The Dan Bongino Show - Why Socialism Sucks. An Interview with Dinesh D’Souza (Ep 1268)

Episode Date: June 6, 2020

In this show I interview author Dinesh D’Souza about the growing threat of socialism in the United States. We discuss his new book “The United States of Socialism” available here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250163781/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UDS2EbFJ40SGF Copyright Bongino Inc All Rights Reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

get ready to hear the truth about america on a show that's not immune to the facts with your host dan bongino another great guest lined up for you today with our interview show we have the great danesh de souza you've probably seen him on fox news or on some of those viral videos where he debates leftists on college campuses and just makes them look absolutely silly. He's the author of the new book, United States of Socialism. We're going to talk about current events. We hit a lot of stuff, folks. If you ever wanted a quick primer on why socialism sucks, this is the show for you. I always record these intros afterwards. I promise you will not be disappointed on this interview. You'll find out what the real purpose of Antifa is, why Sweden isn't socialist. We address all that stuff. So today's show brought to you by our

friends at Paint Your Life. What if I told you you could have an original painting by a world-class artist done by hand from a photo? Sounds like a pretty great idea, doesn't it? Check it out. Go to Paint Your Life. Get a professional hand-painted portrait created from any photo at a truly affordable price. This makes a great gift. It's great for your house too. Choose from a team of world-class artists and work with them until every detail is precision perfect. User-friendly platform lets you order a custom-made hand-painted portrait in less than five minutes. It's a quick and easy process.

Get a hand-painted portrait in about three weeks. Send any picture, yourself, your kids, your family, a special place, a cherished pet. Doesn't matter, whatever you want. Combined photos. Makes a perfect birthday, anniversary, or Father's Day gift. Give it to dad. It's meaningful. It's personal.

It'll be cherished forever. We certainly cherish ours. At paintyourlife.com, there's no risk. If you don't love the final painting, your money's refunded, guaranteed. And right now is a limited time offer. Get 20% off your painting. That's right, 20% off and free shipping. To get this special offer, text the word DAN to 64000. That's DAN, D-A-N to 64000. Text DAN to 64000. Paint your life. Celebrate the moments that matter most. All right, without further ado, celebrate the moments that matter most. All right. Without further ado, our friend Dinesh D'Souza.

I'm excited to welcome today to the show Dinesh D'Souza. I teased this on my Friday show. We'd be interviewing Dinesh and got tremendous feedback. Dinesh, welcome to the show. So great to have you. I've watched you on Fox through the years, heard your lectures. They're fantastic. So thanks for coming on board for the show today. Thank you. It's a pleasure and I'm looking forward to it. Dinesh is the author of an amazing new book, ladies and gentlemen, The United States of Socialism. I can't recommend this book enough. I am an avid reader of Thomas Sowell. I recommend his books often. This is one of those books where you'll think differently when you're done. Very topical for the time, too. So speaking of that, Dinesh, let's just get right to it. very topical for the time, too. So speaking of that, Dinesh, let's just get right to it.

Your book is a real primer on the failures of socialism, the disturbing appeal of socialism. And I wanted to ask you about how this relates to this controversy with Antifa, this anti First Amendment terror group. I mean, hasn't every socialist, communist and proto communist group throughout human history want to take away freedom. Haven't they used these shock troops on the front line to frighten people? Yes, the communists need street gangs. Now, for Lenin, his antifa, if you will, were professional revolutionaries, usually ex-military men. Mussolini, who was also a socialist, had what he called the black shirts. And the black shirts actually were, they looked like Antifa. I mean, black outfits, they typically carried brickbats and cement blocks. So they, same tactics, street fighting. And I think in some ways, Antifa is almost 100 years later, a revival of the black shirts.

Hitler had the brown shirts. So these different socialist movements have had a paramilitary on the street. Now, I would never have thought that in America we would have a paramilitary that would operate with at least tacit sanction from powerful people in Hollywood, in the media, and in the Democratic Party. But that's what makes Antifa a little terrifying is these aren't just goons on the street. These are goons with lawyers, goons with money, goons with strategic planners, and goons that have political supporters who apparently feel the need to have a street gang do some of their dirty work for them. And Dinesh, you know, wouldn't you agree the left is really,

they're experts at the marketing of their brand. You know, a guy you and I both know shall remain nameless for the purpose of this. He would probably remain confidential. But he said to me, you know, the genius of the left is their marketing ability. And the reason is a lot of leftists are Silicon Valley types who have to sell products that require some type of creative marketing. When you think about a lot of people who vote conservative, they're commodities folks. You have the energy industry and things like that. There's not really a need for creative marketing. I mean, Exxon, mobile, what's the difference? You know, you just gasoline, gasoline. And I see that here with Antifa. I mean, what a sick, but in a way,

brilliant anti-fascist. These are the fascists. They're beating the snot out of people in the street. This is like Orwellian Newspeak here. Absolutely. And it goes back to really World War II. Remember that Hitler was allied with the Soviet Union. But the moment that Hitler broke with the Soviets, in a way double-crossed Stalin, suddenly the communists in the West began to take on this Antifa kind of label. And the basic idea was that they were really defending the communists, but they framed it as fighting the fascists. And after World War II, they just began to label all their opponents, particularly their opponents who were free market and so on, as being fascists. And so that dirty game continues to the present. And but, of course, Antifa is the closest resemblance to fascism that we have in America today, both in its ideology, socialist, and also

in its tactics, essentially gangster. You know, I think one of the more important parts of your book, and we're talking to Dinesh D'Souza, author of the new book, a spectacular read, folks. Again, can't recommend it highly enough. Please go pick it up. United States of Socialism. You will, your eyes will be open. Open. I mean, like Clockwork Orange, Stanley Kubrick, open after you're done with this. Although it won't be as painful. Dinesh, one of the most important parts of your book, you address identity socialists. You know, it reminded me a bit going through that portion of something I heard from David Horowitz a long time ago. He talks about how what you just said, how any of their opponents automatically become boxed into the labels they choose.

So he talks about the anti-anti-communists. In other words, we're the anti-communists, So he talks about the anti-anti-communists. In other words, we're the anti-communists and all of these people are against us are the anti-anti-communists. So you get this kind of cornucopia of strange bedfellows. You get Islamists who don't like people who are gay, and then you get liberal activists in the gay community supporting Islamists sometimes. And you see this over and over. And does that relate, or am I reading it wrong, to a lot of what you talk about with identity socialism, how they put us all in these identity politics boxes and targeted us against one another and then pretending they're coming to the rescue? Am I wrong? Well, if I can tell the story a little bit, the original socialism was voluntary communes. You know, people, a hundred people would come together, they'd pool all their possessions. And this was kind of the early, almost free love socialism. This is before Marx. Marx invented the idea of socialism based upon a radical division of society into two groups, basically the rich and the poor, the workers on the one side and the capitalists on the other. And Marx expected that the workers would revolt and overthrow the capitalists. But see, that never happened.

And in America, there was an economist, Murner Sombart, who asked why has socialism never come to America? He asked the question about 100 years ago. And he gave a remarkable answer. He said socialism hasn't come to America because the working man, far from wanting to overthrow the system, wants to succeed in the system. He wants to become his boss. As he put it, all socialist utopias come to grief on roast beef and apple pie. And so what happened is that the left figured out that there's never going to be a worker revolution. In fact, today, if you want to find a working class guy, there's a good chance you'll find him in a Trump rally. So they said, look, we need to create new divisions, not just rich and the poor.

How about the black and the white? There's a lot of racial history in this country. What about if we stoke those fears? What about the division between male and female, between straight and gay, between legal and illegal? So in a way, the left is even more diabolical than Marx because he only wanted to divide society one way. These guys want to carve

up society many different ways with a view to maximizing the social antagonism and then cobbling together a coalition of victim groups. That's how they get to 51 percent. That's how they get a majority. Forgive me for asking a rhetorical question we both know the answer to, but it's worth bringing up on the show for some who may be new to this kind of dirty politics. You don't believe any of this is really principled, do you? I mean, I guess I'll phrase it, giving it for the listeners out there. If the left tomorrow figured out that immigrants from South and Central America largely supported the Republican Party, the left would turn on immigration tomorrow morning. In other words, this isn't about

immigrants. I mean, one of the reasons I bring it up, Dinesh, is I remember a specific Republican senator who I like who years ago put in what effectively was a poison pill, said, all right, we'll consider some of this immigration bill, but they won't be able to come here and have a better life. The illegal immigrants will give them amnesty. All of a sudden, they changed their mind. Like, no, no, no, we don't want them to have a better life. They can't vote for us. So this is in principle now, is it? Absolutely. You are absolutely right. And you have now touched the key point that separates the deluded traditional Republican from the kind of Trump guy who sort of sees through the garbage. And here's what I mean. When I was a kind of traditional Republican in my younger days, I thought American politics was an honest debate. You have two sides, and each side articulates a set of ideals. And we put those before the American people that offers a kind of juror's judgment as to which has the better argument.

Obviously, with my experiences with the Obama administration being locked up in a confinement center, seeing the dirty politics they play, see what they mean by how they enforce plea bargaining, I've realized that was a very naive view. Yes, you're absolutely right. They don't care about the immigrants. Let's say they did.

Then you could say, Elizabeth Warren could say, listen, we don't need to bring illegals over here from Mexico. Why don't we just pay for health care for Mexicans in Mexico? Why don't we just take the wealth of America and equally share it with the rest of the world? Notice that no Democrat even proposes this. Why? Because that's not what it's about. That has nothing to do with it.

Same with the George Floyd business. Conservatives love to point to the double standard? Oh, wow. These guys on the left don't seem to think that black lives really matter, do they? They go out there. They seem perfectly willing to destroy black owned businesses. Of course they do. The reason is it's not about black lives matter for them. For them, it's about using the racial resentments of this particular episode to now go after their real target. And their real target is the American flag, the American dream, the spirit of entrepreneurship, the small businesses that are the core of the Republican Party. Those are their deadly enemies. And ultimately, those are all on the churches. It was not an accident that they burned the church in Washington, D.C. They could have burned Planned Parenthood.

But no, they burned the church because Washington, D.C. They could have burned Planned Parenthood. But no, they burned the church because they chose that target. That church to them represents ultimately the moral order. And they're against that as much as they are against property rights. Which don't you find it odd? Again, we're talking to Dinesh D'Souza, author of a terrific new book, United States of Socialism. All of this stuff is in there and more, folks. Terrific book. Again, don't you find it odd that the Chinese communists have the exact same enemies, Dinesh? I mean, I was reading an article today. I don't know if it was foreign policy or elsewhere, how the Chinese communists are absolutely terrified of Christianity. You know, Pope John Paul, what happened in Poland, of course, they have fresh memories of this. It never goes away for them. They're just terrified of an allegiance, anything

other than the state. It absolutely scares them. They all seem to have these common enemies. These tyrants have common enemies is what I'm getting at. And think about the Islamic radicals, kind of the same thing. It may seem paradoxical at first glance that the left in this country, with its permissive approaches to policy in this country, would be allied with radical Muslims who believe and do the exact opposite. But of course, the reason they do that is they feel they've identified the common enemy and the enemy is Trump. The enemy is Christians. The enemy is conservatives.

The enemy is you and me. Yeah, that's it. That is exactly what that David Horowitz line was always about. That we're the anti-communist people like you and I. We believe in individual liberty and freedom for all. Big R, God-given rights. the absolute opposite of the communist ethos. The anti-anti-communists are just, they're against us. That's it. It's not about principle. I mean, I had that kind of a road to Damascus moment you did as well, where you realized that this is not a fair fight.

I remember running for office, not to make it about me, it's about your book, but I just remember debating with the Washington Post editorial board. It was about an endorsement, which they were never going to give me anyway. But I remember saying to them, it's interesting you're talking about tax dollars because when Reagan cut the top marginal tax rate, tax revenue to the government doubled because the economy grew. It's a simple math equation. And Dinesh, they didn't believe it.

They just insisted it wasn't true. I had to send them the treasury tables and then they ignored me and wouldn't't believe it. They just insisted it wasn't true. I had to send them the treasury tables and then they ignored me and wouldn't answer the email. So I agree with you. It's not about principle, but let's get back to your book because it's important. And I want to just talk about a couple of things at the end about some of the things I picked up in your debate. So Kevin Williamson, a while back, wrote a book he used to write at National Review. I think he may be back there now, but he had a book called The Idiot's Guide to Socialism. And I have to tell you, no knock on Kevin, your book is a lot better, but his book was great. I loved it at the time.

And one of the things he addresses in there is how there are no examples of socialism success, none, a goose egg, zero. Matter of fact, not only are there no examples of success, it's all a catastrophe. So he talks about the new socialism, how the left figured out in the United States that they don't have to control the means of production outright. They don't have the intellectual capability to do that, to run the businesses. So if they can tax and regulate it to death, it's de facto control anyway. I was wondering what your thoughts would be on that in light of your book, The United States of Socialism. Well, that actually was also the fascist model. If you look at the fascists, for example, Hitler's National Socialists, they didn't actually take over German industry. They just told German

industry, from now on, you're going to do what we say. So they issued, you could call it mandates and regulations. Yeah, socialism has never worked. It's been tried in about 25 countries. Now, of course, the left will say today, yes, it works in Scandinavia. That's our model. And I have a chapter in the book where I show that's not their model. First of all, let's look at the Scandinavian model for just a minute. in wealth distribution. They have low corporate tax rates, about 20%, same as here. They have no minimum wage. You can hire or fire people for any reason. They have no wealth tax. They have no inheritance tax. The kind of financial transaction fees that Bernie and Elizabeth Warren want to impose on Wall Street, there is no such thing in any Scandinavian country. Finland tried universal basic income. They got rid of it. So the Scandinavians don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. And even more important, they don't demonize the rich.

You don't have the kind of attacks on millionaires and billionaires. Why? Because the Scandinavians aren't ripping off people. They aren't robbing Peter to pay Paul. Yes, they have a big welfare state, but their principle is everybody has to pay for it. And so if you earn 60 or 70 grand in Sweden, you pay a 45 to 50% tax rate. It's not a matter of targeting the rich. It's a matter of soaking, you might say, the whole society. So none of the leftists in this country want that model, really. And that's why they never go to Scandinavia. You'll notice that all these guys, these Hollywood guys, they've all gone down to Venezuela. The pictures of them embracing Hugo Chavez, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, Jesse Jackson, Jimmy Carter. But you never see any of them in even Bernie Sanders, who is Scandinavian in origin. He's never been to Scandinavia, but he went to Moscow for his honeymoon.

Dinesh, that's a brilliant point. And it's one of the points on cable news when I've done my commentary that I constantly hammer home. That is not socialism. If you want to have a proper argument, a back and forth debate, which you and I just acknowledge is impossible with the left, but we can try once in a while, I guess. You're debating the merits of heavy taxation in a welfare state. Socialism is the government control of the means of production. That is not what's happening in Scandinavia.

Your points are absolutely correct. When you look at economic freedom scales, a lot of these Scandinavian countries are on top of us. When you look at things like one of the statistics I always found interesting about this argument is that this is fascinating, that Swedes in Sweden have a lower net wealth than Swedes in the United States. So in other words, you have this homogenous, hardworking culture that when you transplant them out of this monster welfare state they have, and you put them in the United States

where the tax rates are a little lower, they grow their wealth because they work hard. I mean, none of this is hard to figure out. And it drives me wild. And I think this is where your book can serve as a real guide for people who are confused about this. The United States is socialism, folks real guide for people who are confused about this. The United States is socialism, folks. Check it out. Is that is not socialism. We can't have a debate about socialism if you're talking about a welfare state. There are two separate things. One thing that the socialist left, though, is really good at is they are good at framing a narrative.

You alluded to this earlier, but it's worth emphasizing. They always have a narrative, a storyline. And let's take their George Floyd storyline. Their George Floyd storyline is that what happened to George Floyd is not anomalous. It's not episodic. It's systematic. It happens every day. This is how the cops really are. America is a chronically racist society and has been since the first white man set foot here in 1619. That's their narrative. Now, the important thing is we say things like, you know, facts count and feelings don't. But we need to have a counter narrative. We need to be able to say our side of the story, kind of the way you do when you're summing up a legal case. Now, I just read an article in a conservative magazine saying, in effect,

something like socialism will never work because it's against human nature. Now, this is complete nonsense because socialism does appeal to a certain low and sick aspect of human nature. So when the Democrats are saying to people today things like, hey, you've been sitting on your couch for two months. Wouldn't it be nice to sit on your couch forever? Never get up from your couch. You don't want to shave, do you, and dress up and go to work and punch a time clock and listen to your boss rave on and on. How about if we give you two grand a month to kind of keep hanging out at home with your family and doing the things you like to do?

It's tempting. It's tempting to everybody to say, man, you know, there's a little bit of me that would rather do it that way. The other thing about socialism is it's very tempting for the people who get power, because socialists in this country make a lot of money. You look at guys like the Clintons, you look at guys like Al Gore, you look at the Bidens. These people have gone from zero to 100 million plus on a government salary. Now, if they were in a free market system, they're completely useless. You think Obama would know how to invent an iPhone or start Amazon Prime? He wouldn't even know where

to begin. But they are talented in sowing the seeds of resentment. And they see that in a socialist society, they would have a great deal of power. So this is what motivates them. It's thoroughly consistent with human nature, but kind of that low, disgusting side of human nature that they specialize in. We're going to take a quick break. We're here with Dinesh D'Souza, author of the great new book, United States of Socialism. We'll be right back. Today's show also brought to you by our friends at ExpressVPN. You've heard me talk about how important it is to have a VPN during my show. And now that's a lot of you are working from home. It's even more critical now to choose a VPN you can trust. I do my research on my sponsors. You all know that I only recommend brands I use myself and I believe in. I can say with confidence that ExpressVPN is

the best VPN on the market. We use it here. It's sitting right there. We have a router right there. I'm not kidding. Right to my left. Here's why. ExpressVPN doesn't log your data. Lots of really cheap or free VPNs make money by selling your data to ad why. ExpressVPN doesn't log your data. Lots of really cheap or free VPNs make money by selling your data to ad companies. ExpressVPN developed a technology called Trusted Server. It makes it impossible for their servers to log any of your info. It's fast too. A lot of VPNs in the past, they slow your connection. They make your device sluggish. We don't need any of those issues. Now, but ExpressVPN, we've been using it here for a long time. My internet speeds are blazing fast. Even when I connect to the servers thousands of miles away, I can stream HD quality videos with zero lag. Something else that really sets ExpressVPN apart from other VPNs is how easy it is to use. Unlike other VPNs, you don't have to input or program anything. Just fire up the app. It's that simple and click one button to connect. Listen, I'm not a tech guy.

I use it lickety split, no problem. It's so easy even your grandparents could use it. It's not just me saying this. Wired, CNET, The Verge, and many other tech journals rate ExpressVPN the number one VPN in the world. Protect yourself with the VPN that I use and trust. Use my link at expressvpn.com slash Bongino today and get an extra three months free on a one-year package don't wait protect your online data from prying eyes today go to expressvpn.com slash bongino that's expressvpn.com slash bongino to learn more today now back to our interview with

Dinesh D'Souza all right we're back with Dinesh D'Souza author of the book United States of Socialism which we're here talking about today um Dinesh D'Souza, author of the book United States of Socialism, which we're here talking about today. Dinesh, before the break, we were talking about the appeal to our amygdala of socialism, our lower level brain. And one of the things you mentioned in your book, United States of Socialism, is how the appeal there also is kind of like a class war for these rich people. They have all you know, you got to go get their stuff. They got too much. They don't need that. I mean, who needs 10 cars? You're entitled to that. And I mean, listen, Dinesh, that is, it's a simple argument to understand. You have to admit in a marketing perspective, you're thinking to yourself, yeah, that makes sense. I mean,

I live a middle-class life. I work hard. Why does this guy have seven cars? I should have one of those as well. But what they don't understand and what I think our obligation is as people who have some kind of a public following here is to explain what Hayek always explained, that once you institute government-enforced equality, what you're actually doing is forcing people to be treated unequally. And they give an example. People always think in stories and narratives of,

what about a guy who his whole life, Dinesh, struggled, right? His whole life. He grew up poor, finally hits it big. And a year later, you take everything to him, from him. You redistribute it to a kid who was rich his whole life, got into drugs, and flushed everything down the toilet bowl. I mean, if you were going to have a government policy of equality, that would happen often. And I've always found that puzzling and why people don't think that through. You know, one of the subtitles of my book is

why it's evil. Who's behind it? Why it's evil? I want to say a word about why it's evil. It ties right into what you just said. To me, ultimately, socialism is about figuring out a way of how to annihilate people's conscience. See, if someone were to come to you, Dan, and say, listen, why don't you walk over to your neighbor's house, open his refrigerator, eat his food, look around and see if you find any curios and other things that you like, pick them up, and then bring them over to your house. You'd go, man, that's horrible. That would make me into a thief. Even if I did it, I would feel horrible about it. Now, then the socialist comes to you and goes, Dan, listen, don't worry about it.

Remember, that guy has been stealing from you. And if he hasn't been stealing from you, his ancestors have been stealing from your ancestors. That's how his house is bigger than your house so you really deserve his stuff now the good news is you don't have to go to his house and loot his refrigerator we'll do it for you we will take his stuff by force we will of course keep some of it for ourselves but we will give the rest of it to you so ultimately what the socialist is doing is creating good conscience about being a looter and recruiting the government as the instrument of the looting. See, I think one reason that de Blasio, for example, is not going to condemn the looters is that when he looks at them, he sees a younger version of himself. And he also sees that they are doing in a disorganized way what he would

like to do in an organized way. In fact, he would like to do on a much bigger scale. The looter just goes into Louis Vuitton and grabs three purses. Ultimately, what de Blasio would like to do is establish an organized system of wealth confiscation far beyond anything that Antifa could contemplate. Yeah, it's almost like they envision the accumulation of wealth through hard work as ill-gotten gains. It's almost as if they're against hard work and a meritocracy, you know, themselves. Now, Dinesh, one of the things I always found offensive, having grown up in a largely Democrat family that are now all Republicans. But one of the things I always found offensive was the idea of the hypocrisy of leftism, socialism, even the green movement in and of itself. You know, one of the things you address in your book in socialism and again,

this identity politics, they don't really live that way. You know, when you think about things like school choice, when we're conservatives, you may not like our ideology, but at least it's principled. You know, I believe in school choice because I believe parents should choose their kids' education, mine and yours. I believe in low tax rates because I believe you can spend your money better than the government, not just for me, but for you too. The left doesn't do any of that. I got into an argument with a staffer for a prominent Democratic congressman when I was running for office at the Montgomery County Fair, and he flipped out, Dinesh, when I asked

him a simple question. If you think higher taxes and forfeiting your money to the government are a net good that generates positive externalities for everyone, then why don't you just give the government extra money? Dinesh, he flipped out. Nobody does that for charity, right? I know you give to charity. I'm not forced to do it. I do it because I think it's going to create a positive net good. Why doesn't anybody do that on the left?

No one's stopping them. Well, so let's ask what is the motive? When someone is a hypocrite, they have a motive. Like the Pharisees had a motive. The Pharisees ultimately wanted to be the ruling class of society by putting on a public display of piety that would cause people to subordinate themselves to them. So what's the motive? Here's Obama, for example. He goes and buys a house right on the ocean in Martha's Vineyard. Now, this is the same Obama. We've been giving long lectures about how the oceans are rising. And in a year or two, they will swamp all the coastal cities. So presumably,

his house will be underwater. Why would he put out $12 million for a house that's going to be underwater like in a year or two? He wouldn't. So the truth of it is he doesn't believe it. But it's not just him. The reason coastal properties aren't plummeting in value is that buyers don't believe it. Sellers don't believe it. Real estate agents don't believe it. The truth is no one believes it. Everybody knows that this is completely ridiculous. So then the question becomes, why do they say it? What are they trying to do? Well, the answer is this. Since socialism has never come about by a Marxian revolution, since the workers have never become so discontented to do it, the left has always tried to do it by generating an artificial panic. So in the 70s, it was the world is running out of food. In the 80s, nuclear winter. In the 90s, the ozone layer is dissipating. For the last 20 years, it's climate change. The oceans are rising. The penguins are coughing. You know, the glaciers are melting. Nobody can see any of it. The climate is the same.

But coronavirus, only the latest installment of how fear is now their mechanism to create a crowd stampede that people wouldn't normally go into if they were using their normal, calm, rational brains. Well, that's a perfect example to speak about topicality. I mean, we were told, were we not, for the last two months, that congregating in crowds any greater than five to ten people was public suicide. We were all going to die. And granted, I'm not downplaying this. A series of 100,000 people died.

But now all of a sudden, when there's a protest they can leverage for political advantage, that all went out the window. Nobody cared at all. But, but Dinesh, I'm sorry, one more thing. But when, when Michigan came around and when there was a protest in Michigan that involved some patriotic Americans who showed up and God forbid, they exercise their second amendment rights, leftists in the media were all over that. Oh my God, no face mask. This is horrible. I mean, the hypocrisy, like you said, the motive here is what we got to get to because the hypocrisy is just so transparent. It's transparent. It's staggering. In a weird way, though, I think coronavirus gave us a nasty foretaste of socialism. You know, when I grew up in India, my symbol of socialism, what I remember was the ration card.

It basically set limits on what you could buy, so much rice, so much cooking oil, so much sugar. But it's hard to explain that to Americans. My wife's from Venezuela. She'll talk about empty shelves in the Venezuelan grocery store. But you can't, again, Americans are like, what are you talking about? But under coronavirus, when you suddenly saw, man, you can't get toilet paper, you can only buy two cartons of milk, we got a small preview on a temporary basis of what socialism would look like permanently. You've been very generous with your time. We're talking to Dinesh D'Souza, author of The United States of Socialism. Just a couple more questions

for you, Dinesh. One unrelated to the book is something I heard you say, which I found fascinating. But the socialism and the implementation of hard socialism, the actual government confiscation of the means of production, does that always resort to violence? Because, you know, you'd have to believe in the end. I mean, I think the record's pretty clear. Again, it may be semi-rhetorical, but people are only going to work for someone else

without benefiting themselves or their family for so long before they say, you know, what's the old adage? We pretended to work and they pretended to pay us before they just stop. And the only way then to force people to work on behalf of the state would be to bring out the street thugs and beat the snot out of them. So is this always in the end resort to violence? This was Orwell's point that all socialism ends in tyranny. I love the there's a closing scene in 1984,

where the big brother, the state is interrogating this guy, Winston, and they're trying to get him to admit that two plus two is five. I'm thinking of this because of all the kind of forced conformity the left is trying to impose now in this country, including the take a knee, all this stuff. But Winston is like, I won't do it. Two plus two is four. And so they begin to torture him. They put him in a room, sensory deprivation, no food. Finally, he breaks down and he goes, OK, guys, I admit it. Two plus two is five. Can I go now? And they're like, no, Winston, you can't go because you're just saying that two plus two is five because, you know, that's what we want to hear. We want you to believe it. So what you get out here is you see that socialism ultimately is not just about economic confiscation.

It's about making us into worms. It's making us genuflect before what the left believes. They want us to repeat it, even if it's the opposite of what they said yesterday. As long as it's their doctrine today, we're supposed to subscribe to it. We're supposed to take a knee. And I think there's something in the American spirit, happily, that won't do that, that says, no, we're not going to submit. And that's why I think in the end, we'll defeat the United States of socialism. Yeah, I'm not taking a knee before any man. I can tell you that right away. The Almighty, that's a different story, but I'm not standing

and kneeling before anyone. You could forget that. That was done before the golden calf. That didn't end well. I heard you one time, a little bit off topic, but I've always wanted to ask you this, and now I have the opportunity to interview. You're just masterful on these college campuses at just dismantling, frankly, absurd liberal arguments that have stood the test of time. And one of them I watched for a while. You may remember it, you may not. There's this persistent myth about the Southern strategy and how the Democrats want to detach from their past. Now, granted, I'm not doing what Democrats do. You're not responsible, Democrats, for what some guy in the South did 100 years ago, 50 years ago. I'm not suggesting that.

But there is a past and a history to the Democrat Party that they want to rewrite in Orwellian fashion, two plus two equals five. And it drives me wild. And he had said something to you like, listen, that whole thing about the Democrats and the KKK in the South, which is true, it doesn't really matter because they all became Republicans later. And you had answered something to the effect of, and if you could just comment on that, don't you find it interesting that as the South has become more Republican, it's become less institutionally and collectively racist and moved towards a more harmonious society? And I thought, this guy's brilliant. I love this guy. I use that on TV all the time.

If you would just expound on that a bit, because I'm really tired of that myth. This notion that there was a party switch is based on the idea that the party switched over civil rights, that by and large, the racist Democrats became Republicans. That's the key to the whole thing. Now, there's an element of truth in it, which is why the liberal narrative gets believed by so many people. Of course, blacks used to be Republicans in Lincoln's day, and they did become Democrats. But the key point is that that happened during the New Deal. During the 1930s, the crumbs that FDR offered to help Blacks out during the Depression, it was an economic switch on the part of Blacks. Now, on the part of the South, you also had a switch. The South

used to be traditionally democratic. It became Republican. When did that happen? Not in the 60s. It happened in the 80s under Reagan. It continued in the 90s under Gingrich and the contract with America. So what did Reagan stand for? He stood for patriotism, anti-communism, free markets, anti-communism, free markets, Christianity, family values, pro-life. These are the reasons why the non-racist South moved into the Republican camp. But the left desperately needs this big switch narrative because it takes all the historical crimes that their party did, slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, the Ku Klux Klan, racial terrorism, lynching. It takes all of that and sort of then pins it on the Republican elephant when the real responsibility belongs on the Democratic donkey. Yeah, your answer, that was pretty much precisely what you had said,

was just it was I listened to it's about seven minutes or so. You can probably find it, folks, out there on YouTube. I saw it on Facebook. But I think you've done a real service to people when you go out there and speak the truth, because there are a lot of people out there who still believe this. The media is very powerful, Dinesh. And all they have to do is the switch and all these narratives, you know, and people buy it and they suck it up. And it's a real shame. Dinesh, I can't thank you enough for your time. Folks, please go out and grab this book. I'm asking you as a personal favor, thank you enough for your time. Folks, please go out and grab this book. I'm asking you as a personal favor, not because I think you really need to read this to open your eyes. It's a tremendous book. The United States of Socialism. A lot of the stuff we talked about is in there

today. It is a real eye-opener, the equivalent of some of the Thomas Sowell books I read in the past, where you're going to wake up in the morning a different person. Go check it out. Dinesh, thanks so much for your time. It was an honor to talk to you. I really appreciate it. My pleasure. I really enjoyed it. You just heard the Dan Bongino Show. Follow Dan on Twitter 24-7 at DBongino.