Whenever you have monopolies, you have something
that’s akin to socialism, because these
large monopolies are in bed with the government.
They’re the ones that have the big lobbyists
in Washington. That’s what we call crony
capitalism. A lot of people don’t even know
how capitalism really works, because they
see so much crony capitalism where big government
and big business are benefiting at the expense
of the little guy.
Just how has crony capitalism in America misled
Americans about how capitalism works for the
benefit of the average American?
What did the founding fathers tell us about
the dangers of centralized power?
And why is religious freedom always one of
the first targets of tyrants?
In this episode, we sit down with Jim DeMint,
who served for fourteen years in Congress,
first in the House and then in the Senate.
He is the chairman of the Conservative Partnership
Institute and author of “Saving America
from Socialism: How to Stop Progressive Attacks
on Freedom.”
This is American Thought Leaders 🇺🇸, and
I’m Jan Jekielek.
Senator Jim DeMint, such a pleasure to have
you on American Thought Leaders.
Great to be with you. Thank you for allowing
me to talk about saving America from socialism
and how it relates to a whole lot of things
that are going on today.
It’s really incredible, isn’t it? You
actually wrote the book Saving Freedom about
ten years ago. The subtitle of the book was,
“We Can Stop America’s Slide into Socialism.”
Now your book Saving America from Socialism:
How to Stop Progressive Attacks on Freedom
is an update that you’ve come out with.
How have we done with all of this?
Well I wrote the book before
President Obama really had had a chance
to change things. I did not anticipate that
we would slide towards socialism so quickly.
A lot of the things that I warned about, more
government control of the financial markets
for instance, happened after the 2008 crisis.
We see the government now under the Coronavirus
regimen of lockdowns taking over so much of
our lives, our businesses, the way we live,
whether we go to church. The update here is
more helping people see what’s already on
us. The first edition of the book was more
of a warning about what I saw happening after
being in the House and the Senate.
So what did you see happening then? We’ll
jump into some more current events shortly.
What I saw was more and more control shifting
from individuals, from communities, and from
states to the federal government where power
was just collecting in Washington. When whenever
you have centralized control, you begin to
have all the aspects of socialism. You have
corruption. Whenever there is power, there
is corruption. As more power was moving to
Washington, I saw what we now call “the
swamp” developing, where even if you elected
good people, all the pressures in Washington
and influenced. Most of them within a relatively
short period of time.
were singing the song, more national control.
We can talk a lot about what that means, and
I’ve got it throughout the book, but whenever
there’s a central control of things, people
lose their choices. They lose their freedom,
and we see it in all areas of our lives. The
whole point of releasing this under Saving
America from Socialism is just to be clearer.
A lot of people, as you know, think socialism
is a good idea. But it’s been tragic throughout
history, and we’ve never been closer to
socialism. I don’t think it’s so much
of a slide anymore. We are going off a cliff
now from where we were as a nation, free with
free markets and free people, to something
that’s very, very different.
… In the book ten years ago, it was almost,
you argue, a bad word to talk about socialism
for a lot of people. That has changed quite
a bit. The perception has changed. How did
that happen?
Well, a lot is through our education systems.
We’re not teaching what makes America great
and prosperous, not in K through 12, certainly
not in our universities. So a lot of our young
people are coming out of college believing
that socialism is the way to create fairness
and equality in our society. That’s why
you hear the left continuing to talk about
unfairness, racism, and victimhood.
The idea of socialism suits the elites, because
it gives a few people power over almost everything.
While the folks who advocate for socialism
talk about how it’s going to help the little
guy and the poor guy in the minorities, all
over the world where socialism is in place,
you see the elite and the dictators becoming
wealthy and controlling all power. In North
Korea, China, and Venezuela, everywhere socialism
is in place you see poor people getting poorer
and losing more and more of their freedoms.
The typical thing people will say, and I actually
think this is true, is that we’re very far
away from a place like Communist China, North
Korea, and Venezuela, places that are actually
practicing the system.
Well, we probably were some distance before
the Coronavirus. But if you stop and think
over the last few months, we’ve allowed
our government, local, state, and federal,
to tell us which businesses can open, which
ones are essential, who can we meet with,
how many people we can meet with, and whether
we can go to church or not. I think out of
respect for our citizenship, most Americans
have been willing to do this for a short period
of time.
But now we realize the government was using
data that wasn’t true to say they were acting
in our own best interest and to do that they
needed to take our rights away. That has been
the tradition of socialism all around the
world, “We’re going to take care of you,
you don’t need your guns. You don’t need
to go out and compete. We don’t need all
these different brands of products, the government
can decide what’s best.”
Americans have resisted that, except in crises.
When there was a financial crisis, we were
willing to let the government take over most
of the financial markets and the mortgage
industries. And during the COVID crisis, they
actually now own a lot of the airlines, and
they have taken over large swaths of the American
economy and tell us when we can go to work
and when we can’t. I think even a year ago,
this was unimaginable.
So Jim, with respect to Coronavirus response,
you mentioned that the government was using
erroneous data. According to the principles
of Saving America, how should a government
respond to something like Coronavirus, which
clearly requires some sort of broader response?
I don’t think the data in the beginning
was intentionally erroneous. But it’s clear
now that the medical models, the millions
of people who would die, I mean, none of that
happened. What has worried me is that we have
learned relatively quickly that healthy working-age
Americans had very little threat from this
virus. Yet, you didn’t hear that. The large
majority of people who died were actually
in nursing care facilities with pre-existing
conditions, and they were over 80 years old.
Now, we don’t want anyone to die, but we
cannot keep folks from getting sick and particularly
the elderly. We can do everything we can to
protect them, but to shut down our economy,
based on what we know now, did not make sense.
Now, I think we can say they acted rationally
until we knew the truth, but we know it now,
and we’re still not hearing it. There are
a group of doctors in America called Leveling
the Fear, trying to get the truth out so Americans
won’t be afraid to send their children back
to school.
One person under 18 in America died from the
Coronavirus. Children have almost no risk,
as do people under 50 years old. If you’re
under 65 and don’t have a health condition,
you have very little risk. So how can we close
down the world’s biggest economy, and still
keep it closed down? They’re trying to hype
now a second wave of Coronavirus and spikes
in Texas and Florida, but they’re not telling
us that these are young people getting it
and they’re not even getting sick.
So what I would do, certainly now that we
know what we know, is we need to go back to
normal and go back to work. People who understand
that they have a risk need to take special
precautions, and businesses and the government
need to do everything we can to give flexibility
to people with conditions that might be exacerbated
by Coronavirus. But we cannot afford to print
enough money to support an idle America. If
we keep doing this even a few more weeks,
I’m afraid that we’re going to have an
economic catastrophe on our hands, and there’s
just no rational reason to do it.
I am just appalled at the lack of good information
that is actually given by the media. Right
now, if you gave a good balanced presentation
of the risk, most Americans would feel good
about going back to work, going into restaurants,
going back to school. … What we’ve done
may be the biggest mistake in the history
of our country, and it’s time that we get
back to normal and back to work.
So that’s actually something that also you
talk about in your book. It’s kind of a
theme that basically, whenever there is this
opportunity to expand government, there seems
to be this push to do that, aside from actually
dealing with the crisis or so forth.
Well, you’re right. We see this with the
riots … that were supposedly because of
police racism. That’s a whole other story,
because more whites are shot by police than
blacks. I mean, we certainly have problems,
but it’s not racism. Racism is a way to
create a crisis and make people feel like
they’re being taken advantage of. They need
the government to come in and take care of
these rich people or these white supremacists,
whether they exist or not.
They create these crises artificially in order
to take more control of our lives. A lot of
people are encouraging President Trump to
take more control at the state level, which
so far he’s resisted, and I appreciate that.
But the real reason for the book coming out
right now is to help people understand that
socialism is a threat. There are ways that
we can combat it if we understand how it works,
and if we understand how good we have it in
a free market system.
One of the things that I’ve been thinking
about is that there are certain things that
require this broader response or potentially
national response. The argument has been that
Coronavirus is one of these things. There’s
also the issue of national security; we have
[the threat of] Communist China. … Now we’ve
seen them implement this national security
law in Hong Kong, criminalizing potentially
all sorts of freedom, free behavior, which
was previously normal and is certainly normal
in any free society. This is a behemoth, and
it’s very difficult for any individual small
unit to fight something which is essentially
a giant monopoly that’s aggressive.
You’re exactly right. [The CCP’s] role
in this Coronavirus has been a wake-up call
for many Americans that too much of our production,
particularly our medicines, is going on in
China. It has brought to light how much of
our intellectual property, our patents, and
our military secrets they’ve stolen. It
has brought to light that this trade deficit
of moving all the production and jobs to China
has just been absurd. We’ve allowed it to
happen right under our nose.
China has a socialist-communist type of economy,
and they’re trying to spread that around
the world where we have been a threat to them,
because whenever you compare what they do
with capitalism, ours is so much better. They
have to clamp down on freedoms. This whole
problem we’ve had this year with the Coronavirus
hopefully will backfire against China and
help Americans realize that these folks are
our enemies.
You know, I had the impression twenty years
ago that more trade and contact with China
would create more freedom. I was wrong. They
were just not ready for the civilized world.
I was wrong that America would enforce these
trade agreements and keep China accountable.
We didn’t do it even when it was obvious
they were cheating. I’m going to play a
role myself, and I know a lot of conservatives
are going to be very active in exposing China
and helping Americans realize that they are
an adversary and that we have to deal seriously
with them.
Right, and an adversary with a very, very
different system. Of course, this is exactly
the system that you’re talking about here.
I’ve told people in the past, if you let
things go in that direction, you will eventually
end up with what China has now. But frankly,
there are people in America, especially in
big finance, Wall Street and so forth that
actually kind of liked that model. It’s
a stable one, at least that’s the argument.
Well, the Wall Street folks like central control,
because whenever you have central political
control, you have central economic control
and central cultural control. The big corporations—I
have realized painfully over the last several
years—are not so much interested in America.
Even American globalist companies are not
interested in whether things are produced
here or what’s good for America. All they
want is cheap production and access to the
American markets.
The big benefit from big, and whether it’s
big banks, big corporations, big unions, or
big government, the little guy always loses.
That’s part of the warning signal whenever
you see the consolidation of economic activities,
these huge mergers AT&T and DirectTV. Now
you can only get one service in some places.
Whenever you have monopolies, you have something
that’s akin to socialism, because these
large monopolies are in bed with the government.
They’re the ones that have the big lobbyists
in Washington. That’s what we call crony
capitalism. A lot of people don’t even know
how capitalism really works, because they
see so much crony capitalism where big government
and big business are benefiting at the expense
of the little guy.
… You were a big part of the government
for quite a number of years. There’s certainly
people that your organization, conservative
partnership institute, supports, helps place
staffers and so on. So, who’s actually complicit
here?
Well, we all are in a lot of ways as voters.
It’s incredible to me that they are telling
me that half of American voters are going
to vote for Joe Biden right now, when he is
basically saying we need to move towards a
more socialist economy. The green new deal
is all about socialism and government control
of economic activity. Yes, I was in the government,
and I saw how so many people are co-opted
by the environment in Washington and in the
media. The big media is so in bed with them,
they should have been mentioned with big corporations
and big unions, because they now are advocates
of socialism as much as anything.
So if you have a congressman or a senator
who is trying to do what I did, to try to
move education control back to states to stop
all this federal earmarking, which gives federal
control of so many local project, to try to
stop things like amnesty, which big corporations
wanted for cheap labor and big unions wanted
for more union members, [they face] the excruciating
attacks that come on anyone who’s trying
to do what the Constitution says we should
do, and that is keep power out of Washington.
Move power back to the States and the people.
There’s so much abuse for people doing the
right thing.
That’s one of the reasons we formed the
conservative partnership. I realized you could
spend millions electing good people, but if
you don’t take care of them, once they get
in Washington, they’re going to become like
the swamp, and it doesn’t take very long.
That’s what we’re doing, but citizens
need to be informed. That’s why Saving America
from Socialism is so important right now,
because if you don’t understand the threat,
you won’t see it coming.
As so many philosophers have told us, people
willingly give away their freedom without
knowing it little by little. Americans have
given away more and more control of our lives.
Now the government is telling us where our
children go to school and what they learn,
what kind of health care we’re going to
get and who our doctor is going to be, whether
banks can make us a loan or not, and now whether
we can go to church, and a lot of folks are
saying we should not be able to bear arms.
If you go down the checklist of rights of
Americans, all of them are being threatened.
So you mentioned the American system of government,
and I actually find it quite fascinating.
I’m Canadian, you know, we have a different
system. It’s a parliamentary democracy.
There’s something quite specific about the
US system as a constitutional republic. What
I find fascinating is that it is actually
a kind of a check or even like a protection
from democracy [itself] in a sense, straight-up
democracy. You talked about this a bit in
the book. I’m wondering if you could kind
of give us that picture?
Well, you’re exactly right. A lot of folks
don’t want to hear this, but our founders
and our constitution did not establish a democracy.
They did everything they could to avoid this
national popular vote idea where the people
decide on everything. They first divided power
between local, state and federal governments,
so that power would not be concentrated. At
the federal level, they divided power between
the presidency, the Congress, and the courts.
To divide power again, they did not want a
majority rule at 51 percent, because think
about it, when majority rules, minorities
lose their rights. The 51 percent can decide
everything, and so if you’re a part of a
group of 20 percent or 30 percent, you have
no say, and the majority rules. In countries
like Russia, they are a democracy, but somehow
the same guy keeps getting elected and gets
richer. Venezuela is a democracy, but somehow
the tyrant gets elected and re-elected.
Our founders had a lot of wisdom that a lot
of people are trying to change today. That’s
why the left wants to get rid of the electoral
college that allows states to continue to
have a say in who becomes the president. National
popular vote would give the presidency to
a few major states that are very progressive
and liberal.
In a nutshell, how does it work? How is this
… tyranny of the majority, I’ve heard
that term, held in check exactly in our system
for the benefit of our audience here.
Well, you see it in the Senate where there
was established a 60 vote threshold and in
some cases a two-thirds threshold, because
that forces the majority [to compromise].
If you are a Republican and you have 54 votes,
you have a majority in the Senate, but you
can’t pass bills without working with the
minority. You have to compromise, you have
to give something, so a lot of folks want
to get rid of that and say, “Why can’t
we just make it easy?”
The Constitution intentionally made it hard
to get things done in Washington. We have
to have a consensus. The idea was that we
would not pass laws at the federal level unless
there was a broad national consensus that
supported those laws. Otherwise, they needed
to stay in the hands of the state and local
government. A lot of people want to throw
that out now, but it’s because of … the
desire for centralized power in a socialist
form of government.
If folks don’t understand that, I don’t
think a lot of Americans understand when people
say we want a popular vote to elect the president,
what they’re saying is they want socialism.
They want government control. They do not
want minority power spread around the country
where districts represent different people,
and they all come together to try to create
a system where everyone is heard and has a
fair chance. We’re losing that. Oddly, it’s
the little guy who’s voting, because of
this propaganda that socialism and big government
is going to make life easier, fairer, and
more equitable.
You talk about this lore of socialism. … Every
time that I’ve read about how these systems
are established in the world, it’s kind
of a similar thing that’s played on. I guess
it’s an aspect of human nature. How do you
see this?
Well, you’re right, it sounds fair. “Hey,
let’s change our government, so that we
share more. We take from these very rich people
and spread that wealth among folks who have
very little, and let’s create a referee
and government to try to decide how everything
is done.” Because when you have free markets,
you have winners and losers. When people are
free to go out and work hard, those who don’t
work hard, don’t get as much.
The idea sometimes sounds very compassionate
and charitable, and it’s a little bit of
what we call the Robin Hood instinct in the
book. It’s actually a psychological term
where it sounds like a good idea to take from
the rich and give to the poor. But we call
that legal plunder when you give the government
the ability to go in and take from those who’ve
earned it and worked for it and give it to
those who don’t have it.
While it may sound charitable, it never works
that way. The poor people never get [the money]
in Venezuela. They’re not getting it that,
but the leaders of the government are getting
it. All you’re doing is diminishing the
wealth and prosperity of the whole country
in order for a few to get wealth and power
that no one else has.
You mentioned 2008 earlier, and I’ve been
thinking about this. … I think there’s
a compelling argument that one of the reasons
that the financial crisis happened was kind
of a lack of regulation in the financial system.
People were able to create these various financial
products that no one could understand, and
they were unchecked. Then they basically crashed
the system, because ultimately they weren’t
worth what people were saying they were supposed
to be worth. This is a very simplistic version,
but basically, there was seemingly a need
for regulation.
Right now you have a lot of Chinese companies
that are listed in the US exchanges, but they
have very, very limited disclosure requirements,
essentially the equivalent of a prospectus
or something like that. There’s people arguing
about that and trying to change this as we
speak. You’re not arguing for a complete
lack of regulation here or is that what you’re
arguing?
No, no. Freedom only exists within a framework
of rules, something we talked about in the
book: law and order, why the Constitution
is relevant. Certainly, some regulations are
needed in the financial markets, but the crash
was more related to bad government policy
than it was to a lack of regulations. The
government had an implied guarantee on these
subprime mortgages. These subprime mortgages
were bundled and sold all over the world with
an implied guarantee from the government.
A big part of it was when the government got
in with these big businesses and big banks,
and they created all these products.
When we try to regulate that, the big companies
just use the government to go around it. A
good example is that we’ve added all these
regulations after the financial collapse,
and who is still at top? The banks that caused
the last collapse are now the ones who have
profited the most from the regulations, because
they know how to get around them. Regulations
are needed; rules are needed; laws are needed.
But when you over-regulate, you basically
give the power to government elites instead
of the people.
This is a very interesting point. I can’t
help thinking about this whole education aspect
that you mentioned earlier. How has our perception
changed? You suggest that education is important.
This issue of school choice keeps coming up
again and again. There’s an increasing desire
by many groups in society to have access to
that, even just purely for socio-economic
reasons. How does school choice fit into this?
I consider education choice and more education
choices. [This is] one of the biggest opportunities
we have as a country to save our country from
socialism, because if the government is in
control of educating our children, it’s
going to be very difficult for them to arrive
at a conclusion that is consistent with freedom,
because these schools are controlled by government
unions and big politicians, and they have
proved not to work.
But if parents have a choice, in many cases
to choose a private school or religious school,
they’ll choose a school that’s best for
their child. Even poor single moms I’ve
seen stand in line all night to try to get
their child in a charter school that will
give them a better chance. If we’re going
to be free, as Americans, we need to have
a free education system, where the money that
we provide to the public is attached to the
child, and the parent can pick different schools.
We already spend more than any other country
in the world on a per child basis. We could
take that money and allow it to create the
best education system in the world. But not
if we allow the government to be the only
entity that controls that public money that
we make available for education. So I see
that education choice, school choice, education
savings accounts, [and] state control of education
is probably the number one thing that we can
do as a nation to save America from socialism.
This is really a kind of a fundamental culture
clash. I think you’ve talked about this.
There’s basically [disagreement] on almost
every issue, because I’m thinking about
the Harvard professor that is basically saying
we shouldn’t have school choice, because
people will have different ideas and won’t
fit into the hole, at least that’s how I
read it. On so many issues, there’s a very
divergent perspective.
It is. Socialism depends on sameness, people
thinking the same way and believing the same
things. When you allow people to believe different
things and have different ways of life, [when
you allow] different states to go different
directions on how they do healthcare education,
this is very frustrating to the socialist
in the left, who want to converge power in
one place. But freedom depends on decentralizing
power and pushing it back as low as we possibly
can. So there is this fight in our culture,
and there has been from the beginning, between
centralized power and freedom at the individual
level.
America was built from the ground up. We are
one person at a time doing business together,
local communities going to church together.
… In my life, I spent 25 of my years in
business working in the local community. Most
of the good things that happen at the local,
individual family, and small organization
level. At the federal level, I saw very little
good that was done. We could produce safety
nets, but somehow we’ve turned them into
snares and traps, where people can’t get
out. They can’t get out of poverty, and
then we have multi-generations of poverty,
because our programs basically disincentivize
work, they disincentivize marriage and family
and they make it almost impossible for the
people we’re trying to help to actually
work their way out.
So family is something very important in this
saving America project to you.
It really is, and it’s not just a belief,
it’s the real data. … Children who grew
up in intact families have an overwhelmingly
big advantage over those who don’t. I can
say that as someone who grew up with a single
divorced mom who had to support us, we made
it, but it does make it a lot harder. If you
don’t tell people the things that can help
make you successful, like staying in school,
waiting until you get married to have children,
waiting until you graduate high school to
have children.
If you don’t tell people basics, if you
don’t help them understand that if you work—even
if you start at a low level—and continue
to work, you can move up through the middle
class and beyond if you want, [you are not
setting them up well]. Now we’re telling
people that the best way to get ahead is to
be a victim and to try to get something from
rich people. There’s not enough money in
the hands of rich people to help everybody
in the country, we have to build it from the
ground up.
Saving America from Socialism is just a good
education on what America is and how it works,
where the threats are coming from and why
they really are threats. We’ve got a lot
of good data to support what we’re saying.
This is not just my opinion, we’ve got a
lot of historical evidence and current evidence,
but if you want to get a glimpse of socialism,
just look at the last few months, when the
government is just taking control of our lives
under the guise of doing what’s best for
us. That’s how socialists work.
Jim, you mentioned crony capitalism as being
basically a big problem in Washington DC and
America. In general, I think this is something
that’s a very bipartisan position. It’s
just that the responses [differ with regards]
to how to deal with this accumulation of wealth
through means that are highly suspect. Essentially
how to deal with it is the question, and you’re
proposing a lot of solutions in the book itself.
Can you tell us more?
Yes, I can. There is a reason that seven of
the richest counties in America are in Washington
DC or around Washington DC. This is where
the power comes. This is where the money comes.
Both parties talk about how bad big government
and big corporations are, but they don’t
do anything about it, because these big corporations,
these big lobbyists, are how campaigns are
financed. A lot of the campaign money is coming
from these big special interests, who have
big offices in Washington.
Our government no longer represents the average
American, but they represent the people who
are here in Washington lobbying. Now they
go home and tell people something totally
different, how they’re thinking about them
and representing their district or their state.
But what I’m challenging people to do in
the book Saving America is to … get involved
enough to see what’s really happening. If
congress was doing what it’s telling us
it’s doing, we wouldn’t be having all
of these problems. They’re acting in their
own best interest.
We certainly see this during all the riots
and everything that even the republicans are
kowtowing to this, and you wonder, “Why
are they doing it?” It’s because that’s
where the money is. I mean, they don’t want
to offend these big campaign contributors.
It really all comes back to the people. Freedom
depends on individuals knowing what freedom
is and being willing to stand for it, and
to vote thoughtfully for folks who are at
least saying the right thing. Then let’s
keep them accountable once they get there.
If you hear people talk, they’re going to
go to Washington to make education better
and make healthcare better, rather than saying,
“We’re going to go to Washington, and
we’re going to move power and money back
home, where the decisions can be made by local
people, by families.” If people are talking
in that way, those are the folks I would vote
for. I don’t think there are any Democrats
left like that. I think there are some Republicans
who say it; there are fewer who actually believe
it and will stand for it. But they will if
people support it, and ultimately, we get
the government we deserve and that we vote
for. That’s why it’s important for me
through this book, Saving America from Socialism,
to talk to people and not politicians, because
ultimately politicians will respond to what
Americans demand.
What does Saving America have to say about
so-called cancel culture?
Well, it says it in different ways. It’s
the idea of removing history, something that
the Marxists that you saw in China during
their Great Revolution [acted on]. The way
people take over is to blot out a lot of history.
The whole idea of being progressive is to
leave history behind and just go into the
future without any bearings, because the progressive
say the Constitution, a lot of laws, and traditions
are all obstacles to moving ahead into the
future. History is a part of that.
For instance, the history of socialism is
so clear that those records need to be removed
for people to accept that socialism is going
to be a good thing in America. So you’ll
see the statues continue to come down, which
is completely absurd and illogical when you
say you want to celebrate emancipation day,
but then you want to tear down Abraham Lincoln’s
statue, calling him a racist when he gave
his life to free the slaves and began the
Republican Party, essentially the first Republican
president.
I just think there’s a small group of people
that are doing the writing and the removal
of history. Their messages being amplified
by complicit media. But I can guarantee you
that 90% of Americans think this is nonsense
if they were to be honest, so we’ve got
to rise up as a people and take back our country.
One of the things I say in the book is that
every generation has to fight for freedom.
That’s what we’ve got to do, and this
book is a call to do just that.
Senator DeMint, one of the things about socialism
is typically that it’s also secular, often
atheistic. One of the points that you raise
in the book and that you feel quite strongly
about is the necessity to ensure freedom of
belief, freedom of conscience, and the diversity
that creates for the nation.
Well, it seems an odd part of history that
whenever tyrants are trying to take control
of a country, again whether it be China, the
Soviet Union, or North Korea, one of the first
things they do is to get rid of religion or
at least control it and make it state-controlled.
The problem for dictators is that people can’t
have two masters. If they give their allegiance
to God and get their moral guidance from God,
then the government is subservient to that
in effect. The first allegiance is to God
and moral principles, and for Christians,
that’s the Bible. That actually gives people
the spiritual freedom to demand political
freedom.
That’s what people are seeing around the
world. If there is a belief, if there’s
faith, then people yearn for freedom. And
so they always try to stamp it out. I say
in the book that freedom and faith are two
sides of the same coin. That doesn’t mean
that atheists can’t live in freedom. Part
of the idea is that people are free to believe
or not believe whatever they want. But what
we see is that for people who don’t tend
to have a belief in God and eternity and the
next life, the government becomes much more
central to their life. Their inclinations
are to give the government more control. People
with a strong faith in God, their own identity,
and their own direct relationship with God
tend not to want someone else to dominate,
particularly a government figure that acts
in opposition to their faith.
Jim, you also give a few prescriptions in
the book for people, the everyday folks out
there of whatever political persuasion about
how to actually make a difference, how to
try to affect some sort of change in the face
of all this.
Yeah, a lot of it is how we think. There is
a need to elect good people, and sometimes
it’s hard to find out who are good people.
I know we have to take care of them when they
get there. And of course, I’d love for folks
to support our nonprofit work at the conservative
partnership.
But [what is important] is a way we think
about government, the idea of decentralizing
power, [and] our constitutional concept of
federalism. Don’t elect people to go to
Washington to solve problems and take more
control. Elect people who are real, who realize
that Washington needs to do a few things much
better than it does today, for instance, dealing
with China, in world threats and international
trade and our borders. Those are things that
the constitution wanted the federal government
to do. But the idea of the federal government
controlling health care and education and
banking and so many other things is just going
to lead to a poor quality of life. Look for
those signs of people who want to centralize
power.
Again, I would encourage people to read Saving
America, so they’ll know what makes America
so special. There is certainly hope to change
this slide into socialism, but there’s not
if we don’t understand how it works and
how to recognize the signs. If we do that,
I’m convinced that the heart and soul of
most Americans [turns] towards freedom and
towards a belief in a God that loves us and
has blessed our country and that we are wonderfully
blessed to be Americans. If we live that way,
as people who are grateful and loving to others,
then we’ll have the America that we want.
Senator DeMint, any final words before we
finish up?
Well, let me end on an optimistic tone really.
We are blessed to live in the greatest country
in the history of the world. Anyone who tries
to say something different just doesn’t
know our country and doesn’t know history.
We’ve got problems. You can’t deal with
problems and solve problems if you don’t
understand the causes. So when we have things
happen, and it’s blamed on racism or politics
or whatever, let’s take a minute and understand
what is really the problem, so that we can
solve it.
The book, Saving America from Socialism has
a whole plan that citizens can use to try
to save the country and create a better way
of life. It’s a few simple things at the
end of the book. I think folks will enjoy
the book because every chapter begins with
a very simple little story that makes the
point in that chapter, and some of these are
just children’s stories. I’ve written
it so that all of us can understand it and
act on it. But we need your help. We need
Americans to stand up, because the politicians
are not going to solve these problems for
us unless we force them to.
Jim DeMint, such a pleasure to have you on.
Thank you. Thank you so much for what you
do; your publication is great. I know that
you have folks who are conservative, liberal,
on all sides of the political spectrum. I
just appreciate your focus on what the facts
are, to give people a little clearer perspective
of what is really going on.
Thank you, Jim.
Thank you.
