey, nothing makes more sense.
Food trucks?
No way.
How about an abortion truck?
Let's do that.
Let's get it down here and do that.
You know, it's interesting when you talk about the Native American thing.
My wife and I watched Horizon, the new movie that the gentleman, now I'm forgetting his name, but Kevin Costner, that he did.
And at one And it just reminded me that Native Americans were not necessarily peaceful people.
They were warring with each other as well.
It wasn't like bad guy, evil white people came in and just destroyed these peacemakers who were living off the land.
And so, I think that's just a matter of virtue signaling, and I think they're going to continue to do it.
They're going to gaslight America.
They're going to say one thing, do another.
But you probably saw that yesterday they already had somebody rush the stage and steal the microphone.
I'm guessing we're going to see quite a bit of that this week.
And I was thinking also about what you said about the abortion element here, because in some ways the Democrats, I think, numb themselves with their own rhetoric.
Because they, first of all, they rarely, they'll sometimes use the word abortion, but normally they like to say healthcare services, and so we're merely providing essential healthcare.
So think about it, if that's the way you see it, And you believe your own BS, you believe your own rhetoric, then you go, well, yeah, well, what's wrong with providing, quote, essential health care services at the DNC, even though what you really mean is you're setting up a little abortion factory right outside the the DNC itself?
And no doubt, by the way, with the approval of the DNC, right?
I mean, you can't just come up and start doing this stuff without the DNC signing off on on it. So this is something that the DNC wants to be happening over there.
Well, I wonder if the baby considers it health care services.
Probably not, I'm guessing.
You know, the interesting thing to me is, and I think Democrats are amazing with language.
You've written a bunch of books.
You are a language expert.
I've written a bunch of books.
I'm a language expert.
And one of the things I look at the Democrats all the time, and they're just so good at skewing perspectives by using language, right?
So, my body, my choice.
Well, it kind of makes sense, right?
That we should have autonomy, bodily autonomy, and all these kinds of things.
But if you step back for a moment, you realize that baby isn't her body.
That baby is another body, and it happens to be inside of her body, but it's not her body.
And so she doesn't have a choice what to do with another human being's body.
But they're so good at that healthcare services, my body, my choice, peaceful protest.
You're going to see a lot of language designed to obfuscate what their real positions are this week.
I mean, it seems like one of Tim Walz's slogans that he's using everywhere, and he must think it's a real winner, is mind your own business, right?
And again, that sounds kind of appealing, you know, and he means it to apply in the abortion context, but guess what?
He doesn't mean it to apply in any other context because Democrats don't, aren't letting you mind, you know, if it was a matter of us making our own decisions, they wouldn't be into forcible vaccination, right?
They wouldn't be into vaccine mandates.
They wouldn't be into trying to tell you what you can eat and what kind of stove you can use and you shouldn't be driving a, you know, a gas, you need an electric vehicle.
So, they are not above prescribing and in fact dictating how you should live, except when it comes to...
Quote, controlling your own body.
Very hypocritical.
The one thing that I saw that was really interesting, there are lots of interesting videos, you know, of Minneapolis burning down and all these things.
Have you seen this video where there's like a tranche of fully regaled police guys, it's at night, they're walking down the street, there's like eight or ten of them, and they're literally shooting people with paintball guns to get them back in their...
How ridiculous is this?
But that's not really minding your own business when you're walking the streets and paintballing your citizens to get them off of their porches and back into their house.
They say one thing, they do another.
I'm just hoping that at some point, that small little wavering group of people that haven't decided on Kamala, haven't decided on Trump, that they can see what's really coming down the pike for them.
I pray about it all the time.
It's shocking.
that people can't see that.
Yeah, I mean, I've seen that video, Chris, and it to me, it's I've seen similar videos in other countries, like I've seen, you know, them people being herded into sort of these little camps in Australia, some horrible stuff that went on in Canada.
But that video that is from Minnesota, Tim Walz's home state.
So though he unleashes the police, there was apparently a COVID curfew.
And so, you're supposed to stay in your home, and if you come out even on your own porch, bam, bam, bam!
I mean, this is- it's almost insane to watch that thing, and you realize that these guys are, not only are they not above doing it, they feel that they are righteous in firing shots at you in that way.
They feel like...
The science is telling us to do this.
We're on the side of, we've got science in one arm and morality in the other arm, and so they have a certain indignation that accompanies them.
Let's close out, Chris, by talking a little bit.
You're an entrepreneur.
You love the idea, as I do, of the parallel economy.
You've been working on some projects to get this really going, and this is something that goes That is above and beyond the election.
It's changing the way that we function in our economy.
Just talk a little bit about what is on your mind these days in terms of helping to advance a parallel economy.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, you and Debbie have been so gracious in helping us get the word out about the Red Referral Network.
It's groups of people all across the country who meet weekly, conservatives, in order to do business with one another.
And the idea is we've got to stop giving our money to people who hate us.
They take our money and we voluntarily hand it to them, then they donate a portion of it to a politician who gets elected, and that politician stands in front of a microphone and says, Dinesh D'Souza and Chris Widener are racist, homophobic, transphobic insurrectionists.
And we paid for it.
Why do we continue to pay for a message that's seeking to destroy us?
And so the whole idea with Red Referral Network is to help people get together across the country, meet together, do business with one another.
It's easy to register.
It's free to register a free registration, just go to redreferralnetwork.com, give us some of the basic information, and then you'll get all that kind of information about groups that are near you. We're especially looking for leaders. We need people who will say, because you know, people they shake their fist at the TV or the radio and they say, well this is horrible, what can I do? Well you know what you can do?
You can help us start a group in your area, putting people together so we can support one another.
And again, very appreciative of what you guys have done to help us get the word out because it's imperative that we start getting together.
It was said at one point by Benjamin Franklin, gentlemen, we must hang together.
Because if we don't, we will most certainly hang separately.
And I hate to say it, but we're kind of getting to that point in America where they're doing horrible things to us and seeking to destroy us.
But what you're saying is this kind of thing is not a luxury.
It's really a necessity.
Guys, we're talking about the Red Referral Network.
The website is redreferralnetwork.com.
I've been speaking to Chris Widener.
And also, Chris, excited about the forthcoming book, The Coming American Revival.
Look forward to reading it.
Chris Widener, thank you very much for joining me.
Thanks for having me on, Dinesh.
Take care.
I'm about to jump into Chapter 8 of Booker T. Washington's Up from Slavery, but before I do, I want to mention one of his closing anecdotes at the end of Chapter 7.
I met some very interesting characters during my travels, writes Booker T. Washington.
He says, I remember that I asked one colored man who was about 60 years old to tell me something about his history.
He said he had been born in Virginia and sold into Alabama in 1845.
I asked him how many were sold at the time, and he said, oh, well, there were five of us.
Myself, my brother, and three mules.
This is a bit of a joke.
And yet it's not really a joke that goes over today because there's a little bit of a kind of discomfort or awkwardness about talking about, well, there were five of us, you know, me and my brother and three mules.
Booker T. Washington is doing something very interesting here, which is he is describing a rather dark chapter, a rather depressing situation involving enslavement, buying and selling of human beings, and yet he's doing it in a kind of gentle, almost comical tone.
Now notice that It's only a black guy and it's only a former slave who can even do this kind of thing.
Like Abraham Lincoln can't do this.
If Lincoln were to do it, it would come across as extremely rude and even almost insensitive.
But Booker T. Washington gets away with it, but he gets away with it because he has a kind of a higher purpose in telling these kind of anecdotes.
The first thing he, his first purpose is to say, you know what?
We've gotten past all that.
So even though this is something that's rather dark, there's a kind of optimism, because Booker T. Washington is now writing, slavery has been, is in the rear view mirror by 35 years, and not only that, it really shows no sign of returning, at least not in its old original form.
Now, let's move on to chapter 8 and Booker T begins with a sort of a little uncharacteristic of him, a depressed note.
The work to be done in order to lift these people up seemed almost beyond accomplishing.
I was only one person and he says whatever effort I could do would be just go a really short distance toward bringing about results.
I wondered if I could accomplish anything and if it were worthwhile for me to try.
So, hey, should I even do this?
I mean, what can I do?
What can one guy do?
And he said one thing he does know.
He says, something must be done more than merely to imitate New England education as it then existed.
Let's remember that the model for education in America was set in New England.
And in fact, the people who set it were the Puritans.
The schools in New York, and then up in Connecticut, in Rhode Island, look at, for example, not only the elite schools, but just the profusion of educational institutions up in that part of the country, and it was that way even in 1900.
And so, there was a kind of a New England model of education.
By the way, very much focused on liberal education, very much focused on education in letters.
In those days, it was important to know Latin and Greek.
In fact, you couldn't get into places like Colombia without being able to do translations from the Greek, very often translations of the Bible, from Greek into English, and in some cases, from Greek into Latin.
Now, Booker T says that he had a little ceremony for the opening of the Tuskegee Institute and there was a very small number of people there.
The facility was very simple, a shanty and an adjoining church.
And he says there were some white people who came and there were some black people who came.
These are well-wishers of this new education project.
But then he says something very interesting.
There were not a few white people in the vicinity of Tuskegee who looked with disfavor on the project.
Now, what he means to say is there were actually a lot of white people who didn't like this idea.
Booker T. Washington doesn't say there were many who didn't like it.
He goes, there were not a few.
He downplays it slightly.
He says, they questioned its value to the colored people and had a fear it might result in bringing about trouble between the races.
So he gives two possible reasons why these white people would oppose this very simple project of trying to educate blacks who are often starting out from nothing, to give them a basic education.
Why would you be against that?
Well, apparently there are some whites who go, well, it's not good for the blacks, and we'll explore why they would say that.
I think that the really important reason is the second one.
There was a fear it might result in bringing about trouble between the races.
Now, why is that?
Why would educating blacks cause trouble?
Well, the answer is pretty simple, and that is that in days of slavery, the slave masters were very careful not To educate the slaves.
For the simple reason that once you're educated, first of all, you know that you're a slave.
You know your conditions.
You begin to put your situation in context.
You maybe begin to start thinking, are there ways for me to get out of this?
Are there ways for me to organize some sort of resistance to educate other slaves about their conditions?
So, from the slave master's point of view, all of this is completely undesirable.
So, no education at all.
So, some of that is being imported, by the way, within the Democratic Party, the same party that promoted slavery and is now promoting segregation.
But Booker T. Washington is not ready to dismiss the first objection either, and he says, The white people who questioned the wisdom of starting this new school had in their minds pictures of what was called an educated Negro with a high hat, imitation gold eyeglasses, a showy walking stick, kid gloves, fancy boots and whatnot.
In a word, a man who was determined to live by his wits.
It was difficult for these people to see how education could produce any other kind of colored man.
Now, this is quite important, because there were free blacks in the North who would go and get liberal education, and as a result of that, they would learn, hey, I need to dress well.
Hey, I need to go around in a monocle.
I need a walking stick.
I need to drop some Latin and Greek phrases to impress people.
And so, what Booker T is really saying is that some of these people, not all, but some of them, are not learning any usable skills.
They're not competent once they get this education of really doing anything, even simple things.
They can't really be a doorman in a hotel because that's not what they've learned.
They can't be a driver.
They can't be, certainly can't be a plumber or an electrician or a mason because they don't have those skills either.
And so they become, in a sense, artful kind of con men.
And Booker T is very eager to show that this is not what he's trying to produce.
He's not trying to take former slaves or the children of slaves and turn them into sort of shysters.
He's actually going to train them so that they can not only be useful to others, but dependent more on themselves and not on the government.
This is what he is all about.
And so he's sort of laying the groundwork.
So he takes seriously this objection, even though he knows that there are probably some people who just don't like blacks, who just have sort of inherited this idea that an educated black man is like an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms.
And so, but Booker T acts as if, you know what, you've got a sincere objection.
We need to meet this objection by showing that the kind of education that we have in mind has nothing to do with any of that.
So, here we go.
He then says, there are two men upon whom I have depended constantly for advice and guidance.
And this is interesting because I've never heard of either of the two men.
One is a white man and an ex-slaveholder, Mr. George W. Campbell.
The other is a black man and an ex-slave, Mr. Lewis Adams.
This is interesting on a couple accounts.
First of all, notice that Booker T lists the two men side by side, and they are both addressed with a mister.
So there's an equal, equality of respect to the two men, but they're not at the same status.
One is a former slaveholder, and the other is a former slave.
He goes on to say Mr. Campbell, the white guy, is a merchant and banker.
Mr. Adams is a mechanic.
He had never been to school a day in his life, But as a slave, he taught himself to read and write.
And somehow Booker T thinks that these two men at sort of opposite stations of life, and it's not even clear they know each other.
He says, supported me in every effort.
And he goes on to say something that I think is quite essential when you try to support someone in something.
There are a lot of people who are like, oh, we wish you well, we encourage you, we're right behind you.
He goes, those guys never gave him a suggestion without offering themselves to help achieve that suggestion.
So, yes, I want you to build a new addition to your school.
I will help you to pay for it to the degree that I can.
And then you go raise the rest of the money.
Or, I want you to do this, make your classroom better in this way, but I'm a mechanic.
I will help you to install this or that.
So what Booker T is getting at is these are people who really want to help Not just by exhortation, but by action.
And then he says, I do not know two men whose advice and judgment I would feel more like following in everything which concerns the life and development of the school at Tuskegee than those of these two men.
So here you see the kind of generosity of spirit of Booker T. Washington.
He's a large-hearted guy.
He is, at this time, one of the most famous black men in America.
Probably the most famous, by far.
And yet, he's always stopping to give credit.
The task is very difficult.
I can't do it by myself.
I really admire the Northern teachers who came to the South to teach at Hampton.
I relied on this white guy and the black guy.
And again, notice that the amazing thing here is not that Booker T. Washington is going to rely on the black guy.
That's actually kind of expected.
What's surprising is that he is willing to not only work with, but look up to a former slaveholder.
And so, in other words, Booker T is willing to let bygones be bygones.
And his point is, here's a guy, yeah, he used to own slaves, but guess what?
He wants to help me start this school, and it's a school by and large for black kids.
And so, you know what?
Not only am I going to take his help, but if the help is genuine, and if the guy is really putting himself out, I will admire the effort that this guy is putting in.
I will rely on him.
And him and the other guy, and I will take their advice over anyone else's about how to start this new institution that came to be called the Tuskegee Institute.
▲
Export Selection