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A Venezuelan Immigrant's Perspective on Immigration with Daniel Di Martino
87 Plays1 year ago
We sit down with Daniel Di Martino to discuss his experience as a Venezuelan immigrant, what the right gets wrong about immigration, and Christian Nationalism. We’re a nonpartisan PAC dedicated to restoring, promoting, and advancing liberal values in American politics. Learn more: https://projectliberal.org/
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Welcome
00:00:00
Speaker
Okay everyone, welcome to the latest episode of the Project Liberal podcast. Today I'm joined by somebody who I'm a huge fan of, Daniel DiMartino. Daniel, thank you for making time to join us this afternoon, this morning. Thank you for having me.
00:00:15
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I'll give you a quick bio for the audience's sake.
Daniel's Immigration Story
00:00:19
Speaker
So for anyone who's not familiar with Daniel's work, he's an economics PhD student at Columbia studying immigration. He's a founder of the Dissident Project, which is an org that seeks to connect those with firsthand insights into authoritarianism with students. And we want to talk about that as well here on the conversation.
00:00:37
Speaker
He's a fellow of the Manhattan Institute. He's a member of the Board Advisors of Young America's Foundation. He's a Novak Fellow at the Fund for American Studies. The reason why I wanted you to come on the show today, Daniel, is because you are a loud proponent of immigration. You speak very positively about immigration. You speak very eloquently about the power of immigration.
00:00:58
Speaker
And your unique voice on the right that really stands for those values. And so I wanted to talk to you a bit to kick off the conversation about the power of open immigration and your story. And in order to do that, I wanted to actually stream a photo of one of your tweets that went viral.
00:01:18
Speaker
a couple years ago. Actually, maybe it was last year. So let me just kick us off by showing our audience this tweet. I think this is a very interesting tweet. Not to put you on the spot by showing the photo, but you did share it online. I was going to say, so obviously, this is, yeah, so read it for the audience. This is a picture of me at 14. You went to Miami with your parents, and you asked them to take a picture of you with food in the grocery store.
00:01:45
Speaker
Coming from Venezuela, which I know is your background, this is something that I think really puts into perspective the perspective that first immigration immigrants have on the United States and the power of free market capitalism. And what I just wanted to kick us off with, Daniel, was just ask you about your story. And maybe for the sake of our audience, give us some context on kind of what brought you to the United States, your background in Venezuela, and just kind of what brought you into this conversation about immigration.
00:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, very related actually to what brought me to the conversation of immigration is that my grandparents in Venezuela were immigrants too. They immigrated to Venezuela from Spain and from Italy in the 50s. And, you know, they had very little education and
00:02:29
Speaker
very little money when they got there, and they ended up doing very well. Over time, he became middle class. On the dad side, the Italian, he became actually really, really rich, and then bankrupt, and then really, really rich again. Really interesting story there. Eventually, what happened was that my parents were born, they went to college, and they had me.
00:02:51
Speaker
And I lived in a very good family relatively. We had a gas station, that's the business that my parents dedicated themselves to, where maybe we made $4,000, $3,000 a month in the early 2000s. And eventually by 2016, the last year I lived in Venezuela, we were making $100 a month.
00:03:10
Speaker
And so our standard of living really declined significantly in my lifetime, both financially but also socially, right? Because it became so dangerous in the country that it was difficult to go out, you know, live in your teenage years. I wouldn't be able to go to a party at night by the end of it and we would just host them during the daylight or sleep in your friend's place. Everybody would sleep rather than be picked up by their parents or live on their own.
00:03:39
Speaker
because it would be too risky to leave at night. And so that's basically what happened during my lifetime.
Venezuela's Economic Decline
00:03:48
Speaker
I was very blessed in that we had some foresight and I started learning English when I was younger and that allowed me to eventually apply for colleges. I got a Fulbright scholarship then I moved to Indiana and that's how I left Venezuela. My parents stayed
00:04:03
Speaker
And then they left a year and a half later in 2017 to go to Spain. And that's where they are now. Most of my family has left now. Very few really are left. They live in Spain and Italy.
00:04:18
Speaker
Okay. So, you know, for the sake of our audience, it might be an interesting commentary specifically to go back to your childhood experience. Now, correct me if I'm wrong on the timeline, but obviously Venezuela was historically one of the wealthiest countries in South America. They were at economic powerhouse in the late 20th century. And what I gather now, correct me on the timeline is,
00:04:40
Speaker
You were born into effectively the beginning of that decline, right? It was right in the 80s and 90s when everything started to tip into effectively socialist authoritarianism and nationalization of industry. A lot of these other things that caused the downturn.
00:04:57
Speaker
And I'm curious if we could start with that conversation. I mean, as somebody who saw this decline firsthand, I'm curious as to whether or not you could kind of provide me some commentary on what you think the components were that led to Venezuela's effectively collapse, economic collapse. Do you have any commentary for me on that from a firsthand experience?
00:05:19
Speaker
Yes, well, you know, certainly Venezuela, when I was born in 1999, it was the richest country in Latin America. That's just, you know, the factor among the major countries. I'm not sure there was an island that was richer and became an islands or something like that.
00:05:35
Speaker
And that meant that Venezuelans were able to buy a lot of things from everywhere. You know, the Venezuelans would go to Colombia and buy things and the Colombians would actually be immigrant workers in Venezuela and would be maids and watchmen of buildings who would be the immigrants who would come to Venezuela and do those things. You would see a lot of people from the Caribbean countries, they would man ice cream carts that would go around the neighborhoods and everybody, you know, every country of origin had their own industry basically.
00:06:03
Speaker
So Venezuela was like that. And then gradually, as we got poorer, because Chavez got elected in December of 98, he became president in February of 99, a month after I was born, and over time, you know, nationalization of agriculture, that was one of the first steps, banking, manufacturing, other factories,
00:06:29
Speaker
Eventually that destroyed every business he touched. He would walk around the cities and point at people's buildings and take them over. His famous quote was expropiese, which means expropriated, and it's not yours anymore. They also didn't compensate you if they took over your property.
00:06:47
Speaker
And, you know, obviously that meant nobody else invested. A few smart companies left early. My parents remembering the city in which we lived. Fiat had a factory, which today is part of Chrysler, Fiat Chrysler.
00:07:03
Speaker
The same year that Chavez was in office, they closed down the factory and fired everybody and left and sold it. And everybody thought that was really radical, because the reality is that at the start, nobody thought it would get this bad. Nobody was going to make a political bet on their company, on their life, when they thought, you know, Chavez is going to live in a few years, somebody else will get elected, and yeah, things will be bad temporarily, but everything will come back.
00:07:29
Speaker
And that's not what happened. What happened is that they perpetuated themselves in power, and our economy was obliterated. Obliterated, I'm telling you. Today, Venezuela has the standard of living of the 19th century. It's lack of electricity. It's lack of water. It's having to line up for food. It's depending on remittances from abroad. Thankfully, for the remittances from abroad, otherwise more people will have left or more people will have starved.
00:07:59
Speaker
Yeah that's incredibly disturbing and you know I think it's one of the things about Venezuela that I think is why it serves as such a powerful example is you've got a country there that was, as you mentioned, an economic powerhouse and then due to a set of
00:08:15
Speaker
political policies effectively, electing a political leader, it was literally sent back 250 years, right, in standard of living. And so, I want to map that to today and talk a little bit about, you know, how that can apply today.
Comparisons to U.S. Economic Trends
00:08:32
Speaker
But before I do that, I'm curious as to whether or not as somebody that's as well, you know, knowledgeable in the history here, as you are,
00:08:38
Speaker
If you could point to what you think led to Maduro initially. Were there any sort of things that you felt like this is what led him into power and caused that to begin?
00:08:54
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's very clear. You see the economic history of Venezuela. Venezuela became a democracy in 1958, before that it was a series of military regimes over time or attempts at democracy. And after that, the state started growing gradually much more when it became democratic, simply because people were willing to vote other leaders in.
00:09:17
Speaker
that were promised the more handouts, the oil money contributed to that, but really was oil nationalization in the 70s that gave the state so much power to redistribute. And the economy stagnated after the 1970s. In fact, the top GDP per capita in Venezuelan history was in the mid to late 70s.
00:09:38
Speaker
It was not in the 90s. It was mid to late 70s. But we were so rich already that we were still the richest country in America 20 years later, despite no growth. That is how much ahead we were already. And I think that that stagnation of the 70s until the 90s is what allowed people to permit themselves to vote for somebody like Chavez, who had attended a coup. People forget, here in the US, Chavez was already well-known in Venezuela by the time he got elected.
00:10:08
Speaker
because he tried to overthrow the government. He was in the military, and he went to jail. The problem is that Chavez was pardoned by the following president. He got out of prison, and then it's that he campaigned in one office. Now, I think that in any circumstance, voting for a killer, a traitor, somebody who tried to overthrow democracy is unacceptable, no matter the ideology, right?
00:10:34
Speaker
But a lot of Venezuelans didn't. A lot of Venezuelans didn't vote either in that election. And it's what happens in every country. It's a vocal minority that gets, you know, its voice heard and they win and they punished all of us, the future generations, with their bad choice.
00:10:55
Speaker
Yeah, disturbing. And I think there are some crazy parallels that can be applied to really any country in the United States. So let me ask this then. So let's just frame it then. Economic powerhouse, 70s led to stagnation. Stagnation led to, would you say, populism, effectively economic populism, nationalization. Well, the populism led to the stagnation.
00:11:21
Speaker
The populism led to the stagnation and then what happened is that the population was willing to vote for an even more radical socialist after that stagnation.
00:11:36
Speaker
Understood, understood. So the parallels are powerful. So then do you see any parallels as it pertains to today in the United States among young people? I mean, I think there are a lot of characteristics that I could say map over. I mean, we've seen a bit of economic stagnation. I think we've seen great growth. But obviously in certain areas around the country, there's definitely been economic stagnation, which I think has led to populism.
00:12:00
Speaker
You know, I would also say that I'm hearing things that concern me around economic, like economic populist narratives around nationalizing industry. I mean, I've heard, we hear a lot about that off and on. But can you say that you see anything that you maybe, you or your family saw growing up, that you'd say, well, this is the same thing I'm seeing in today's politics? And how do you think those things matter? Yeah, well, a lot of things, actually. Well, you know, number one,
00:12:30
Speaker
The big problem that I think we're facing is exactly that. It's that stagnation that makes people feel like they need to vote for somebody like Chavez. And you see it in the young people with the student loan issue and let's just vote for the guy who's going to forgive everything for us and give us our handouts.
00:12:46
Speaker
President Biden was talking about giving people tax credits and handouts for now, the homeowner debt. So, you know, like if everything's going to be free, then we're just going to bring the money and everything. We're all going to go bankrupt. That's what's going to happen. You can't make everything free. And I think that that's the path we're going on. Everything must be all right. Everything must be government provided. The government is here to fix all your problems, from your happiness to your debt.
00:13:15
Speaker
to all your family issues. And so that's what concerns me. And then the other parallel that I see really is after COVID-19 with inflation, we saw from the left blaming the inflation on greed and business owners. That's the same thing Chavez did when his policies cost inflation.
00:13:37
Speaker
And so I don't think that's something we should be doing. And what concerns me too is from the right is the push to grow government in order to fix some of the problems that we think exist. You know, I don't think government is the solution almost ever really the problems we face.
00:13:55
Speaker
And we need to be very careful because there's a lot of bad people who are able to then use those tools against us in the government. And that's what happened. If Chavez hadn't had the oil industry naturalized by the time he got into power, then he wouldn't have been able to do as much damage.
00:14:12
Speaker
And so separation of powers is very important. That's something that Chavez destroyed by packing the Supreme Court, initially in his term, indoctrinating the military, rewriting the Constitution. So this is why I really care about the rule of law, the separation of powers, and these issues.
00:14:33
Speaker
Yeah, I think a lot of Americans, especially a lot of American young people, don't really understand how novel functioning institutions are. And that's one of the reasons why I appreciate. So in my work, I've spent a lot of time talking to people overseas, and I've spent a lot of time talking to first-generation immigrants. And I feel like people like yourself have a really good understanding of
00:14:53
Speaker
how bad things can get without that. And that I think is an incredibly powerful thing to mention. So, you know, I think you did touch on it. One of the things that I see is I see a rising threat of socialism or socialist policies both on the left and the right, which I think you touched on. You know, I've hearing things about nationalizing pet industries on both sides. I mean, on the left,
00:15:15
Speaker
We hear about corporate handouts to their pet industries. On the right, we hear about corporate handouts to their pet industries. I've heard things about, you know, nationalizing media from the right, which is really concerning. And I've also heard some things on the left. Obviously, we know about what happened during COVID, which was, you know, definitely in many cases an assault on free speech.
00:15:37
Speaker
So, do you see that same thing? I mean, I know that socialism, one of the things that I think is a dynamic that a lot of people aren't aware of is I see socialism as definitely a left threat, right? It's a threat that comes from the left, and I think you're completely on point trying to educate young people about that. But I also see kind of socialist tendencies
00:15:58
Speaker
brewing on the right, especially when it comes to protectionism and many of the things that we touched on earlier. Do you see that same threat? Do you see them as equivalent? Do you see maybe one side as more dangerous than the other? Kind of how do you feel about this, what new vein of right-wing politics that's kind of embracing some of those traditionally socialist economic solutions?
00:16:22
Speaker
Well, you know, I think the sad reality or the sad reality will be that we will get both at the same time and we will get both at the same time. I wish it was just like, oh, maybe we're just going to get the protectionist and the one from the right, or we're just going to get the left wing one. But no, we're going to get both because we're going to have
00:16:44
Speaker
The Democrats wanted to raise their taxes and increase their regulations. And we're going to have the Republicans closing our trade, stopping high skilled immigration, and giving handouts to the companies they like, agriculture or manufacturing or the steel industry. And the real productive forces of our economy are going to be crushed. They're going to be crushed under the weight of government and under the weight of restrictionism from trade and immigration.
00:17:13
Speaker
And that's what scares me, because that's going to lead to a stagnant US economy. And if that happens for long enough, and we become like, say, Europe, then maybe we will end up electing somebody who will just end up destroying it, not even stagnating it. And that's what really concerns me. I want America to stay prosperous, because if people, you know, especially young people, if they're making a lot of money, they have money to pay their debt, they have money to buy a house, they have money to do things well,
00:17:42
Speaker
they're not going to be worried about electing people who are promising handouts because they're doing well in their personal lives. And that's what we want.
Immigration Policies and Challenges
00:17:53
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's a part of the reason why we started Project Liberal was because we want to see a political movement that's nonpartisan that kind of unites people around truly classical liberal liberal ideas. And one of the things that we strongly believe, and I know you and I are on the same page with this one, is economic prosperity as an engine is incredibly powerful. Not only to fight populism and fight a lot of these dangerous elements,
00:18:19
Speaker
But if you can lift everyone up or as a rising tide lifts all ships, that is something that needs to happen. And it's something that can only really happen if you embrace truly liberal economic policies of deregulation and property rights and free trade and all these other things that have led to Americans' prosperity. So I think that's really powerful. One of the things, though, that you touched on, and I think this is a good pivot into the next section, is immigration.
00:18:43
Speaker
A lot of people, especially on the right, look at immigration as a threat to economic prosperity or a threat, at least in the minimum, to their individual livelihood. And one of the things that I was looking at the other day, there was a graph floating around that showed projections of population in the United States. And it was a projection of, hey, if we cut off immigration today and just let birth rates handle it, we'd see a population decline. And they had all these different categorizations of low, medium, and high immigration.
00:19:13
Speaker
But one of the things that I thought was powerful about that image and that chart that was floating around was that if you cut off all immigration, which it seems like many on the far right want to do right now, you would not only lead to economic stagnation in a lot of ways, but you would lead to a decline in population, which is going to lead to a decline in GDP and a decline in economic growth. So I am curious as to how you have this conversation with people on the right and maybe what reasons
00:19:41
Speaker
do you use to make a case for immigration? Obviously, we can argue the devil's in the details on how much immigration, but I think we all agree there needs to be more. We need to be letting people in, come into work, and it's a good thing for our economy. How do you handle those conversations with people on the right? Because I know you do this a lot. Yeah. Well, number one, we have to understand what motivates the organizations that are pushing against all immigration. It's very different from what motivates the public.
00:20:09
Speaker
the organizations in their right, if you want to call them on the right, I don't think they're actually conservative, but they're actually environmentalist organizations, Joshua. They do believe in population control and they want fewer Americans and fewer humans.
00:20:26
Speaker
because they think the planet is a threat from overpopulation. That's how the organizations against immigration began. In fact, there's an organization called Negative Population Growth that sponsors ads against immigration. That's literally their name, Negative Population Growth. The Center for Immigration Studies is fair. I mean, all these organizations were funded by the same people and they all just want fewer human beings to the point that they even have advocated in the past for
00:20:52
Speaker
the U.S. government giving taxpayer dollars to abort babies in Central America so that fewer Central Americans immigrate to the United States. So it's insane what they believe in. And it's not conservative, it's not pro-life. And so, you know, I'm definitely for humans. I want more humanity.
00:21:12
Speaker
I'm skeptical about the fertility policy questions because I'm not sure about their effectiveness. I think if there was a government policy that wasn't really proven to be highly effective, I would solve the demographic crisis, I would support it. But I haven't seen any of that yet. And the issue with immigration is not as much, and this is what I tell people, it's not as much the how many, but the who.
00:21:38
Speaker
Right? Nobody wants criminals to come to the United States. And what's happening today is that we have a huge uncontrolled and unvetted inflow of people into the United States. Now, most of those people are just people who want to work, just people fleeing, suffering and poverty. But a few of those people are violent, savage criminals or bad people. People we don't want in the United States. People like the one that killed Lake and Riley.
00:22:07
Speaker
People like the shoplifters in New York City. And those people should not be let in and should be quickly removed once they are proven to be bad. And the problem is that the Democrats have undermined support for immigration by supporting those bad cases that are really not representative of immigrants, right?
00:22:30
Speaker
And so once we get that out of the way, I think immigration would be much more positively seen. And then it's all about the who, right? Most people don't know this, but about half of the legal immigration inflow in 2019 was the spouses and kids of Americans and legal permanent residents.
00:22:49
Speaker
Are you going to stop legal husbands and wives and minor children of these people? That's already half. And then the highly skilled portion of the immigrant inflow is very small. It's very, very small. We're talking about a few tens of thousands a year. We're talking about 0.0.
00:23:08
Speaker
zero something of our population a year. So I want many more high-skilled immigrants to come, people like Elon Musk who came here, students, and they had H-1B visas. People forget, the richest man in America was an H-1B visa. Isn't that incredible?
00:23:24
Speaker
So we need more of that, and I think that that changes people's minds when you hear that. Most Republicans, most conservatives are not against all immigration. They're not even against high-skilled immigration at all. They just are upset about what's happening at the border. They're upset, and I do understand this also about who.
00:23:45
Speaker
Are we going to let in a lot of people who don't speak English, who are going to receive welfare benefits paid for by democratic states and or live in the street? And so once you get away with the argument of open borders, which I don't support, you know, I don't really support full free migration, but I do support highly expanded from the status quo, especially for highly skilled people. I want people to come here sponsored to work orderly by plane.
00:24:13
Speaker
and people to be repelled at the border if they don't have authorization in a humane way, right? That's the other part that really concerns me is that the border has become so uncontrolled that there are people on the right now advocating for inhumane things at the border, like shooting at migrants, like killing them. And I think that that's unacceptable in any case because America is not North Korea. Nobody should be shot at for being unarmed and just trying to seek a better life.
00:24:46
Speaker
Yeah, no, absolutely powerful and you're completely correct. One of the things that I see, you know, I am curious as to how you navigate these conversations with people on the right because one of the things that I see is
00:25:00
Speaker
The problem with immigration is more of a problem with economic incentives and systems. So, I mean, one of the reasons why people are so willing to come over the border illegally, put their lives at risk, put their families' lives at risk is because there is no real coherent legal path for most people.
00:25:20
Speaker
And a lot of people, as I think you've lived in your life, are fleeing authoritarianism, they're fleeing socialism, they're fleeing a dangerous environment. And I can tell you as a parent of two sons, if I was living in an environment where I was unable to feed my kids or afraid that they might get hurt, I would drop everything just like how many of these people would to try to get to somewhere where I could have safety and security.
00:25:46
Speaker
And I think that the thing that causes me so much frustration is I do agree with you. The left is far over corrected. I mean, I like to say I'm open borders, but I'm open borders in the sense of the Ellis Island model. We should allow people to come in and get work visas. We should track people that are coming in and make sure that they're not criminals and they're not carrying disease. Put them through a legal port of entry and kind of give them a coherent path. And as you mentioned, if they are
00:26:12
Speaker
Violent or they're criminal then deport them and you can track them as long as you have them come through some sort of legal means To register when they come in and I think that solves the incentive problem, but on the right I see I see what's really like a dangerous spiral I see they are unwilling or unable to solve the system's problem right because they're they're so against
00:26:33
Speaker
You know, you and I might disagree on this, but I think there are xenophobic elements that kind of drive some of the sentiment there. They're against immigration influxes to the point that they want to restrict immigration, even if it's like, say, through a work permit. And then when the issue gets out of control, which it will because of economic factors, they then go to extreme positions like we need to shoot protesters, we need to invade Mexico, we need to put a wall up and have patrol all the time.
00:27:00
Speaker
eminent domain to build the wall, right, things like that. So, you know, do you agree with me that it's a systems problem first and foremost? And if so, how do you think we can kind of get that across to people on the right? Because I think if they could truly understand and wrap their mind around the economics of the situation, it would really help us both come to find a middle ground on how to solve the problem and actually fix the problem that we all have.
00:27:23
Speaker
Yeah, so several things. Number one, most people are highly uninformed about immigration policy and the border. Most people think, and I talked with people on social media all the time about this, they think Biden can just sign an executive order or close the border and everything will be solved if we just sign a few papers. That is not true. That is false. That's not going to happen. Trump had a ton of illegal immigration, more on average than Obama did.
00:27:50
Speaker
In fact, I think conservatives gave too much trouble to Obama. I think Obama was the best president on illegal immigration in a very long time, deporting a lot of criminals and securing the border. So that is the truth about what happened under Obama, whether you think he caused it or not. And so what concerns me is that people don't understand the incentives of the system. You mentioned that people come here because they can make more money and have a better life.
00:28:20
Speaker
Now, I do think the US should restrict the entry of people who just show up to the US border. Now, you'll say, well, we should just let them in legally. Well, but not really, because even if you have a generous legal process to be sponsored, it doesn't mean that most people are going to follow it. A lot of people just won't have a sponsor. A lot of people just don't know English, have very little education and very little money, and they just won't do it.
00:28:48
Speaker
And I think the U.S.
Pragmatic Immigration Solutions
00:28:50
Speaker
would be right to restrict their entry either through physical barriers or through deporting them once they show up. And if you don't do that, then they're going to keep showing up. If they know they're going to be let in, they're going to show up, and that's what's happening today at the border. They know that they're going to have to wait eight or even ten years to receive an asylum hearing.
00:29:12
Speaker
And that's what Biden was saying in the State of the Union. They know they're going to wait. And so why wouldn't they show up? That means that's an eight to 10 year work visa. That's what that means.
00:29:22
Speaker
So if you can do that, if we don't fix that, then we're going to keep having the border problems. And instead, the Republicans in the House proposed a budget that cuts immigration court budgets. It courts the number of judges and lawyers that process asylum requests, which in my opinion, we should be calling that out as amnesty, because they don't want asylum cases to be decided, which means nobody can get deported.
00:29:48
Speaker
A lot of people think Trump gets elected, he's going to be able to deport all these illegal immigrants who came under Biden. They are not going to be deported. Not even if he builds his deportation force, because they have pending court cases. They can't be deported until their court case is decided, which means it's after Trump leaves office. So this is not an easy problem.
00:30:10
Speaker
People also need to understand some other things. The legal system is really messed up for the people who they do want to come into the United States. How is it possible that the wife of an American has to wait years to receive a visa to come here?
00:30:25
Speaker
That's unacceptable. And then they'll use that as an argument, right? On the right. Well, but my wife had to wait three years and then these people are just crossing the border. Well, number one, your wife shouldn't have waited three years. You should be criticizing the government, not the illegal immigrants.
00:30:41
Speaker
And then number two, yes, I don't want illegal immigrants to come, but the question is how, right? And we need to be pragmatic. We will always have some level of illegal immigration. What we want to do is minimize it, and we want to maximize the number of highly skilled people who can contribute.
00:31:03
Speaker
Yeah, that makes sense to me. And I think that there's a lot of solutions you laid out that absolutely could go a long way in solving the problem. Do you, so are you kind of a proponent of, are you, do you, I guess, to go back to the maybe the open borders distinction, are you, are you, how do you feel just from your perspective grappling this with this on the right?
00:31:25
Speaker
of the idea of effectively allowing a work permit system where really anyone that wants to come in as long as they pass a screen can come in. I mean, do you see a hazard or harm with that? I mean, we're talking about not green cards, not citizenship. Obviously, simply come through report entry. If you want to work, you can work. As somebody who's researched this a lot, how do you feel about that proposal?
00:31:47
Speaker
Well, I wouldn't agree with just giving people a work permit who show up. I think, well, regards with permanent immigration, I think you only want really people who are going to be highly skilled coming permanently and the spouses and kids of Americans. And you generally want young people, not old people, so that they don't receive Social Security and Medicare.
00:32:07
Speaker
But with temporary migration, I think it should be much more liberalized, but it should be employer-sponsored. So something like what we have with the H-2A visa. There are no caps on the number of agricultural workers in the United States. The problem is that it's only seasonal, so year-round farms are not allowed to sponsor
00:32:27
Speaker
H2A visas. So I think we should give out many more H2As, H2B visas, and H1B visas. But that means that you have to be sponsored by an employer in the United States before you come here. It doesn't mean you can't show up at the border and be let in. I don't think anybody should be able to do that. And that's important, Joshua, because we can't vet everybody.
00:32:50
Speaker
because you can't vet somebody from Venezuela really very well. Because those governments of many countries that live in Venezuela don't share criminal information with the United States. So you don't know really if somebody's a criminal. But the employers in America are not going to be hiring
00:33:06
Speaker
gang members to come, right? And that allows you to really, you know, set yourself, you know, I wouldn't have been admitted to a university if I didn't pass an interview and pass the TOEFL and all these, you know, barriers that make it difficult for a criminal and a bad person to get through. And so that's what we need. A much more generous, liberal, low cost, efficient employer
00:33:32
Speaker
sponsored immigration system for the temporary workers uh... but that also means that there's a lot of people who are still going to show up because they can't find an employer and they think they can just try their luck showing up at the border and we have to be strong about stopping them do you think that we need uh... have serious reforms and specifically to the asylum process and basically in the status quo that as it exists now uh... comment like it to address the
00:34:00
Speaker
You know, one way, and a lot of people say, we can just do what other countries do in that we just, like Canada, you don't give asylum at people who cross illegally the border. That doesn't happen in Canada. You have to come here on a visa and then apply. I'm not sure that that's the solution because people are still going to show up and then they're going to try to evade capture. I think the solution is you're going to need to invest a lot of money in detention facilities at the border.
00:34:28
Speaker
and you're going to have to decide cases very quickly, maybe in a matter of weeks, in which case it's fair to detain somebody for a few weeks. It's not fair to detain somebody for five years who didn't commit a crime.
00:34:42
Speaker
that you'll detain them for a few weeks, decide their asylum case. If they're approved, welcome to the United States. You are approved asylum seeker, and in a year you apply for your green card. If you're rejected, you are immediately deported. And that's the only solution. The problem is that it's going to cost a lot of money because we probably will need 200,000 bets. And that's a lot of bets.
00:35:03
Speaker
Yeah, and that's not even to consider the, as you mentioned a second ago, the courts, you know, making sure we have judges to even the process they request and assess them and vet them through that process, so that all makes sense to me. Okay, well then let's pivot, you know, I have one more question on immigration, but I do want to kind of pivot to a broader commentary about authoritarianism, specifically to shine a light on the dissident project and learn a little bit more about what you're doing there. But before I do that, and I think this is a good kind of segue,
00:35:29
Speaker
You know, how do you feel like we can encourage empathy and understanding towards immigrants and refugees right now? Because I feel like we're incredibly politically polarized. I feel like immigrants are dehumanized. I see on the far right, you know, as you mentioned, people threatening to shoot people crossing the border, you know, and there's still the dehumanization that happens on the far left for different reasons. But I am curious as to, like,
00:35:53
Speaker
How do you grapple with that challenge, the dehumanization of people? I think it's a really big threat because the first step to take away somebody's rights and to really hurt them is to dehumanize them. Do you have any thoughts overall on how to grapple with that challenge right now in this time of polarization? Yeah, I really dislike when people are offensive just for the sake of being offensive.
00:36:15
Speaker
I think that the best way to win an enemy is to do that. And, you know, obviously, just for political reasons, it's a bad thing, right? I mean, I think we should be speaking positively of others in general and be good examples in our lives. I think that that's what the Christian thing to do.
00:36:33
Speaker
A lot of people on the right today think that they're cool by just sounding strong or offensive and I don't think that's right. No, that doesn't mean they have the right to do it. I fully believe in that. But I think it's bad politically and it's not a Christian thing. I think we're called to love our neighbor.
00:36:54
Speaker
and also to love specifically the foreign and the refugee and the person seeking asylum, actually. And even if you think it's a false claim from among those people, look, I've interviewed some of the migrants in New York City. I have nothing but compassion for them, even if I think they shouldn't be in the United States.
00:37:13
Speaker
And I would never say that they're bad people or anything like that. But I would also be pragmatic about these things. A lot of people think deportation is free. We can just enforce the law. Enforcing the law costs money. An average deportation costs about 15K to the US government. So really, we shouldn't be deporting people who don't think are going to cost 15K in damages over the rest of their lives here. We shouldn't. This is just a cost-benefit analysis.
00:37:42
Speaker
And so we have to be pragmatic, and we have to be kind to others, and that would be so good for the conservative movement. Imagine how many more votes from immigrants the Republicans would get if they just spoke more positively of immigrants, not even changing policies. And I think candidates in Florida have understood that. In Miami, we have Mario Vira Salazar, whose district was tied between Biden and Trump in 2020.
00:38:08
Speaker
was a much more heavily Clinton district in 2016, and she won by 20 points at the same time Trump tied it. 20 points! It is the most foreign-born district in the United States, her district. Over half of the population who lived there was born outside the United States.
00:38:25
Speaker
She appeals to those people. She appeals to people like me from Venezuela because she stands up for freedom abroad and for freedom at home. And a lot of immigrants care about what happens in their home countries. They care about what the US thinks of that. And they care that you are not somebody who's going to stop them or their family members from living peaceful lives in the United States or call them whatever name.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, I'm also in the same boat as you. I really would like to see more of this tolerance mindset from people on the right, and I'd like to see less dehumanization. A lot of that really causes me a major amount of concern.
00:39:09
Speaker
I know that if we're if we're just boiling human beings down to numbers or calling them, you know, just referencing them as illegals or referencing them all as criminals, it really does. It could result some extremely dangerous policies that could. Well, I'll tell you, I think and so I do think you're right. I think if there was a.
00:39:27
Speaker
Yeah, sorry. From the State of the Union, Joshua, a lot of Democrats criticized Biden for saying illegal. I wouldn't criticize him for saying that at all. Simple because, I mean, he was referring to a killer. And I think it's totally fine to dehumanize a killer. We're not talking about criticizing the general population. I also don't think the term illegal immigrant is necessarily a dehumanizing term.
00:39:52
Speaker
I wouldn't call them criminals, all of them, because I don't think they all committed a crime. Actually, objectively, not all of them committed a crime. But I would be careful, I like to use the term unauthorized because that's what it really is, but I would be careful about
00:40:13
Speaker
You know, it's not so much about the term. I think it's mostly about the intention. And I know that, you know, a lot of people say, well, what matters is the consequences, not the intentions. Actually, for personal relationships, the intention is what matters. Because when you're saying something offensive to a friend or saying something that you don't like, you don't care about what they said. You care whether they did it with the intent to do it badly. So I think intentions do matter.
00:40:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think that makes sense and we could. Yeah, we could absolutely go back and forth on the on the illegal issue. I think your point makes sense to me, you know, but in in a sheet you're right. He caught a. He caught a lot of heat about that last night. That was like the topic I saw blow up once the state of the Union ended.
00:40:55
Speaker
But no, to the point that I was going on a second ago, I do think that if we could create a movement that was a center-right movement that was welcoming towards immigration, at least in rhetoric, and was providing true, coherent solutions to fix the problem of illegal immigration, that solved the core
The Dissident Project's Mission
00:41:14
Speaker
incentive issues and the economic considerations that are driving this.
00:41:17
Speaker
I think it would be an incredibly powerful political force. So that's why I'm a big fan of yours. I think you kind of exemplify that on the right. And I think that if more Republicans embrace that approach, they would do way better electorally, especially in a lot of places around the world where there's a high immigrant population. So I think you're completely correct.
00:41:36
Speaker
I do want to ask you then, let's talk about the dissident project a little bit and we can still touch on authoritarianism, but one of the things you know, I read through this project and I know you're the founder of this organization. What I gather from this and correct me if I'm wrong, maybe you can frame what this project is and how you approach this conversation is you've seen firsthand the impact of authoritarianism on your life and your family's lives and the people that you've interacted with and I think
00:42:00
Speaker
You want to try to avoid that by telling and humanizing that in a way to young people that really makes them think twice about supporting those types of policies. Can you tell me a little bit more about what led you to start the dissident project and what led you to feel like this was an important thing to do?
00:42:15
Speaker
Yes, well, actually, just this morning, I spoke at a middle school and a high school in southwest Florida in Naples. That's where I'm at. And I was talking through this project to the children. And what began this was that I got connected to a teacher in Massachusetts who sponsored one of my talks and wanted me to speak. This didn't exist. We were just connected by a foundation. And the foundation wasn't going to pay for the expenses.
00:42:44
Speaker
And I, you know, it would cost hundreds of dollars just to get me there and then my time and everything, right? The hotel if I needed one. And the teacher just offered to pay for it all herself. So I didn't charge for my time. I didn't charge for a hotel. I went on a train to Boston from New York City and then came back and did Uber too. And it cost a lot of money between the train and the Uber. But, you know, I did a lot of effort on my personal part to not charge a hotel and time even though I lost 24 hours.
00:43:14
Speaker
And I spoke to the kids there and I found it so fulfilling and so impactful on their lives too, that all the questions they had about Venezuela and socialism and they had never talked about it in school or anything like that before, that I thought every kid in America should really have the experience of being grateful.
00:43:37
Speaker
for living in America. And they are not because they don't know what happens in the rest of the world and as a consequence they fall trapped to these failed ideas that have destroyed so many lives in so many nations, right? Like my family, like so many families. And so because we can send Americans to other countries to experience it themselves, it would be expensive and dangerous, we can send the immigrants who already live here and have experienced it to them directly. And so that's how the idea of this project came about in my mind. I started in the
00:44:07
Speaker
officially in the summer of 2022 so we've been this is our second year academic year in operation and it's gone really well the first year we spoke to you know about 30 50 to 30 to 50 high schools this year we're speaking to about 70 high schools
00:44:24
Speaker
So we're growing. We're bringing in new speakers. Now we have 12. We're going to be probably 15, 16 next year from many countries, from Hong Kong and Iran to Eritrea, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela. We want to bring different forms of authoritarianism. So we're looking for new countries all the time, maybe a Russian who opposes Putin, maybe somebody from Nicaragua that we don't have anybody. So those kinds of things are important.
00:44:55
Speaker
And it's a beautiful thing. I think the students ask a lot of questions. They ask about politicians. We don't make it partisan because for me it's not a partisan thing. I think it's totally fine if people believe in bigger government.
00:45:10
Speaker
What it is, is giving them the facts about how private property is a requirement for freedom and freedom of enterprise is required for prosperity. Whether you believe we should be like Sweden and I explain what they actually do, I do explain that. That's a different question.
00:45:30
Speaker
Yeah. And actually the Scandinavian countries are a great example of that. I was actually, I was talking to somebody about this the other day. You know, I think young people always say, Oh, look at Scandinavia. They're socialist country. And when you look at them on the economic freedom index, they're far higher than even the United States. They just have a large welfare state. And as long as people, I think it's incredibly important, as you mentioned, if young people can understand the important private property rights and free enterprise, free trade, and the ability to kind of build your way out of poverty,
00:45:59
Speaker
will be good. So I think that's an incredibly powerful and important thing to be doing. I'm glad you did that. One of the things I'd also say, and I'm going to be taking this in mind when I raise my kids, is there was nothing that really contextualized the value of America and the uniqueness of the American experiment for me, like traveling abroad.
00:46:19
Speaker
And I think that's an incredibly powerful tool. If you can get young people, I love the idea that you're trying to bring them face to face with people who have lived experiences of authoritarianism, because that's incredibly powerful. The only other thing would be getting them, as you mentioned, out of the country. Because I think that will really change your mind once you can kind of understand how unique America is on the global stage.
00:46:39
Speaker
But Daniel, we are getting close to time. I want to pivot in. Sorry, the only people that want to get to Venezuela are the members of Congress who love Cuba and Venezuela and Iran and all these countries. Them, I'm very happy to take them there and risk their lives. That's their problem. They praise it, so they should live it.
00:46:59
Speaker
Yeah, that's a good point. So what I was going to take us here to kind of close this out was talk a bit about the threat of authoritarianism in general. So obviously you spent a lot of time thinking about this, a lot of time talking about this. You and I got into a back and forth on Twitter the other day because I think I was going after Christian nationalists.
00:47:20
Speaker
I'll give you a little bit of context on my background, Daniel. I think I mentioned this before we went live. I was raised in a very Pentecostal environment. So I was raised in an environment where I was homeschooled, K through 12. I was kind of in a very, we'd say it was a pretty extreme condition where I wasn't kind of exposed to narratives outside of the Pentecostal Orthodoxy.
Influence of Religion on Politics
00:47:48
Speaker
And I saw firsthand the mindset of a lot of people kind of in the Christian nationalist movement because I was basically part of that when I was younger. Now my family's no longer done this. We've learned a lot of lessons. This is not an indictment on my family at all. They gave me a great education. It was just a little bit Christian centric. So I grew up and now I'm more on the agnostic side.
00:48:08
Speaker
as an adult, and I see a lot of the things I saw as a kid where there's this mindset in what I say in this kind of even in the far right evangelical community where they kind of think, hey, we need to enforce our moral worldview through law. And for a long time, I saw this as something that was kind of an unsaid truth. Like it wasn't something where people were in your face about it. It was just kind of something that people knew deep down. And that's how it was when I was growing up. It was like people at church would be like,
00:48:37
Speaker
You know, we really should outlaw people being blasphemous towards the Bible, right? But they never go and say that publicly. Just be kind of a wink, wink, nudge, nudge. But now with MAGA and with the rise of what this new republicanism is, I think heritage has been kind of courting people like Victor Orban and things like that. I see a lot of the stuff that I used to hear whispers at church about when I was younger kind of being publicly talked about.
00:49:07
Speaker
Like I know we may disagree on the issue of abortion, but that was one of the things we talked about banning IVF. I've heard some politicians at least at the state level talk about criminalizing homosexuality, banning sex change operations, things like that. So I posted a tweet the other day about how I think that they're very similar to these things that motivate the Islamic theocrats. It's like we have a worldview, a moral framework, and we want to apply that through coercive law because we believe it should be done.
00:49:36
Speaker
And I think you and I had a back and forth on that. And I'm curious as to whether or not you have any commentary on that. Do you feel like that's a real threat, like Christian nationalism through the American experiment? And kind of how do you approach this issue or think about it? So no, I don't think it's a threat like the Christian part. The nationalist part, I think, is a threat. But let's be realistic here. I mean, do you think Trump is the moral force of Christianity that's going to enforce morality in the United States? Trump?
00:50:06
Speaker
or the other part of MAGA, Marjorie Taylor Greene, essentially getting divorced now. And Lauren Boebert, the one that you know, I mean, you know who we're talking about. These are not the examples of ethics that we want to teach for children. So I'm not really concerned about them because I don't think they believe it, these specific politicians. But I am very Catholic. I do believe that the, I mean, at the end, the state doesn't force some sort of morality.
00:50:35
Speaker
I mean, murder is illegal because it is wrong. Why is it wrong? Because we're all made in the image of God, and we all have equal rights because of that. I do think it is the role of government to protect us from each other, not necessarily to enforce religion. But the whole concept of protecting us from each other and free will comes from Christianity.
00:50:58
Speaker
That is also why Christianity is very different from Islamic societies in general. But I think that what was unfair about comparing and I think that that was the
00:51:09
Speaker
the issue with your tweet, Josh, comparing the Speaker of the House with the Islamics, like terrorists, is that? Yeah, look, I don't think Trump or the people who call themselves MAGA are any type of representatives of Christianity. I don't think they are in their personal lives, and they certainly most of the time don't even believe
00:51:33
Speaker
in those things. So I'm not concerned about the government enforcing Christian values. If anything, I'm concerned about the government persecuting Christians. I mean, we have people who have been put in jail by the FBI for showing up at abortion clinics or for protesting, you know, these things.
00:51:49
Speaker
And so I think that that's very dangerous. We have had the FBI actually persecute traditional Catholics who go to Latin Mass. And look, I don't go to Latin Mass because I like to understand what I'm listening to. But I think if people want to do it, that's their religious freedom. And so I'm not concerned of it as a threat. And I think that my disagreement with what you said came from you comparing the Speaker of the House with Islamic terrorists. I think that that was the comparison.
00:52:20
Speaker
And of course, I think that that's an unfair comparison. I mean, the Speaker of the House didn't kill anybody. The Islamic terrorists that you were comparing them did. And even if you believe that his ideas are bad, it's not the same thing. You can't compare it. It's like me trying to, you know,
00:52:37
Speaker
Well I guess you could say I compare Bernie Sanders to Hugo Chavez right and Chavez killed people and Bernie Sanders didn't because he believes in the same ideas and I imagine that's the vein of what you're saying. I do think it's different because you come out with the
00:52:56
Speaker
idea that the government is not to enforce any morality, then what is the government there for? I mean, we do think the government is here to protect us from each other, from violence, because we think that's moral. But what if somebody else has a different moral system where they don't think violence is immoral, they don't think your life has any worth?
00:53:15
Speaker
like, say, an Islamic terrorist who believes that non-Islamics don't have any worth, and you are actually going to heaven by killing the infidels. We don't believe in that in Christianity. So Christian morality is the foundation, really, of the United States, whether or not somebody's Christian living here. I don't think the government is here to impose the faith on people. The founders obviously discarded that.
00:53:42
Speaker
But I do think the government is here to protect our right to life and property. And where I think we may disagree with is in how, right? There also the other controversy has been with what's starting schools, right? You know that the left is saying
00:53:58
Speaker
conservatives just want to ban books or whatever. Look, I've seen the books that they're banning, and these are not appropriate books for children. And they're not really being banned, right? Anybody can buy these books for their kids. They're just not being shown up in the high school library.
00:54:15
Speaker
which is not censorship, because high schools do choose what to teach. And look, in my ideal world, we wouldn't have public schools, so that wouldn't be a problem, because the government wouldn't be involved. Everything would be private. But we're not in my ideal world, and as long as the government is involved, they're going to need to choose a curriculum. And it's the same thing with laws, right? We think murder is immoral.
00:54:37
Speaker
And I will not say the IVF issues a new one for the right, but look, I'm Catholic, and I do believe in the Church's doctrine on reproductive freedom, which means it is a life from conception, and IVF is not the moral way to bring people into the world.
00:54:59
Speaker
And I will have a lot of people who disagree with me, probably the overwhelming majority of the population for this. I'm not going to outright say the government should ban it. But I think that if we were consistent about being pro-life from conception to natural death, that's what it actually implies. And I do believe in life from conception to natural death.
00:55:25
Speaker
Yeah, we could talk about the abortion one for another hour. But so the interest of time, I won't get too much into the weeds on that. And I will say this because I do want to address a couple of the points you made. The first thing I'll say is I actually I I can understand the moral argument or really the
00:55:41
Speaker
So as a libertarian or somebody's libertarian, a classical liberal, I kind of look at things through the framework of aggression and violence. So your commentary on murder, for example, I don't necessarily think murder is wrong because of some sort of abstract god or moral principle. I think it's wrong because it causes harm to someone else. That's the reason why I would criminalize it. In the same way, I could see you applying that same framework to abortion.
00:56:05
Speaker
If you believe that a life is a life at the moment of conception, then I could see that framework being applied. I understand that argument. I don't agree with that argument, but I get it. I won't even pick you on that one because I think you and I will probably be on two different sides. But I do want to go back to the first point you made just to frame things for me. I frame things on my perspective here. You're right. Trump, Boebert,
00:56:33
Speaker
Marjorie Taylor Greene are not the pinnacle of moral authority by any means, but I actually see them as almost more dangerous because of two things. The first thing is they don't seem to have any sort of principles or moral guidance.
00:56:49
Speaker
They seem to be driven kind of by, sometimes animus, you know, they seem to be rudderless from a principal's perspective, and I think that's dangerous. The second thing that I add to that is you do have people within on the right right now, especially major organizations like Heritage, for example, that are working to, you know, embed the operatives and the effectively the bureaucrats that are going to be the ones that do the day-to-day work within a MAGA administration.
00:57:18
Speaker
And a lot of these people are on the side of enforcing Christian values and Christian morality through law.
00:57:25
Speaker
Now, again, you're right, the devil's in the details on how that's applied. But I think that the fact that there doesn't seem to be any sort of principled framework on how to look at law from their perspective, and you pair that with the fact that their base is very Christian nationalist and that their operatives are very Christian nationalist, I think you're going to result in a situation where the political incentives drive them towards that, even if they personally disagree. I mean, you're right. Trump is a
00:57:49
Speaker
multiple divorcee. He's never been the pinnacle of moral authority. And so, so that's the way I look at it. I mean, you and I can agree to disagree on that one, but I so I see that as a big threat. And you're right. I think that I was going to make the point that you made for me about the connection between Chavez and Bernie Sanders. Obviously, Bernie Sanders
00:58:09
Speaker
is not trying to initiate a coup against the government or kill people, but he operates with the same mindset and the same framework of ideas in the sense that he believes in socialist values applied through law are going to, that's what he's trying to do, right? And that will lead to the same results that Chavez created. I will just say that, you know, you mentioned, you know, your framework is about aggression, right? And you think aggression is wrong. I also think aggression is wrong. Sure.
00:58:34
Speaker
But that is a framework that the government, a moral framework that you want the government to enforce. Somebody can have a different moral framework. And so the argument against Christian nationalism should not be moral relativism because no moral framework works. So I do believe that we should have religious freedom and all of that, but at the end we're all trying to enforce our own version of morality through the government.
00:59:01
Speaker
And so that's important to understand. We do just disagree about the version of morality, and that's totally fair. And in fact, I will tell you about, you mentioned the Heritage Foundation and the project of embedding bureaucrats. I'm worried not because of the strategy, I'm worried because of the policies, especially in immigration and trade, and now in economics that it's becoming more left-wing.
00:59:23
Speaker
I'm worried because I wish it was actually Christian, but it's not, right? You know, like stopping all immigrants from coming from a country is not a Christian biblical point of view or whatever. Like, so I'm concerned about the policies, not necessarily the strategy. Yeah.
00:59:45
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's a really good way to put it. I actually have some friends that I've interacted with in our space that are very, very devout Christians. And one of the things that they say to me is, effectively, the application of Christian nationalism is a bastardization of the preaching of Christ in many contexts, because it's effectively saying it's a rejection of a lot of the things that Jesus taught.
01:00:12
Speaker
So I think that's an interesting thing. And I never really thought about the immigration side, but I think that's a whole other angle that I haven't thought about. But I definitely think there's something to that. One of the other things that I think I will say, and I'll say this just to put it out there, is I don't think that the United States is a overtly Christian nation in the sense that it is a, you know, Christianity sits at the center of our law, but I do agree with you that Christian moral framework
01:00:39
Speaker
led the founders to write.
01:00:43
Speaker
the Constitution in the way that it did. I mean, we live, the people that, the Judeo-Christian ideas did have some sort of influence on classical
Conservatism and Moral Values
01:00:51
Speaker
liberal thought. There's no way you could argue that. And I think where we come into now is just, are you going to be enforcing your viewpoint morally through the coercive force of the state? And actually, that's inherently against Christian teaching in a lot of ways. I mean, Christ was not about violently enforcing his views. That's an Islamic view. So that's something you see at the time.
01:01:12
Speaker
Yeah, I think that that's a fair – that's a very fair counter-argument. So yes, while I do think the U.S. benefited from being so Christian early on, and that's why he actually became disprosperous, because it was that Christian framework that led to freedom of enterprise and the constitution and so many things.
01:01:37
Speaker
And I do think it's worrisome because I'm Catholic of the decline in religion in the United States and the world. And I do think that it may become our ultimate demise because once the vast majority of the population does not agree on a moral framework,
01:01:54
Speaker
then we are going to have a lot of problems because people are going to try to enforce different moral frameworks on each other. And that's what we're seeing. And so, you know, that concerns me. I think the social issues, a lot of them concern me. You know, you mentioned cross-sex. I mean, we could talk a lot about all of this. But the point is, you know, we're not going to persuade people of Christianity by forcing them. That's for sure.
01:02:19
Speaker
And I don't want to do that. I want to persuade them and I want to be very persuasive about it. And I think in general for conservatives and what I tell people is
01:02:30
Speaker
There's, for most liberals, they don't have a conservative friend, if you see most polls. Most liberals really, I think there was one poll about dating, and it was like, half of women say they would never date a Trump supporter or something like that. And for many, it was communists. So they're smarter. I also wouldn't date a communist. And the important thing,
01:02:56
Speaker
Yeah, of course. I wouldn't be a problem, you know. If I wanted to, I would have to stay in Venezuela, right? And so the reason this is important is because if we can be good examples, if we can be good people in our own personal lives,
01:03:11
Speaker
If we can be kind people to others, if we can be persuasive when we speak, then we can make a difference just by debunking the myth that conservatives are some sort of crazy people. Most are not. And if you meet them and if they get a chance to meet liberals,
01:03:29
Speaker
Things can, you can really change people's minds. And that's part of what the appeal of the decision project is. Because you bring in the perspective of immigrants directly to students who are told lies about Venezuela, about Cuba. I went to a classroom, Josh, where they had a picture of Che Guevara.
01:03:48
Speaker
in a public school in the United States. I went to a classroom where some of the kids asked me, this is in a different school, whether the CIA destroyed Venezuela. They believed the lies. And so we can debunk those things directly by showing up and talking, rather than staying home and not doing anything about it.
01:04:09
Speaker
Yeah, no, well said, well said. And I'll start taking this out. I want to add two things to the points you just made. The first one is I could not agree more with you. Now, we probably disagree on the moral framework thing, because as an agnostic, I don't think you need to have necessarily a religion to be moral. But that's a whole other conversation.
01:04:26
Speaker
But I will agree with you that if the people on the extreme, on the Christian nationalist side, are able to enforce their religion, I think it will only exacerbate the decline of religion in the country. And I think it will do great harm to that. And again, many of my good friends are
01:04:45
Speaker
are Christian and reject that. So I'm glad to hear that there's, you know, it's definitely not the majority. It's a fringe minority of the country that want to do this. So it doesn't represent all of conservatives. And to your point about liberals, I, framing things for Project Liberal, one of the things we're trying to do is I see that the left is abandoning the word liberal and accepting terms like socialist, communist, progressive, leftist.
01:05:08
Speaker
And in many ways, I like to say, you know, liberals need to take the word back. That's why we started the project. Classical liberals need to take the word back. And so, yeah, make that distinction just on the comments.
01:05:23
Speaker
No, no, no. And that's not an indictment of you. I'm just saying that out loud. We're trying to fight this battle. So I do think it's an interesting thing. Because one of the things I'm seeing is there's a civil war going on on the left.
Future Political Landscape
01:05:33
Speaker
There's a civil war going on on the right. And one of the things that I respect about you, one of the reasons why, what are you having in the show, is I see that there are liberal conservatives, truly people that accept liberal values that are conservatives. I think you're one of them. And there are liberal Democrats. There are people that are acceptance of liberal values, but are on the left.
01:05:50
Speaker
And so the whole goal for us is to find a way to kind of bring those people together for a movement. So I've truly enjoyed. Thank you. Thank you. And you should look into the New York City Council because that's where that battle in the left really shows up the most because the majority of the overwhelming majority of the New York City Council are Democrats. But a lot of them joined the Republicans into what's called the common sense
01:06:14
Speaker
solutions or something like that, caucus, and oppose the progressive Democrats, who are still the majority, by the way. The progressives, even though they are not all Democrats, they have more than 50% of the seats in the city council, and that's what's stopping the major from doing a lot of common sense reforms.
01:06:30
Speaker
They are the people who are for defunding the police, for the homeless out of control, the crime stuff, the trash, all of that. And so I think that in a lot of American cities, there's a big opportunity for really common sense liberals on the left, on the right to come together and say, no.
01:06:50
Speaker
We need some things that should not be partisan, like trash collection and policing. Yeah. No, and that is effectively the idea here. I think that if we could find a way to have effectively what is a pro-liberal value, moderate center,
01:07:08
Speaker
coherently organized, the far extremes, they are fringe minorities. So they would be completely irrelevant overnight if there was a way coherently from an electoral perspective to bring this coalition together. And I'm going to tell you right now, I think that this is very possible in the next decade, mainly because really the only, and I'm not a fan of Joe Biden, but like the only remaining
01:07:35
Speaker
Like, Joe Biden represents this kind of milk toast, pro-capitalist Democrat. He's going to be the last of his kind, right? I think that progressives are on track to fully co-op the Democratic Party and pull it very far left. In the same way that I saw what MAGA Republicans did to the Republican Party in 2016. And I think that this could be the last election where we kind of have that option. And we could be going into 2028 with two really extreme polarizing candidates.
01:08:04
Speaker
that reject capitalism, that kind of embrace the elements of authoritarianism and socialism in different components of their plan. And I really think there needs to be a coalition that brings people both on the left and the right that say, hey, we want to stand up for liberal values. We want to stand up for free trade, private property and capitalism, and social tolerance to try to exert political influence.
01:08:25
Speaker
And so we'll see. It's a gamble. We'll see how it works. But that's effectively what we're trying to do. And I'd love to have you part of that. I think we have a lot of shared ideas. I really like that you're taking back the name liberal. I think that's a good thing. Milton Friedman used to describe himself as a liberal in the classical sense. I do think Joe Biden is
01:08:46
Speaker
more symbolically, like what you're saying, but in practice has been pulled to the left and his administration is staffed by people like that that have really pulled it to the left. And that's the problem, right? At the end, it's all about the staffing, not about the president himself, like we mentioned before.
01:09:02
Speaker
And so, yeah, you know, it's important to build that coalition. I think Nikki Haley represented that on the Republican primary, you know, a positive vision for freedom. In general, just the optimism part I think is really highly correlated to these ideas.
01:09:19
Speaker
And that's important because it's not even that we disagree on solutions, it's that we even diagnose a different problem. I don't agree with this saying, oh, American wages have been stagnant since the 70s. That's false. If we can't agree on the basic facts of the matter, then how are we going to agree on solutions?
01:09:43
Speaker
No, you could not be more correct. And that sits at the center of what we at the board of directors have talked about, is articulating a positive vision for the future and celebrating our wins is extremely important. And operating on a set framework of facts, because again, you cannot solve a problem unless you understand the problem. And the first step is understanding the problem. It's not trying to shove some sort of demagogue solution down people's throats. So that's incredibly dangerous, both on the left and the right.
Daniel's Current Work and Future Plans
01:10:12
Speaker
That's, yeah, incredibly powerful. Daniel, I'm glad to have you as a voice. I really enjoy seeing what you tweet, what you talk about, what you fight for. I will ask you to take us out. Is there anything that you'd like to plug or maybe push in our audience or tell them maybe where they can go to learn more about what you do? Yes.
01:10:28
Speaker
Yes, so well first they should definitely check out the dissident project and you can go to dissidentproject.org and if you're a teacher, you're a parent, you are a high school student, you can bring any of our speakers at no cost to you to your high school or middle school.
01:10:45
Speaker
and hear the experiences of different types. Maybe you are interested in the religious oppression of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Maybe you're interested in somebody who escaped North Korea and suffered tremendously for years in China with being deported back and then coming to America.
01:11:03
Speaker
Maybe you want to hear from me. Maybe you want to hear from a Cuban who was a stowaway on a plane, and that's actually got to the United States. So we have really cool stories that I think will make kids appreciate being in America. And so dissidentpride.org is what I will plug in. If you want to follow me, go to my Twitter at Daniel DeMartino. I do a lot of things with the Manhattan Institute on Immigration. And I'm very proud of that work and finishing up my PhD soon, maybe at a university.
01:11:34
Speaker
Godspeed, my friend. I know that's a long road, so I'm glad to hear you're at the end of it. I know you're going to do big things in the future. I would love to have you back anytime. But again, thank you for your time, Daniel. And if you guys want to learn more about Project Liberal, follow us on Twitter at Project Liberal. You can check out projectliberal.org. We are a political pact that's dedicated to resurrecting the values of true liberalism in American politics. So we'd love to have you part of the team. Daniel, thank you again. Have a wonderful afternoon. Likewise.