Lieutenant Colonel Alan W. West served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 21 years and is now a retired major general in the United States Army. He talks about his military career, growing up in a Democratic family in the old Fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, and how he became the first black man in his family to serve in the Marine Corps. He also talks about how his family values set him up for success in the military and the value of a no-quit system of values that he and his family instilled in him. You're going to love this Sunday Special with our special guest, Lt. Col. Alan West! Thanks to our sponsor, Teeter, for sponsoring this special Sunday Special featuring a very special guest who is not only awesome, but also has a great deal on a new inversion table you can invert at home or take to the gym to keep your back and neck pain at bay! Teeter Fit Spine Inversion Table is a great addition to anyone s daily routine to maintain a healthy spine and active lifestyle without the pain that comes with back pain. With this deal, you'll get $150 off when you go to teeter.co/TTEERTFITSPINE inversion tables and get a bonus accessory and a free pair of gravity boots! FREE SHIPPING when you try it out! You get free shipping, free return guarantee, and a 60-day money back guarantee, no risk to try it, and 60-back guarantee so you can get the best deal on it out there! And with the best inversion Table on the market! Thanks, Ben Ben That's T-E-T-R. Ben. That s T.E.R. That's TEERETERETEER . - Ben That s Ben that s T-ROTR! -Ben That's Teeter. -Teezer.co / Ben Thats T. E-R-R . -That s Teezer . T-TEEER . Ben that's TTEERR TEE-R -T-Teever. (TEEFER . (Ben That s Teeter_R.E-R Ben's TEEERER. ) (BEN T. W. (Ben) ( ) (TEERTER.COM)
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00:01:51.000Let's start by me asking about your military career a little bit.
00:01:55.000So for folks who don't know anything about you, you grew up in Georgia in a democratic family and then you served for 21 years in the military.
00:02:01.000So can you kind of give your background, your life story in a nutshell?
00:02:04.000Well, you know, I grew up in the same neighborhood that gave us Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
00:02:07.000It's called the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia.
00:02:10.000And my elementary school was right across the street from Ebenezer Baptist Church.
00:02:14.000And to grow up in a family where, first of all, unlike many young black kids today, I had a great mother and father in the home.
00:02:20.000My dad was a corporal in World War II.
00:02:23.000My mother worked with a Marine Corps headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.
00:02:26.000They would probably tell me my hair is too long right now, but God rest their souls.
00:02:30.000And I will never forget, at the age of 15, my dad challenged me to be the first officer in our family because my older brother was a Lance Corporal in the Marine Corps doing Vietnam.
00:02:39.000He was wounded there, but he got out okay.
00:02:42.000So, my trek started in high school, junior ROTC, went through ROTC at the University of Tennessee, got commissioned 31 July 1982, and I still try to live up to that commission and that oath to support and defend the Constitution.
00:02:56.000And the great thing is that, you know, my nephew now is a major in the Army, following in my footsteps as a paratrooper and artillery officer, continuing that service, sacrifice, and commitment that we've done in our family.
00:03:07.000Well, what do you think are the military set of values that differentiate so many folks in the military from sort of the mainstream American population, the vast majority of whom not only have never served, I mean, I never served, you know, and thank God for folks like you who did, but who don't even know people who have served.
00:03:20.000What do you think differentiates that value system?
00:03:23.000It's service above self and a no-quit attitude.
00:03:26.000You know, I always tell people, folks ask, who's your greatest military, you know, hero and everything.
00:03:31.000I'll talk about Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.
00:03:34.000And if you study the Battle of Gettysburg, and here was a guy who was just a simple professor of rhetoric at Bowdoin College in Maine.
00:03:41.000But because he was an educated man, he got a commission, he was put in charge of a regiment, the 20th Maine Regiment.
00:03:46.000And on that second day at Gettysburg, when the ammunition is running out, casualties are mounting, the 20th Alabamians still charging the hill, and they fix bayonets.
00:03:55.000The first bayonet charge in the Union Army.
00:03:57.000And they saved not just the day at Gettysburg, but they probably saved this Union, because if Lee and an army in northern Virginia had been successful at Gettysburg, they would have marched on.
00:04:06.000So here's Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, just a simple man, a professor of rhetoric, ends up being awarded the Medal of Honor, becomes a governor, two-time governor of the State of Maine.
00:04:16.000And I think that if we can get back to that, people that believe that there's something greater than just themselves or a selfie or iPhone, iPad or whatever, and understand that commitment to a core set of principles and values.
00:04:29.000Like I said, I took an oath to the Constitution.
00:04:32.000Every one of us need to be committed and convicted for something.
00:04:35.000And that's why you're such a great, brilliant young man, because you know what you believe in.
00:04:39.000You know those fundamental principles and values.
00:05:02.000And when you talk about principles, the black community has always been a conservative community.
00:05:07.000It has always been about faith, it's always been about family, individual responsibility, until Lyndon Johnson came along with the Great Society.
00:05:15.000It has always been about service to the country, as I talk about, four generations out of my family.
00:05:20.000It has always been about quality education, but we don't see those things continue to permeate now in the black community, and like I said, When Johnson came along in 1964-65 with his Gray Society programs, he eroded many of those fundamental principles and values.
00:05:34.000So when my parents, John Lewis was my congressional representative growing up in Atlanta, and it was so funny when I was sworn in up there, and I was a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and I told him, it was an honor to meet you because you were once my representative.
00:05:47.000He was a guy, he was campaigning against me.
00:05:52.000But if we can get people to think more about philosophy of governance and not about political parties, understand that right and true relationship between the individual and the institution of government, I think we correct things.
00:06:04.000And so how my parents brought me up, it was just natural for me to see myself as a very conservative person.
00:06:11.000But the Republican Party, when you talk about it, they need to understand.
00:06:15.000What their fundamental principles and values are.
00:06:17.000You talk to most Republicans, Ben, and they don't know why the Republican Party was established in 1854.
00:06:53.000It's a problem with, I remember talking to Reince Priebus once, and I told him how much I despised and detested the word outreach.
00:07:00.000Because what outreach means is that you show up in Black History Month, or Hispanic American Month, or Asian Pacific American Month, all of these balkanized months that we created, and you act like you're a part of the community, and then they don't hear or see you again until 60 days before an election, when you show up and you say, vote for me.
00:07:17.000What really needs to happen is policy inclusiveness.
00:07:19.000What really needs to happen is a connection and understand people Basically, who they are and what they believe.
00:07:24.000Everybody wants to be a part of an American dream.
00:07:27.000I don't believe that people wake up every day in life and say, I want to sit here in Section 8 housing and get a check from the government.
00:07:33.000But if that's the only message that they hear, if that's the only people that are going into those communities and talking to them about being victims and not victors, then the Republicans are always chasing their tail.
00:07:44.000So I think it's so important when you look at quality education, you look at the inner cities.
00:07:49.000And how that aspect of education is falling apart.
00:08:20.000What a great issue to talk about how we want to restore the sense of family and restore small business entrepreneurship.
00:08:28.000And you talk about urban economic empowerment zones and all of these things.
00:08:32.000Well, go in there and start showing people what you mean by that.
00:08:35.000Are Republicans at a systemic disadvantage to a certain extent with this?
00:08:38.000Because for Democrats, you can put Democratic-oriented social workers in a lot of these areas, or you can put a welfare office that cuts a lot of checks in areas.
00:08:45.000And this has nothing to do with black and white, actually, because there are downtrodden white communities where the same thing is happening.
00:08:50.000But for Republicans, where the basic message is that if we provide you the freedom to rise, then you should rise.
00:08:57.000I mean, it's your job to rise if we're providing you the freedom.
00:08:59.000What should Republican politicians be doing?
00:09:01.000What sort of policies would you prefer to see where there is that face-to-face contact?
00:09:05.000Because as you say, if you're only seeing a Republican once every election cycle, it's a lot less likely you're going to vote for them than the people who are presumably interacting with you on a daily basis.
00:09:31.000And so we need to challenge the status quo, and we need to have a wholehearted effort to go into these communities and show ourselves and show these policies.
00:09:39.000And I'm not just talking about, you know, at the federal government level.
00:09:44.000I'm talking about those local representatives that can go in there, and the party needs to support that.
00:09:50.000You know, it was so funny, I was talking to Lake Highlands Republicans Women's Club there in Dallas, Texas, and I was saying these exact same things.
00:09:58.000And they said, that's easy for you to say that because you're black.
00:10:01.000We can't go into a black neighborhood and say that.
00:10:02.000I said, but why do white liberal progressives Go into black and Hispanic neighborhoods and they say what they have to say.
00:10:10.000You're already saying that we can't, you know, have any relationship here.
00:10:15.000And I think that that's one of the horrible things that happened.
00:10:18.000If George Soros can write all these checks and create this organization like a Black Lives Matter, which really is oxymoronic to me, it's just the lives that the liberal progressive left believes that matters in the black community.
00:10:32.000On the conservative side, they're saying, we're going to get in here, and we're going to show, policy-wise, what we can do.
00:10:38.000And we're going to have these connections.
00:10:40.000We're going to have after-school programs for kids.
00:10:43.000And we're going to support the local law enforcement.
00:10:46.000And we're going to develop more police athletic league programs, support those type of things.
00:10:51.000You've got to show them something different.
00:10:52.000Now, how do Republicans overcome the generalized perception the media puts out there that they're a bunch of racists?
00:10:57.000And you see this because there are certain situations in which Republicans say things that are quite awful and that draws fire.
00:11:03.000So, for example, in the last couple of weeks we saw what Steve King said in Iowa and Senator Tim Scott, the only black senator, came out and said the Republican Party's been too easy on this sort of stuff in the past.
00:11:13.000Do you think the Republican Party has been too easy on sort of polarized or racially tinged or quasi-racist language in the past?
00:11:20.000I think the Republican Party has been reactionary to it and not been proactive.
00:11:24.000You know, we just recently had, last year, the people there in the Dallas City Council decided to take down the statue of Robert E. Lee.
00:11:33.000And I spoke there before the City Council saying, you know, statues don't keep you from going to school or getting a job or being successful.
00:11:42.000The left is very good at saying, you know, these statues or these things, these parts of history are bad.
00:11:47.000But yet, when was the last time you had anyone talk about the founder of Planned Parenthood?
00:11:52.000Margaret Sanger, a known white supremacist, a known racist, a person who spoke at Klan rallies.
00:11:57.000And when you look at the fact that, you know, close to 70% of Planned Parenthood clinics are located where?
00:12:04.000And so what we need to be saying is that, hey, sure, we don't want to deal with this white supremacy or anything, but let's be very honest.
00:12:14.000And let's start calling this as it is.
00:12:15.000And when we have these assertions, you know, the president being a racist or whatever, someone needs to be on these shows, CNN, MSNBC, whatever, and speaking out against it.
00:12:25.000I cannot tell you how many times I've been called Uncle Tom, sellout, white man's porch monkey, all of these things.
00:12:32.000For whatever reason, white liberals think that it's open game on Hispanic, black, female conservatives, but yet all of a sudden they have this, you know, this force field of protection that, you know, keeps them from any type of scrutiny.
00:12:46.000We've got to break down that force field.
00:12:48.000What do you make of the philosophy that's now rearing its head on campus and is moving the mainstream of intersectionality?
00:12:53.000You see mainstream Democratic candidates now talking about intersectionality, the assumption being that basically if you're a member of particular groups then you are inherently victimized by American life and that this means that we ought to take your opinion more seriously on particular issues of public policy.
00:13:32.000Because I'm thinking, out of all the things I just said, That was the only thing that you could bring about, because there's this effort on college campuses to say that if you're Jewish, you're supposed to think a certain way.
00:13:45.000If you're black, you're supposed to think a certain way.
00:13:59.000Because the left needs more people to be dependent upon them.
00:14:02.000And the only people that can have validity in the mindset of the left are people that have been victimized.
00:14:08.000Because if you are not, you know, even though I was brought up in inner city, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, those kind of guys, they can't, you know, speak for me.
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00:16:08.000Whenever I talk about these issues with folks on the left, what they say is you are giving short shrift to the real role of both historic and current racism in American life.
00:16:15.000You don't understand racism and that's why you're not quick enough to denounce racism.
00:16:19.000So to take the Steve King example, Steve King for years said stuff that was very borderline and could be interpreted a couple of different ways and I gave him the benefit of the doubt because I tried to give people the benefit of the doubt and then he said something in the last couple of weeks that is just inexcusable and there's no way for me to give him the benefit of the doubt anymore.
00:16:35.000According to the left, they would say, well, why did you give them the benefit of the doubt in the first place?
00:16:38.000If you truly understood how evanescent racism is, how present it is, then you wouldn't be giving people the benefit of the doubt.
00:16:44.000You'd be coming down on them when they say something that could even be construed as racist.
00:16:48.000How should we deal with racism in American life?
00:16:54.000Well, I think that we have seen this resurgence of the word and the term racism and racist here recently because the left has used it as a tool to get people to self-censor.
00:17:05.000As a matter of fact, we just recently had the new freshman Democrat representative from the state of Washington, Representative Javapal, talk about the whole thing about this border wall is because, you know, Donald Trump wants to keep America pure, that it's all about racism.
00:17:21.000Well, you know, say that to the young legal immigrant police officer, Ronil Singh.
00:18:03.000You know, there are people that are going to have inherent prejudices.
00:18:05.000But the great thing about America is that this America now will do everything it can to squash And not allow those type of thoughts or perspectives or philosophies to have any impact or influence in our society.
00:18:18.000And I think Steve King has really relegated himself to insignificance and irrelevance.
00:18:24.000And I would be very surprised if the people out in Iowa were to vote for him again.
00:18:28.000I mean, because it just gets to be too much too often.
00:18:31.000But I also think that we need to combat a racism that we have seen in what I call and some people call the soft bigotry of low expectations.
00:18:40.000You know, someone could look at a program like Affirmative Action and say, that's racist.
00:18:44.000To say to me that, well, you probably can't achieve it, so we're going to lower the standards so you can get out there and play.
00:18:51.000That was the great thing that my dad taught me about the military.
00:18:53.000He said, son, when you go into the military, it ain't about the color of your skin.
00:18:57.000It is all about what you can do out there on the battlefield.
00:19:03.000And Martin Luther King talked about that.
00:19:04.000It's about characters, not about color of the skin.
00:19:07.000But for whatever reason, America has reversed and we've gone back to talking more so about the color of the skin issues instead of the character people.
00:19:14.000So Steve King, you know, this is not so much about, you know, skin color.
00:19:18.000It's about his lack of character and lack of integrity that would have him saying something as foolish as he did.
00:19:22.000So I want to ask you a little bit about military policies.
00:19:24.000One of the things that's happened inside the Republican Party, even since you left the military, is a movement away from a more hawkish interventionist Republican Party and toward a sort of isolationist perspective.
00:19:36.000The prevailing opinion seems to be, not only in the mainstream media, but now inside the Republican Party, that the war in Iraq was a horrible mistake.
00:19:43.000What's your perspective on the war, having served there and having made policy about it in Congress?
00:19:47.000Well, I will tell you that having been there on the ground, I mean, there were things that you gave opportunities for, for the people in Iraq that they never would have ever had.
00:19:55.000You know, folks ask me, what was the greatest achievement that you had in your 22 years or so in the military?
00:20:01.000And I will tell you, when I was in Afghanistan and seeing little girls go to school, That was the most special thing that I could ever think of.
00:20:08.000Now, the problem with our military and the problem with the civilian leaders that we have over the military and political leaders, they don't understand nation building.
00:20:16.000We don't need to be in the business of nation building.
00:20:19.000There are enemies out there, and when you're dealing with Islamic terrorism, we need to be denying that enemy sanctuaries.
00:20:25.000We need to be focused more so on strike operations.
00:20:27.000When you look at what is going on in Syria right now, You work with, you know, a local allied force, like the Kurds, and you provide them that support and the resources to be able to go down there and do what is necessary, instead of being bogged down and worrying about, you know, the Syrian civil war or, you know, building roads or what have you there.
00:20:46.000And I think that that's what, you know, we have lost our sight in Afghanistan.
00:20:49.000In Afghanistan, if you're not going to do something about the terrorist sanctuaries in Pakistan, then you might as well leave.
00:20:55.000Because, you know, the two and a half years that I was spent in Afghanistan, we knew exactly what was happening.
00:21:00.000When the snows melted and the passes opened up, they came right out of Pakistan, back over into Afghanistan.
00:21:15.000We were allowing the enemy to stay there and come in and attack us.
00:21:18.000So, you know, as George Santayana attributed to him, said, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
00:21:24.000We need to understand and figure out what are we going to use our military for.
00:21:28.000Our military is not there for nation building.
00:21:30.000Our military there is as a credible deterrent force.
00:21:33.000And I think that too often people just believe, let's put the military out there and let's figure out as we go along.
00:21:39.000We want defined and set goals and objectives and strategies that enable us to achieve victory.
00:21:44.000But I tell you, when I see what's happening with Iran out there in the Persian Gulf and the harassment they're doing of our warships, that's got to end.
00:21:51.000What do you think of, you know, the declaration by President Trump, for example, that the war in Iraq was basically lost?
00:21:57.000I mean, he essentially called George W. Bush a war criminal in the middle of the campaign.
00:22:02.000He suggested that people who had been killed in action in Iraq had basically wasted their lives.
00:22:08.000What do you think of, you know, a Republican Party that's moved in this more very harshly isolationist direction, at least in rhetoric, if not in practice?
00:22:14.000Well, I think it's really interesting when people or private citizens, what they say, and then all of a sudden they sit there at the Resolute Desk and they get those briefings.
00:22:21.000They come to understand, you know, military affairs, national security, and foreign policy.
00:22:31.000But what the United States military and the United States should be doing is building those key relationships and partnerships.
00:22:37.000When you look at Eastern Europe, you know, we should be, you know, better relations with Poland, with the Baltic States, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania.
00:22:47.000When Vladimir Putin saw us kind of wash our hands with the Ukraine, that's when he went in and he took the Crimea.
00:22:53.000When he saw us decimating our military capability and capacity, he, Xi Jinping, North Korea, Hassan Rouhani and the Iranians, the Ayatollahs, they saw that as the window of opportunity.
00:23:03.000The thing is that you don't want to go out there and seek to fight every single person, but you need to have that credible deterrent that prevents people from seeking those aspirations that are antithetical to liberty and freedom all across the world.
00:23:15.000If I could have gone 22 years of my military career, Ben, and never had to look at my wife and my daughters in the eye and say, hey, I gotta go, and not know if I'm coming back, I would have been happy to do that.
00:23:27.000But it's a volunteer military, and I raised my right hand, and I understand the consequences that go to that.
00:23:32.000But all I want are for people up in Washington, D.C., those elected leaders and officials, to understand, if you're going to employ the military, give us the left and right limits to be able to go out and do what's necessary.
00:23:46.000We sat down with Benjamin Netanyahu back in August of 2011, and he, congressional delegation, he said, if you withdraw all of your troops out of Iraq, you're going to create a vacuum.
00:23:57.000And something's going to fill that vacuum.
00:23:59.000That's what you need to go back and sincerely tell President Obama.
00:24:12.000So I just wish we would think a little bit smarter.
00:24:15.000And one of the things I believe, we've got to get more veterans.
00:24:18.000More veterans that have been on the ground and they understand the tactical level that can help us make the right strategic level decisions.
00:24:24.000And we've got to have those people that haven't been in the military that are willing to listen to them.
00:24:28.000What do you think are the proper set of rules of engagement?
00:24:30.000So obviously you came to National Motoriety originally because of controversy over rules of engagement in Iraq.
00:24:35.000I wonder if you could tell that story and also what you think the normal rules of engagement should be for our military.
00:24:40.000They seem to change rapidly and almost randomly based on headlines.
00:24:44.000Well, one of the things you cannot do, it should be a consistent steady state when it comes to national security.
00:24:53.000They can disagree on domestic policies, but they're constant on national security.
00:24:57.000What happened with me is that we had information about an Iraqi police officer that was feeding intel over to Saddam Fedayeen.
00:25:04.000He was not forthcoming with any information.
00:25:07.000You know, I just improvised, adapted, and overcame, and used a psychological intimidation trick, told him I was going to shoot him, I was going to kill him, and I actually just fired a pistol over his head, and he, you know, divulged some information that helped us out, kept my guys alive.
00:25:20.000But understand it, I colored outside the lines, I reported myself.
00:25:24.000And about a month later, you know, they came down and investigated.
00:26:03.000Because some lawyers said that unless you can prove hostile intent, a guy in the middle of the night with a shovel, with a projectile that's about yay big, with little cylindrical wires coming out of it, he's not showing hostile intent.
00:26:15.000And then the next thing you know in the morning, someone gets blown up.
00:26:18.000So again, we cannot cede over the battlefield to lawyers.
00:26:23.000This is not a law enforcement operation.
00:26:25.000You don't collect someone up and, you know, question them and interrogate them and try to charge them with something.
00:26:30.000We've got to get them off the battlefield.
00:26:32.000And I think it's so important that we get, you know, that steady state of people that come in and understand, I don't care Republican or Democrat.
00:26:40.000These are young men and women that are out there protecting our way of life.
00:26:44.000And if you're going to commit them into an engagement, then allow them to go out there and do what needs to be done.
00:26:50.000Because President Trump understood, I'm going to allow the military commanders to do what needs to be done.
00:26:56.000So we've talked about some of the shifts inside the Republican Party.
00:26:58.000When you first came into Congress, you came in in 2010 with the Tea Party wave, and it's really interesting because now you've seen that the Republicans have basically continued to blow out spending, despite what the Tea Party wave was all about.
00:27:10.000What do you think the Tea Party was about?
00:27:12.000Because the leftist take on the Tea Party is that it was simply anger at President Obama, channeled toward a false end of smaller government.
00:27:20.000And then as soon as Obama was gone, we didn't care about spending anymore.
00:27:22.000We were happy to blow out the spending ourselves.
00:27:25.000And do you think that that sentiment is still alive?
00:27:27.000Well, I call it constitutional conservatism.
00:27:30.000And the Tea Party was all about fiscal, fiscally responsible government and government that operated within the parameters of the Constitution.
00:27:37.000But yet, when you have a Republican Party that, you know, just late last year, they passed a 1.3 trillion dollar omnibus spending package.
00:28:01.000Being progressive has everything to do with how do you see the relationship of government to the individual.
00:28:07.000If you think government is preeminent, then the individual is small and you're going to tax them ad nauseum ad infinitum to sustain that entity up in Washington, D.C.
00:28:15.000And someone somewhere has to come around and reverse that cycle.
00:28:19.000And get this government to be back where it was intended to be.
00:28:21.000And yet I hear people talk about 70% top tax rate, 90% top tax rate.
00:28:27.000What is that going to do to production?
00:28:29.000Individual production in the United States of America?
00:28:32.000So I think that there is still a desire to have true constitutional conservatism in this country.
00:28:37.000There's still a desire to go back to our founding document and our rule of law.
00:28:42.000But the thing is that do we have the people that have the courage to go up there to Washington, D.C.
00:28:48.000Look, the Republicans redistricted me out in Florida, you know, and I was always a team player.
00:28:55.000But the thing is this, when you start to get more attention and show that some people are not standing up for what they say they're going to stand up for, then they don't like that.
00:29:05.000And so America has to, you know, once again create those founding father type of leaders that were visionaries.
00:29:12.000And we're not there yet, but hopefully we can get there.
00:29:15.000One of the things that's been really fascinating is there's been this open debate that's now broken out maybe in the last couple of months particularly over kind of the direction of the Republican Party in terms of what the government should do.
00:29:24.000So it was really led off by Tucker Carlson who gave this monologue on Fox News in which he suggested that the breakdown of family structure was due to a bunch of people in the American economy being left behind by economic choices that have been made.
00:29:36.000And the counter argument was that the breakdown of the American family and the breakdown of a lot of our societal institutions was really a moral issue that started in the 1960s, was more linked to welfare policy than it was linked to government failures on tariffs, and that these problems can't necessarily be cured by more government interventionism, that this is actually a problem of the American soul.
00:29:56.000Do you think that we have more of a moral problem in America, or do you think that this is all just sort of economics translated into a moral problem?
00:30:02.000People who can't afford to get married, for example.
00:30:03.000No, it's a moral problem in the United States of America.
00:30:06.000And it's a moral messaging problem where, you know, people have devalued family.
00:30:24.000And so again, when I look at the breakdown in the black community of the family, and the fact that you had a government program that said, we're going to give a woman a check from the government if she has her child out of wedlock.
00:30:37.000But the caveat is that she can't have a man in the home.
00:30:40.000So the maybe unintended, but I think somewhat intended consequence is that you remove the responsibility of the man in the home in a community where the man had always been that responsible figure.
00:30:54.000I mean, what got the black community through slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, all of these things?
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00:32:52.000Because the two biggest electoral vote states, California and Texas, and the left, without a doubt, have their sights on Texas.
00:33:01.000As a matter of fact, their mantra is, turn Texas blue.
00:33:04.000And if you followed the election results from this past November, they really were close to it.
00:33:10.000As a matter of fact, I live in Dallas, Dallas County, woke up, my congressional representative was gone, state house, state senate, a lot of the judicial appointees, gone.
00:33:19.000And what is happening is that the greatest export that comes out of California is not avocados, wine or walnuts.
00:33:27.000And if you look at what Nevada used to be, you look at Arizona, you look at Colorado, you look at New Mexico, and for whatever reason people are leaving California Because of the failed tax and regulatory policies, but they're migrating to states that used to be red states, and they're flipping them because they're, you know, once again, holding on to these same failed policies.
00:33:47.000So even though Texas, with the incredible economic vibrancy and the economic opportunities you have there, all the right tax and regulatory policies, all the businesses and corporations that are moving there, Texas almost elected a far left progressive socialist as a senator.
00:34:06.000Because when you look at these major population centers, the Dallas, the Austin, the San Antonio, the Houston, the El Paso, it's all trending toward the blue.
00:34:16.000And even though Texas has 254 counties, if all of that population centers in the I-35 corridor and some other places, it's just a matter of time.
00:34:26.000And if the left is successful and turn in Texas, the national level elections are done.
00:34:32.000You're never going to be able to reverse that cycle.
00:34:34.000One of the scariest things that I saw about the polling from Texas in the aftermath of Cruz's narrow win over Bob O'Rourke, as you call him, is that the polls tended to show that immigrants from other parts of the country actually tended to vote for Cruz, that it was homegrown Texans, young homegrown Texans.
00:34:49.000We're voting actually more and more in favor of Democrats.
00:34:55.000And of course, when you go to like a place like the University of Texas, and of course, Representative O'Rourke was at his event skateboarding and what have you.
00:35:03.000But you're also seeing a lot of people that are coming into Texas.
00:35:07.000The heads of these corporations understand why they're moving.
00:35:10.000But yet, they're not talking to a lot of the employees.
00:35:13.000Now, without a doubt, there are people that are coming from California, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey that say, I've had it with the policies there, especially the tax policies.
00:35:20.000But you also are having people that are coming in within the last year, two years, they don't know the history of Texas.
00:35:26.000But yet, they're able to immediately come in and vote.
00:35:28.000And I think it's so important that it's almost like a proactive marketing venture that Texas has to go into to say, you know, welcome to Texas, but why are you here?
00:35:38.000And they also have to talk to those young people, those future generations, to say, you know, what future do you want to have?
00:35:45.000I mean, you think, think about this, Ben.
00:35:48.000Last September, they had to have a special session for the Texas State Board of Education because someone came up with the idea of removing the word heroic in reference to the defenders of the Alamo in Texas history books.
00:36:45.000I mean, they have not had a statewide Republican victory in Virginia for, I think, going on now nine years.
00:36:52.000Well, what exactly should Republicans be doing differently in Texas, per se?
00:36:57.000Especially because when you look at Texas, it's interesting.
00:36:58.000I had Governor Greg Abbott on my show a little while ago, and he has been winning a pretty significant percentage of the Hispanic vote.
00:37:04.000If you look at how California has moved in terms of the Hispanic vote versus Texas, it's really quite stunning.
00:37:09.000The Hispanic vote in California goes 70-30 Democrat.
00:37:12.000In Texas, it goes like 55-45 Democrat.
00:37:14.000It's a lot closer between Democrats and Republicans.
00:37:17.000What do you think that Texas Republicans have been doing that California Republicans have not in terms of the Hispanic vote?
00:37:21.000Well, I think that the difference is that many of the Hispanics that are coming into California are coming, you know, centered around an illegal immigrant philosophy.
00:37:31.000Where many of the Hispanics that are coming into Texas, and there have been some studies about this, more about the small business entrepreneurship, they still have those basic conservative values about family, they want better education opportunities.
00:37:41.000And so they understand that connection with the Republican Party.
00:37:45.000I mean, Hispanic programs in Texas are very strong.
00:37:51.000And then of course, you know, Governor Abbott has a Hispanic wife who, without a doubt, being the first lady of Texas, I mean, she's a great person to go out and deliver that message.
00:38:01.000But I think that overall, not just in Texas, but everywhere, Republicans have to get back into the major population centers.
00:38:08.000They wrote them off for so long, and now that's where the left is bringing everyone into.
00:38:14.000And those policies in most of those urban areas are failing.
00:38:20.000Again, in Georgia, when Stacey Abrams won, she had the Atlanta metropolitan area, then all the rest around it was red.
00:38:26.000But she came within, what, two points of winning.
00:38:28.000So I think that's where someone in the Republican Party needs to sit back and look at the big map and say, how do we start penetrating, you know, quote unquote, the blue wall in these, you know, major population centers?
00:38:41.000I heard one person say that, you know, Pennsylvania, you've got Pittsburgh on one side and Philadelphia on the other side, and in between is Alabama.
00:39:33.000Very quickly, all those suburban areas got very blue.
00:39:37.000If Republicans keep doubling down on this narrow base, they're going to lose.
00:39:42.000I think that a lot of Republicans have fallen into the trap of thinking that because Trump pulled a rabbit out of the hat in 2016 by winning 80,000 votes in the correct three states while losing the popular vote by 3 million, that that's replicable.
00:39:54.000And I'm having a hard time seeing exactly how that's replicable over the long haul or even over the short term.
00:40:00.000No, you're absolutely right, and I think, and you and I had this discussion also, is that the American people are very visual, and you can have all the right policies and everything like that, but, you know, President Trump has to understand that there's an optic, and his personality can turn a lot of people off, and that's why you've seen a lot of Republicans, and we had that happen.
00:40:21.000In the state of Texas, where you had the, you could break up your, you don't have the straight line ticket voting.
00:40:27.000And there were a lot of people that were picking and choosing in there.
00:40:29.000And so what we need to do is have someone that is that standard bearer that does portray that leadership image and the policies relate back to it.
00:40:38.000Because the left is going to go back into those places where he thought that he will have that success again.
00:41:33.000So those are the type of things we have to really talk about.
00:41:36.000But again, it cannot be this outreach thing.
00:41:38.000It has to find those policies that bring people to understanding that right relationship between themselves and the institution of government.
00:41:46.000The fact that this should be playing over and over and over.
00:41:49.000When the president last State of the Union address announced that black unemployment was at an historic all-time low, and they panned over to the members of the Congressional Black Caucus and they just sat there stoically.
00:42:01.000Those are the type of images you need to show to the American people.
00:42:04.000If you really want to win on this illegal immigration debate and the thing about the wall, get the angel moms out there.
00:42:10.000Get the people that have been victimized by illegal immigration.
00:42:13.000What I would say is, President Trump, you're doing great things, less of you on camera, okay?
00:42:18.000And let these stories tell themselves, and let the American people tell some of these stories instead of you trying to do it.
00:42:25.000So, Lieutenant Colonel West, you were in Congress for a couple of years.
00:42:28.000Do you have any intent to go back into politics?
00:44:01.000And anyone that tries to, you know, harass, you know, my two daughters or whatever, they're going to have to, they'll find their way to me.
00:44:09.000And that's an important thing about being a strong male role model and the father figure.
00:44:13.000And the exact same thing with you and your kids.
00:44:16.000But when we continue to have this chip, chip, chip away, when, when you have Colin Kaepernick in that Nike commercial, you know, believe in something, even if it means sacrificing everything.
00:44:26.000The perfect person that Nike should have used was Pat Tillman.
00:44:31.000Here's a pro football player after 9-11 said, there's something better than this, and unfortunately lost his life, but enlisted into the army as an infantryman, as a ranger, and gets deployed to Afghanistan.
00:44:45.000So I think that what we need to do is start to fight that culture war and stop allowing the left to define everything.
00:44:52.000They define what it means to be Jewish, what it means to be black, what it means to be Hispanic, what it means to be a woman, what it means to be a man, masculinity and everything.
00:45:04.000Obviously, there are a lot of folks right now who are deeply disturbed by the unworkability of Congress and a lot of Republicans who are frustrated.
00:47:06.000You hunker down in these respective holes, and you're not taking care of us.
00:47:10.000And if someone can come along and show a principled vision for this country, you'll find a third party.
00:47:16.000Do you think that that's more plausible, or the plausibility is that somebody's going to come up inside one of the parties?
00:47:21.000So this has been the case made about President Trump, is that he tried in 2000 to run on a third-party ticket basically with the Reform Party, then decided not to.
00:47:28.000We've seen third parties before try and fail in American life.
00:47:31.000And then Trump launches this outsider campaign and basically takes over the party.
00:47:34.000Bernie Sanders launched an outsider campaign inside the Democratic Party, basically took over that party.
00:47:38.000Do you think it's more plausible that there will be a rising third party, or that there will be a force inside one of these parties that just Well, I think that there will be a movement amongst the people.
00:48:00.000And the next thing you know, it's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no.
00:48:03.000And even when, you know, Samuel went to the house of Jesse, and he saw all of those sons, and he thought it was this son, and he thought it was that son.
00:48:12.000And God said, no, it's that kid there.
00:48:14.000It's the little scrappy kid coming in from tending the sheep.
00:48:17.000So I think somewhere there's a David out there that's out there just tending the sheep, minding his own business, but he will be the one that will take this country to this next level and restore this country as a constitutional republic.
00:48:31.000And then our education system has to educate people about what it means to be.
00:48:58.000Four generations in my family, all combat veterans, we didn't fight for America to look like a Venezuela.
00:49:07.000When I was a young lieutenant and I went through Checkpoint Charlie over to East Berlin, I knew exactly the reason why there was a United States of America.
00:49:15.000Do you think that there should be some sort of national service component?
00:49:18.000Because obviously being in the military changed you, obviously it had a long line in your family of changing people.
00:49:23.000There's been a lot of talk about the idea that young people particularly don't feel any sense of solidarity with the ideals of the United States.
00:49:29.000We feel increasingly disconnected because of social media and isolated.
00:49:32.000Do you think that there should be consideration of a national service like they have in Israel, for example?
00:49:36.000Some type of national service, not exactly bringing back a military draft.
00:49:40.000Because as a former commander, I don't need to spend 95% of my time with, you know, 5% that don't want to be there.
00:49:46.000It should be a privilege to wear the uniform of the United States of America and serve this country in uniform.
00:49:53.000I mean, you know, just being in some of these local communities and around here going to some of the, you know, feed the homeless type of places.
00:50:15.000And we've got to restore that in these future generations.
00:50:17.000So you've been going around a lot with the Young Americans Foundation, obviously they're a group that I work with as well, and you've been going to a lot of college campuses.
00:50:24.000What's made you optimistic and what's made you pessimistic?
00:50:26.000What was the worst question you got while you were on the road?
00:50:29.000And you know, you've seen some protests as well.
00:50:31.000What's that been like going to these Well, the worst question was when the young lady at Northwestern University asked me if I identified as black.
00:50:38.000But that also gave me a window into understanding that level of indoctrination that's happening, that people are just believing that you have to—it's kind of like the Borg in the old Star Trek Next Generation that, you know, you will assimilate, resistance is futile, you don't have an identity, you're just six of seven or seven of nine or whatever.
00:50:58.000And so that's very troubling for me because College is supposed to be a place where you develop critical thinking skills, and you're supposed to have that intellectual debate, and you're not having that.
00:51:09.000And I've been to places where, you know, folks, you know, they hold up the signs trying to disrupt you or whatever, and you just plow right through it.
00:51:17.000And what keeps me optimistic is that when you go on these campuses, Ben, and you see those young future conservatives, that are standing up in the most horrific of situations.
00:51:26.000I mean, I don't know if I could have done that if I was a college student in these same areas where, you know, your professors are against you, the administration is against you, your peers are against you, and they continue to stand.
00:51:38.000So the least I can do is to be optimistic and to fight for an America to give these young, deserving people.
00:51:45.000How about the case that colleges are basically trashed?
00:51:47.000I mean, this is a case that's been made by some conservatives, which is that the best move for conservatives would be to take their kids and either put them in places like Hillsdale College or to take their kids out of college completely and do the Peter Thiel thing.
00:52:00.000If they've got money, give them their kids money, get them an apprenticeship, find a way for them to avoid college.
00:52:04.000Do you think that college is actually a useful bargain for a lot No, I think college is still useful.
00:52:08.000I think that, you know, to develop the mind is a very important thing.
00:52:11.000But I think that we should have a Hillsdale College in every single state in the United States of America.
00:52:18.000Northwood University is another school up in Michigan that's a free market for enterprise institution.
00:52:24.000You know, I once went to some very wealthy white philanthropists, and I said, look at how historic black colleges and universities are struggling.
00:52:32.000Wouldn't it be great if you went in and just bought a few of them and turned them into constitutional conservative black institutions?
00:52:42.000You know, because when you read, you know, Booker T. Washington's, you know, autobiography, Up From Slavery, how did he establish Tuskegee Institute?
00:52:49.000He established Tuskegee Institute based upon conservative principles, education, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance.
00:52:57.000Now that's what we should be, you know, bringing forth in all of our schools, that you're there to get a relevant education, not just there to get some education in women's studies or underwater basket weaving, and then you've got to go out and be a barista at the Starbucks and you've got all kinds of massive debt.
00:53:12.000What are we doing to develop the next generation of productive Americans to go out into our society?
00:53:18.000And that's why, I mean, we've got to rethink how education is done.
00:53:21.000Sure, not every kid needs to go to college.
00:53:23.000But college needs to be there, needs to be available, but it needs to be relevant education.
00:53:28.000Well, this does raise the question of conservative donors because it seems like conservative donors, very often, they only want to give to a couple of causes.
00:53:35.000One, they want to give to their church.
00:53:36.000Two, they want to give to a political candidate.
00:53:38.000Or three, they want to give to somebody who they think is making a splash.
00:53:41.000How do we change minds in the conservative giving community to say, look, you actually have to invest in local institutions that may not put your name on a building and that may not actually benefit you in the press?
00:53:52.000Again, they got to stop thinking about themselves and stop, you know, creating these organizations that is reflective of them in their own little rice bowl or their own little silo.
00:54:00.000I mean, when I look at, you know, the George Soros's and the Tom Steyer's and Michael Bloomberg, I mean, they find a cause.
00:54:09.000And they fund that cause from the strategic level down to the tactical level.
00:54:13.000And you can walk it back to all of these groups that are out there.
00:54:16.000Moms Demand Action, the environmental groups, the Black Lives Matter, Antifa, whatever.
00:54:23.000And you can trace it back to one of these top funders.
00:54:26.000But we don't have that same type of fervor.
00:54:28.000I mean, we've got the resources on our side to go out there and buy a newspaper.
00:54:35.000And then we sit back and we wring our hands and say, oh, you know, they control this and they control that.
00:54:40.000They control it because we are ceding that territory over to them.
00:54:44.000So I am looking, yeah, we do need people that think from at the strategic level and say, I'm going to, you know, develop my army that can get down here at the tactical level on the ground, that can get in this neighborhood in X city.
00:54:56.000And I'm going to replicate that in other neighborhoods and cities all across.
00:55:00.000You know, I'm going to, you know, take on this mantle of building constitutional conservative centers of higher education.
00:57:16.000So, Colonel West, I have one final question for you.
00:57:18.000I want to ask you what advice you would give to a 16-year-old kid in the United States right now who feels like opportunity is kind of slipping away, whatever community they're in.
00:57:27.000What would you say to them to inspire them to greatness?
00:57:30.000And I'm going to ask you that question in just one second.
00:57:32.000But first, if you want to hear Colonel West's answer, you actually have to be a Daily Wire subscriber.