The Daily Signal - #485: He Grew Up Under Socialism. Now He's Urging Young People to Reject It.

Episode Date: June 17, 2019

Daniel Di Martino grew up in Venezuela, and left the country as socialism was taking its grip. Now, he’s on a mission to convince young people that socialism is destructive. Our colleague and senior news producer Kelsey Bolar recently sat down with Daniel to hear his story, and today we share that exclusive interview. Plus: Great Britain is banning “harmful” gender stereotypes in advertising. That’s a move that would shock many Americans—but then again, we enjoy the First Amendment. Rachel and Daniel discuss.We also cover the following stories:-Iran says it will break its uranium stockpile limit in the next 10 days.-The Supreme Court sends a wedding cake case back to Oregon.-Nearly 2 million Hong Kong protesters take to the streets in opposition to the extradition bill.The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet, iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Tuesday, June 18th. I'm Rachel Del Judas. And I'm Daniel Davis. Daniel Di Martino grew up in Venezuela and left as socialism was ruining the country. Now he's on a mission to convince young people that socialism is destructive. Our colleague and senior news producer Kelsey Bolar recently sat down with Daniel to hear his story. Today we'll share that exclusive interview. Plus, Great Britain is banning, quote unquote, harmful gender stereotypes in advertising.

Well, that's a move that would shock many Americans, but then again, we enjoy the First Amendment. Rachel and I will discuss. By the way, if you're enjoying this podcast, please consider leaving a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and encourage others to subscribe. Now on to our top news. Iran says it is exceeding their uranium stockpile limit set by its nuclear deal in the next 10 days. Here's what Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had to say about the situation Sunday on Face the Nation. You say a full range of options. Does that include a military response?

Of course. Of course, the president will consider everything we need to do to make sure, right? By the way, the president said, we don't want Iran to get a nuclear weapon. The previous administration put them on a pathway that virtually guaranteed that they could get there. So we withdrew from the ridiculous JCPOA and are moving ourselves towards a set of policies, which will convince Iran to behave simply like a normal nation. And so you've seen them attacking international waterways, trying to frankly drive up the price of crude oil around the world. so that the world will cry uncle. How do you do that?

If they're so cash-strapped and they need these customers, why would they attack them? Because Iran can't sell, it's crude oil. We've stopped them from doing that. We've put sanctions in place that have taken them from roughly 2.7 barrels per day, million barrels per day,

with American sanctions. Iran has been facing increasing scrutiny from the U.S. after evidence surfaced that it attacked two civilian oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman. The Supreme Court on Monday vacated a state ruling against Melissa and Aaron Klin.

the owners of the bakery shop, Sweet Cakes by Melissa. The clients had been fined $135,000 by the state of Oregon for declining to create a custom cake for a same-sex wedding, since doing so would have violated their religious beliefs. The state accused them of discrimination, and the large fine forced them to close their bakery. The clients hold that cake baking is more than just a service, but a work of art, and therefore speech protected by the First Amendment. While the court vacated, Oregon's ruling, it chose not to get involved any further, instead sending the case back to state court to be reconsidered in light of last year's masterpiece cake shop ruling. In that case, Christian Baker Jack Phillips was handed a win because the state Civil Rights Commission had shown

hostility toward his religious beliefs. But it's hardly certain that the Oregon court will reach a different conclusion than it already has. The Supreme Court also ruled on Monday 5 to 4 against the Virginia House of Delegates giving Virginia Democrats a win in a gerrymandering case. The court found that the Republican-led House of Delegates didn't have standing to challenge a lower court ruling, which found that Republicans had gerrymandered a district to skew in favor of Republican candidates. The decision from the Supreme Court will allow Democrats to continue to use electoral maps that favor their party.

Well, protesters in Hong Kong aren't letting up. In fact, they're increasing. On Sunday, over 2 million protesters packed the streets of Hong Kong to protest the city government, where legislators have been considering an extradition bill backed by Beijing. The bill would allow Hong Kong to extradite anyone in custody to mainland China for trial upon Beijing's request. But the protesters so far have succeeded in getting that bill postponed. On Sunday, they gathered outside the office of Chief Executive Kerry Lamb, demanding that she resign and cancel the legislation.

The bill represents a severe rollback of liberty and autonomy in Hong Kong, which under international treaty is supposed to retain a separate legal system from China until the year 2047. Hong Kong currently enjoys a unique legal status as a former British colony. Argentina and Uruguay are attempting to recover from a huge power outage on Sunday that disabled a power grid that serves both Argentina and Uruguay. The power outage occur while voters in Argentina were heading to the polls to vote. in local elections, causing delays for voting in several provinces. Alejandro Martinez, a spokeswoman for the local electric company, said that the outage was the first of its kind. This is the first time something like this has happened across the entire country, she said,

according to the Associated Press. Argentina's president, Maricio McCree, has promised an investigation into the outage that is planned to be released in the next 10 to 15 days. Well, the president got a unique birthday present over the weekend, an Israeli settlement named in his honor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu unveiled the tiny new settlement in the Golan Heights. It's called Trump Heights. Israel announced the name after President Trump officially recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory back in March.

Israel captured the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967. Here's U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman. As some of you may not know, many of you may not know, two days ago, President, President Trump celebrated his birthday. And I can't think of a more appropriate and a more beautiful birthday present to present to him than Ramat Trump, than Trump Heights.

It is... Well, up next, Kelsey Bollar's exclusive interview with Daniel D. Martino, the young man who grew up under Venezuelan Socialism. Kelsey spoke with him at the Heritage Foundation's annual Resource Bank event. Tired of high taxes? Fewer health care choices and bigger government,

become a part of the Heritage Foundation. We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at heritage.org. This is Kelsey Bowler coming to you from the Heritage Foundation's Resource Bank. I am sitting down today with Daniel DiMartino.

Daniel is from Venezuela, grew up there. and just came to the United States recently three years ago to attend college. So we have a lot to get to. Daniel, welcome to the show. Thank you very much. Where to begin? You grew up in Venezuela. I imagine you still have a lot of family there. Tell us what your childhood was like. Yeah. So I was born in 1999.

So for you've years to know, in 1999 was the year that Hugo Chavez became president of Venezuela. So I lived all my life during the same regime, basically. And, you know, things start, as they started implementing these policies, such as nationalization of private businesses, price controls, controlling what we could buy from other countries, the country started progressively becoming less free. So there were times where I didn't have milk at home. There were times where we didn't have toilet paper.

There were times where, you know, you couldn't find flour, things like that. And increasingly, it became worse and worse, and we got to the situation where we're at. What type of jobs did your family hold? My parents owned a gas station, so I don't know if you're familiar, but gas in Venezuela is actually the cheapest in the world. It's basically free. And it is because the government nationalized all of this,

but my parents were able to keep the gas station, like all gas station owners, but we had to be provided by the government gasoline. So at the end, because we couldn't make a profit by selling it because of the price cap, the government had to print money to give us subsidies and basically keep us in business. So it was a terrible, unprofitable business. Like at this point it doesn't even give, we couldn't even sell it. It's just there standing without gasoline because now there's not even gasoline production.

That's what my parents did. My mom then also started like a chocolate business. So she purchased chocolate, she made it into like bonbons and made them for parties. It was very hard as well because since it was officially controlled the price of chocolate, you couldn't find chocolate anywhere because the price cap by the government was too low. So we had to buy it illegally. The government controlled the price of chocolate. Yes. Chocolate, everything you can imagine.

Meat, you know, chicken, milk, toilet paper, housing, rent, absolutely everything. At what age did you start to realize your country was on the wrong track? So I think I was 12 and I was in my school. I was I think in sixth grade and my library had a Hayek, a book from Hayek, the road to serve them and they also had Friedman's Free to Choose book, both in Spanish. And I took them home from the library, I asked them, borrowed, and that's when I started reading and I'm like, wow, this is exactly what's going on in my country, that the government is destroying our economy.

This is, you know, definitely what we need to change. This is so simple. Now I understand it all. And that's what led me to become, you know, conservative and the return. And how are you one of the lucky ones who got to attend college in the United States? Well, I knew that I wanted to get out of Venezuela, right? And since I wanted to get out of Venezuela, and I love the United States because of its culture of freedom, it's not just about the economic and political freedom, it's also

about having a movement such as this, you know? There's so many people in this country, like you, like, you know, your viewers and everybody else here in this conference, that love to spread the message about liberty and wants to protect their country. So I wanted to come to America, and what I did was that I prepared very hard to take the SAT to, you know, in my school, do well, extract record activities. I applied to universities here. And, well, I got a scholarship from my university, the one that I'm currently attending,

a UPY, Indiana University in Indianapolis. And, well, I basically paid no tuition. I got even more scholarships later to help me pay for my cost of living. I work on campus as well, and that's how I managed to get here. And what is your perspective coming from Venezuela? seeing the real effects of socialism and then going on college campus and seeing the number of students who are now saying in polls that they view socialism favorably and it's something they'd want to bring here.

Yeah. It was a shock initially because, you know, I come from a country where, you know, I had to live because these policies were applied and, you know, you don't want those things to happen when they're. you arrive somewhere else. I know people who escaped from Cuba and went to Venezuela after escaping from the Castro regime and they had the bad luck that the same thing happened again. And now they had to escape to another country and we definitely don't want that for America. I think that most people who support these kinds of words like just vague words like socialism, they don't really know what it means. They just want free things, you know? I mean, who doesn't

want to live for free? The problem is that those things aren't free. And we want also everybody to have good quality of life, and the question is how to achieve that, right? And I think that if us, you know, people who are in favor of liberty, is continue spreading the message that if we take away government's burden of people's backs, if we allow people to actually prosper on their own and perhaps even have some kind of help, you know, charity, we have a lot of even current government programs that can be improved, I think that we can definitely get an overwhelming majority of Americans to agree with us.

What would you say to someone who says, no, I don't want the type of socialism that you see in Venezuela. That's not real socialism. I want more what you see in Denmark or one of the Nordic countries. Yeah. Well, most of these Nordic countries, and I think most people don't know it, are us or even more economically free than the United States.

And many of them don't even have minimum wages. Like, that's something that I'm sure the left currently would not agree with. So if we wanted to become more like the Nordic countries, then we would need to accept the trade-off, right? We see that in Europe, unemployment is much harder than the United States. People earn much less. There is less inequality of income, but there is also less prosperity. So we either accept a society that can prosper and that can be improved. There's many things that can be done in the U.S. to improve, you know, criminal justice reform that is currently being done.

You can, you know, improve the tax system to make it simpler. You can improve regulations so that it's not as burdensome for people. But if we want to have the system of the Nordic countries, people will need to understand that this is not about taxing the rich. This is about like 40% income taxes for the poor and 20% sales taxes. That is unseen in the United States. I don't think people are willing to pay what it would take to achieve that. That is not even a better outcome.

So that kind of socialism is not real nationalization. So it wouldn't be a disaster for the country, but it would lead us to stagnation. It wouldn't be the prosperity that we see today in America with low unemployment, people, you know, more jobs available than unemployed. And in the worst case scenario, if you apply policies like the Green New Deal, like Medicare for All that would bankrupt this country, you wouldn't need to print money to pay for them. Like it's impossible to pay for $100 trillion in 10 years.

in 10 years with taxes. You have to print money, and that would be like Venezuela. What is the monetary situation in Venezuela? How much cash do you have to carry to go get milk? Yeah, so actually, believe it or not, there's a shortage of cash, because the government is only printing the money online.

So now most of the money is actually just like in bank accounts online, and you can't actually take it out from the bank in cash. So if you don't have access to the banking system, you don't even have access to cash. Wow. So people are actually starting to use US dollars to purchase in the streets. It's crazy the situation.

You never think that you could have a shortage of money. Having so much money actually online printed, it's a little complex. But it all comes from the fact that when the government spends more than it collects in revenue, there's a deficit just like you in the US. The US can cover that with debt. But at some point, international borrowers

will not be willing to lend you money. And that's what happened in Venezuela. So because nobody's willing to lend the money for a long time ago, then they had to print it. And well, that's what leads us into hyperinflation and dismissal. I'm curious to hear more about the personal effects of socialism, particularly in the last couple of years, where things have really heated up to the point that

Maduro's regime is using tankers to run over protesters, protesters, his own citizens in the streets. So are people you know actually out there protesting? What are the risks involved with that? And what is the day-to-day life for your family? They are. They are. Thankfully, my parents are not there, but I still have uncles, cousins, a lot of, you

know, friends in Venezuela. But yes, they are going to protest, and they obviously want Maduro out. It's like 90% over 90% of the population agrees. We don't want the social assistance. In fact, there are polls in Venezuela that say that over 80% of the population thinks that socialism is the worst economic system ever devised in history. And, you know, you only say that once you go through it. And we don't want, you know, we're humans. We learn from each other, and we don't have to go through that in America to learn that.

So, yes, people are protesting. The risks are terrible. I have friends who have been kidnapped by the regime and they have been tortured. There's videos online that people can look themselves up. And it's a very sad situation. And it's something that it's also, while it looks complex for people, because they see, you know, if all these people are against the regime, why doesn't the dictatorship fall?

And I guess that your viewers, you know, they, of course, wonder that. And the reason is that even if you have all the civilian population united, when you have a military that is armed against them, that is loyal to a dictator because they either get the drug money from cocaine trafficking that comes to the United States, by the way, or they have the Cuban spies that control them and therefore they can't plan a coup against Maduro, then there's no way for us to fight back

because we're also unarmed, we don't have a Second Amendment. So... Right, a lot of people don't know the history of that. How long ago was it that they actually ban citizens from owning guns? Around the mid-2010s, around that time, I don't remember the specific year, but it was recent that they banned completely gone ownership.

We never had a full Second Amendment either. that was never in our constitution, that was never part of our culture, but we did have the possibility of people to purchase weapons legally through licenses. And that was something that was completely taken out of the table several years ago. And it's part of why now only criminals and the military own weapons. And I'm talking about, like, high, you know, caliber Russian weapons that they bring on purpose to kill civilians. So it's complex, but at the same time, it's complex the solution,

not so much the problem. The problem is simple. socialism and government power. Well, you clearly have a very bright future ahead of you. I'm curious, what do you hope to do here? Do you plan to stay in the United States? Do you want to return to Venezuela, hopefully, what will be a better situation than it is now? Yeah.

So I love being in the United States, so I love to stay. If Venezuela were to obtain freedom, which is my goal. Of course, I love to go there as well. But as of now, my plan is to be in the U.S. I'm fighting, especially advocating for freedom in Venezuela. I'm currently with two organizations and with young voices, which is this nonprofit that helps young people like myself to spread the word of liberty in the media.

So that's how I've been able to be in Fox News, CNN, to write articles for different news media outlets. And at the same time, I'm a spokesman for Vente Venezuela, which is a political party in Venezuela, the main conservative party there, libertarian party. We focus mainly on economic issues rather than social because that's, you know,

most of our problems in Venezuela. And, you know, we're really pushing to obtain help from all our countries, because we know that we can't do it alone since we're unarmed. So our goal is to obtain freedom for a country whichever way possible, because otherwise, you know,

we're talking about a huge humanitarian crisis, and we don't want another genocide, our genocide to happen, not even in our hemisphere. Daniel, you have such an important perspective, particularly for this time period right now. For anyone listening, where can they go to follow your work? Yeah, so you can follow me on Twitter. That is at Daniel DiMartino.

Just my name and my last name, at Daniel D.Martino. You can follow me on Facebook, request me as a friend. Look at me up in my website, DanielD.Martino.com. You can show my media appearances. You can contact me by email all over there. And yeah, I'm always happy to talk to anybody about anything they want about Venezuela, about socialism, about economic policy in general.

I'm always willing to have a conversation or take an opportunity. Well, thank you for joining us. We wish you and your home country the best. You are all in our prayers. Thank you. Are you looking for quick conservative policy solutions to current issues?

Sign up for Heritage's weekly newsletter, The Agenda. In the agenda, you will learn what issues Heritage Scholars on Capitol Hill are working on, what position conservatives are taking, and links to our in-depth research. The agenda also provides information on important events happening here at Heritage that you can watch online, as well as media interviews from our experts. Sign up for the agenda on heritage.org today. Well, if you think political correctness is out of control here, look across the pond, where in the UK, the government has just banned what it calls harmful gender stereotyping in advertising.

The regulations went into effect on Friday. MSN reports that ads containing certain stereotypes, for instance a woman being bad at driving or a man being lazy while his wife cleans, will be banned. The rationale? Well, according to MSN, Ella Smilly of the UK's Advertising Standards Authority, yes, that's a real agency, said, quote, making assumptions about how people should look and behave might negatively restrict how they see

themselves and how others see them and limit choices they make in life, end quote. While other scenarios likely to be banned are stereotypes of children's aspirations, for example, a boy wanting to be an engineer when he grows up and a girl wanting to be a dancer. Guy Parker, who's chief executive for the agency, said, quote, Our evidence shows how harmful gender stereotypes in ads can contribute to, to inequality in society, with costs for all of us. Put simply, we found that some portrayals and ads can, over time, play a part in limiting people's potential. It's in the interest of women and men, our economy and society, that advertisers steer clear of these outdated

portrayals, end quote. Rachel, your thoughts on the new advertising regulation in the UK. I think it's kind of laughable. As you mentioned in talking about what these actually do, some of the stereotypes that are probably going to be banned are some things that children, boys and girls and just people in general as they're growing up they tend to do such as a boy wanting to be an engineer a girl wanting to be a dancer. There's nothing wrong with that.

And I think, I mean, all people have to do is just look at advertising and see what happens when a company puts out an ad. If the American public or if any public of any country, if they don't like it, then guess what, people are not going to buy the product. And I think, you know, obviously companies should have the right to advertise as they see fit.

And I think something to be said for this is, you know, not trying to portray harmful, you know, stereotypes qualities like laziness, ambivalence, whatever. I think, you know, that might be a good thing. And we don't want to, you know, portray violence or encourage that or other harmful qualities. But doing away with portraying professions that boys and girls are naturally drawn to is honestly, I mean,

it's inherently dishonest when we look at it. And we should be, I think, supporting and part of, you know, advertising, it's their, you know, prerogative to advertise as they want to see fit. But the American public or any country should be encouraging professions, just like we want to encourage education and people, you know, learning outside of the box. And I think this is, it's going to take away from not only their, you know, careers down the road if they're, you know, constantly being messaged to like, oh, you shouldn't be put in a box. I think a lot of these kids, they don't feel put in a box at all.

They're just pursuing a dream and a natural goal that they feel drawn to. And I think it's dishonest for these companies to say, oh, we're not going to talk about these things because it hinders these people. And in fact, it probably inspires them. Yeah, I think the big issue here, at least from the American perspective, is got to be the free speech angle because this is a government agency saying that advertising companies, private companies can't say, like it's a free speech question. They can't say or portray men and women as being a certain way.

that seems like a real incursion into the cultural space where, you know, free companies and individuals can say whatever they want. And it makes you wonder, why does it, why stop with advertising? Why not make it any teacher or any parent or any individual, you know, can't perpetuate the same stereotypes? If they really are harmful, then why shouldn't they be banned from everyone? It's pretty Orwellian. We think about it. My thought is, look at all of the companies here in the United States who are already pushing social liberal visions through their advertising. Like we see more and more of.

We just saw in the last couple weeks a lot of companies come out against the abortion bans in Georgia. They don't have any problem being outspoken and towing a certain liberal ideology without government regulations forcing them to. You know? So, I mean, it just seems, it just seems that when you let free speech do its thing, the market will correct itself over time. And people can decide whether they want to support these companies based on their ideology. Exactly. And it's a different situation, but even in terms of education here in the United States, we're seeing public schools basically messaging to children and telling them, you know, what sexuality is and, you know, how you know if you're gay, if you're a child. And this is a completely different. situation, but they're still telling these kids, oh, well, this is how it's supposed to be. This is how things work naturally when, in fact, it's completely the antithesis of natural. And I think this example from MSN is just another instance where, like, these companies and, you know, people that are doing this in the name of, you know, quote, good or acceptance

or wanting to give people more opportunities. They're, in fact, making it very narrow in putting kids, especially in a box. I think it's unfair to them. Yeah, and I just think, you know, who is the government to declare? Who are they to decide? To declare, like, what is harm, like what stereotypes are harmful? I mean, stereotypes, this kind of touches the issue of whether speech itself is violence. They're stereotyping with stereotypes.

Speech as violence. And that's, again, you're seeing that in college campuses, increasingly here in the U.S., where people think speech itself is a form of violence. Hate speech should be banned and expand that category of hate speech to include all kinds of normal traditional views and you know before too long you've you've banned lots of speech that a lot of people would like to say exactly but anyway

if you have any thoughts on this on the UK's new speech regulations you can let us know what you think send an email to letters at daily signal.com we're going to leave it there for today thanks for listening to the Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation please be sure to subscribe on iTunes Google Play or SoundCloud, and please leave us a review or a rating on iTunes to give us any feedback.

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