Leadership Lessons From The Great Books

Leadership Lessons From The Great Books #97 - Malcolm X Speaks: Selected Speeches and Statements. George Breitman, ed. w/Dorollo Nixon
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00:00 Welcome and Introduction - Discussion of Malcolm X's speeches and Statements with Dorollo Nixon.
02:00 "Black Revolution" by Malcolm X.
06:30 The Literary Life of Malcolm X.
08:43 Malcolm X's Impact on Leadership Culture.
14:52 The Split in Black American Culture We All Live With.
16:19 Separatist Movements in the United States of America.
24:27 "The Ballot or the Bullet" by Malcolm X.
30:23 Ballots, Bullets, and Black Lives Mattering: 60 Years on from Victory.
35:55 Lack of Moral Force in Post-Modern Leadership.
39:06 Heading to a Ukrainian War Rally.
42:59 Leadership Gains Moral Authority from True Religion not from the Media.
53:12 From Jerry Maguire to The Wire: It's Hard to "Sell" Revolution to Post-Modern Black Americans.
55:34 "It is a Long Way from Heaven to Here." - Bubs, The Wire.
01:04:04 Larry Bird and the 1988 NBA 3-Point Shootout.
01:08:00 Malcolm X's Transformation with Orthodox Islam.
01:12:55 "Mrs. Fani Lou Hamer" by Malcolm X.
01:16:42 The Invisible Man Must Exit the Basement to Become Malcolm X.
01:25:06 Leaders Change Requires Sacrifice.
01:30:12 Leaders: Learn and Apply Wisdom from the Words of Malcolm X.
01:33:03 Leadership Lessons from Malcolm X's Life and Work.
01:39:53 Islam and House of Peace vs. House of War.
01:42:38 Staying on the Leadership Path with Malcolm X's Speeches and Statements.
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Opening theme composed by Brian Sanyshyn of Brian Sanyshyn Music.
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Creators & Guests

Host
Jesan Sorrells
CEO of HSCT Publishing, home of Leadership ToolBox and LeadingKeys
Guest
Dorollo Nixon Jr
"We are all born mad. Some remain so." Samuel Beckett
Producer
Leadership Toolbox
The home of Leadership ToolBox, LeaderBuzz, and LeadingKeys. Leadership Lessons From The Great Books podcast link here: https://t.co/3VmtjgqTUz

What is Leadership Lessons From The Great Books?

Because understanding great literature is better than trying to read and understand (yet) another business book, Leadership Lessons From The Great Books leverages insights from the GREAT BOOKS of the Western canon to explain, dissect, and analyze leadership best practices for the post-modern leader.

Hello. My name is Jesan Sorrells, and this is the

Leadership Lessons for the Great Books podcast, episode

number 97.

With our book today, a collection

of of what are publicly available,

speeches and statements from the lips of a man who once

said quite rightly that, quote,

revolutions are based on land. Revolutions overturn

systems. Of course, when the revolution

is over, then the immortal lines of Juan Miranda from the

film Duck, You Sucker or A Fistful of Dynamite from

19 seventies, then become a little more accurate.

And I quote directly from a fistful of dynamite,

The people who read the books go to the people who can't read the books,

the poor people would say, we have to have a change. So the poor people

make the change. And then the people who read the books, they sit around the

big polished tables and they talk and talk and talk and eat and eat and

eat and eat and eat and eat and eat. But what has happened to the

poor people? They are dead, close

quote. This orator and

revolutionary from the 19 sixties

stood precariously between the revolution and what happened

after the revolution as the heir to the

ideas of Marcus Garvey and the revolutionary grandfather

to Eldridge Cleaver. We Libby

joined on this revolutionary journey to explore

this man's speeches and statements at the close of Black

History Month in the United States with our returning

guest and sparring partner, from episode number 94,

where we covered Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, Dorollo

Nixon junior. Welcome to the podcast, Dorollo.

How are you doing today? You, sir. Pleasure to be here as always.

Alright. And so we will be looking at Malcolm x

Speaks. We'll be looking at several different,

several different speeches. We're kinda gonna be moving around as we, as

we go through his speeches, and we'll be talking about

well, we'll be talking about revolution. We'll be talking about the literary life

of Malcolm x, and we'll be talking about we're gonna

talk about what happens after you win

the revolution because that's when the hard part, the

less romantic part really starts to kick in. And

there are lessons for leaders inside of that. So

from, Malcolm X's speech, the Black

Revolution, This was a speech that was delivered,

at a meeting sponsored by the Militant Labor Forum at Palm

Gardens in New York, on April 8,

1964. Malcolm X said, and I

quote, so today when the black man starts reaching out for what America

says are his rights, the black man feels that he is within his rights when

he becomes the victim of brutality by those who are depriving him of his rights

to do whatever is necessary to protect himself. An example of

this was taking place last night in the same time in Cleveland, where the police

were putting water hoses on our people there and also throwing tear gas at them.

And they met a hail of stones, a hail of rocks, a hail of bricks.

A couple of weeks ago in Jacksonville, Florida, a young teenage Negro was

throwing Molotov cocktails. Well, Negroes

didn't do this 10 years ago, but what you should learn from this is that

they are waking up. It was stones yesterday, Molotov cocktails

today. It will be hand grenades tomorrow and wherever else is available the next

day. The seriousness of the situation must be faced up Tom, you should not feel

that I am inciting someone to violence. I'm

only warning of the powder kegs situation. You could take it or leave it. If

you take the warning, perhaps you can still save yourself. But if you ignore it

or ridicule it, well, death is already at your doorstep. There are

22,000,000 African Americans who are ready to fight for independence right

here. When I say fight for independence right here, I don't mean any nonviolent

fight or turn the other cheek fight. Those days are gone. Those days are over.

George if George Washington didn't get independence for his country nonviolently, and if

Patrick Henry didn't come up with a nonviolent statement, and you taught me to look

upon them as patriots and heroes, then it's time for you to realize that I

have studied your books well.

1964 will see the Negro revolt evolve and merge into the

worldwide black revolution that has been taking place on this earth since

1945. The so called revolt will be come a real

black revolution. Now the black revolution has been

taking place in Africa and Asia and Latin America. When I say black, I mean

nonwhite, black, brown, red, or yellow. Our brothers and sisters in Asia who were

colonized by the Europeans, our brothers and sisters in Africa who were colonized by the

Europeans. And in Latin America, the peasants who were colonized by the Europeans have

been involved in a struggle since 1945 to get the colonialists or

the colonizing powers, the Europeans off their land

out of their country. This is a real

revolution. Revolution is always based on land.

Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee.

Revolutions are never fought by turning the other cheek. Revolutions are never based upon love

your enemy and pray for those who spitefully use you. And revolutions are never

waged seeing we shall overcome. Revolutions are based upon

bloodshed. Revolutions are never compromising. Revolutions are never based upon

negotiations. Revolutions are never based upon any kind of tokenism whatsoever.

Revolutions are never even based upon that which is begging a corrupt society or corrupt

system to accept us into it. Revolutions

overturn systems. And there is no system on this

earth who just proven itself more corrupt, more criminal than this system that in

1964 still colonizes 22,000,000 African Americans still in

slaves, 22,000,000 Afro Americans.

There was no system more corrupt than a system that represents itself as the example

of freedom, the example of democracy. I could go all over this earth telling other

people how to straighten out their house when you have citizens of

this country who have to use bullets if they want to

cast a ballot.

Malcolm x, by the way, x

was the name that he chose. We'll talk a little bit about

that in a minute. Malcolm X born Malcolm

literature, on May 19, 2025

died February 21, 1965 was an American Muslim

minister. And according to Wikipedia, anyway, a human

rights activist. And he definitely

was one of the most colorful figures of the black American

civil rights movement in the fifties sixties.

By the way, he was portrayed by Denzel Washington in a burning

performance given under direction of Spike Lee in the 19

nineties. Malcolm spent his adolescence living in a

series of foster homes with relatives after his father's death and his mother's hospitalization.

He committed various crimes being sentenced to 8 to 10 years in prison

in 1946 for larceny and burglary. In

prison, he joined the nation of Islam adopting the name Malcolm x to

symbolize his unknown African ancestral surname while

discarding the quote, white slave master name of Little.

Malcolm x advocated black empowerment and a separation of black and white

Americans and was very critical of Martin Luther King

Junior and the mainstream civil rights movement for its emphasis on nonviolence,

which you heard in that piece that I read and racial integration.

By the way, if you live by the revolution, you die by

it. And Malcolm X did indeed

get assassinated on February 21, 1965.

Allegedly, there's still some murkiness on this

by members of the Nation of Islam,

some of Elijah Muhammad's books. Even though Elijah Muhammad

claimed all the way to the end of his life, he never laid a

hand on Malcolm x.

Well, that's also really good rhetoric then, right, since he wasn't

ever accused of being one of the actual assassins. So,

you know, as soon as I hear that as a lawyer, it makes me smile

because I just say, well, that's that's actually well put. That doesn't tell us much

though other than that you weren't in the room. You could send

the people in the room, but you weren't in the room. Okay. Okay.

Not that I'm accusing him of having x killed. No.

No. Not that I'm accusing him of that. No. Besides,

we're not here. Had him killed. Somebody had him killed. We're not

here to engage in slander. We're here to, well,

we're here to talk about the impact of Malcolm X on black culture and politics

in America. So let's start there. I think there is

a direct line from

the not, not the intellectual leaders from there's

a direct line from Marcus Garvey

to Malcolm X to Black Lives Matters, particularly the the shock troops

of Black Lives Matter, of BLM, the ones who were

burning down cities, you know, a few years ago.

And so

what do we do with Malcolm X? What do we do with Book? How do

how do we I I I and I've hesitated to kind of touch on him

on this show because he is so incendiary,

but what the heck? Why not? Writers. So what do you what do you think

about what we think about Malcolm X? What do you think about Malcolm X? What

how should leaders think about Malcolm X? Because the he is taught in

school as a revolutionary leader that was

full of revolutionary Elon.

And they sort of skip over the parts about the violence

and the calls to action that he was

making, and I I think that's rather convenient. At least, that's that's my

thinking. Yeah. Joint meetings with Nazis.

Yep. They don't mention that. They don't mention any of that. His

penchant for, his snack his favorite snack food, of course,

it was crackers. Right? Mhmm. So Right. His whole pension for that whole thing.

Right. Anyway, well, so I I'm glad you did because I think

it's inevitable. I mean, from my perspective, he was like

gasoline on a fire or nitroglycerin into an engine for the civil

rights movement. He showed up with a very in a very different spirit with a

very different energy, with some high claims

and with brilliant rhetoric that he used to expose

some of the basic propositions, at work in

America and some of the fundamental

his word would be hypocrisy, right, or chicanery,

that was used to deprive so many black men and women

of the exercise of their rights. Mhmm. Right?

And so I think if America were a system that just

oppressed black people and didn't have any rhetoric about equality and justice and

freedom and liberty, his approach would be similar, but there would be

less rhetoric and more shooting. Mhmm. We need to get free.

This is not a free system, so we're gonna overthrow it. You know? The challenge

part of the the challenge for him

was being able to use a system that is being

misused against, himself and against

our people to then get it to perform

better. You know? One of the lines he said in more than one speech

was directed at white members of the audience where he said, book, If

this makes you uncomfortable, fine. You go tell the mayor to stop sending police

dogs, you know, attacking, you know, black protesters, and then it

will stop. And then you don't have to feel uncomfortable. And if you don't, your

kids will grow up and look at you and point a finger and say shame.

And I I think it's actually a very valid point,

where, you know, there's an illicit permission

from the white majority for what went

on 40s 50s 60s to to for

that to continue that had to be there.

You know if we back up, you know, almost 200 years before

that, right Mhmm. The illicit permission

was withdrawn. And the majority, you know, in

America, the majority of the colonists supported a revolution against

the oppressive powers of the British parliament, in the name of

King George the 3rd. So, you know, that that elicit

that that not elicit, that tacit permission.

Okay? That unspoken, that silent majority's willingness

or unwillingness to to stand up and take action,

is very powerful. You know, it's very powerful. And it also will help

address, you know, a later point that you're gonna ask that I won't raise

now because we're gonna address it later. But so, you know, I think

throwing gasoline on a fire, putting nitrous in an engine, this is what he

brought. And, of course, another way of putting it is he's Archie

Guevara. Right? He's the guy in the t shirts. You don't have you don't have

King on a t shirt. You don't. Okay? With the fist and everything. Gets

this and the pendants. And, I mean, I used to have, like, an African pendant.

Like, the nineties was big. It was like the seventies, late sixties readers. So I

remember wearing that. The dashiki, I remember when I got one in middle

school. My parents gave me one. I remember that. You know?

And I think that was slightly before that movie came out. And it's, yeah,

it's definitely one of my favorite performances by Denzel Washington.

I would take that over training day 7 days out of 7. Yeah. Training day

was the movie that Denzel promised us he wasn't gonna do. Like, that's the movie

he that's exactly the movie he promised. That's that and that's where I I realized

Denzel, well, Denzel's really just an

actor. Like, at the end of the day, like, we have to we have to

I'm not taking anything away from his acting. Mhmm. But at the end of the

day, he is an actor. So he's not

he's not a Well, he's not a revolutionary. We know that. Not a revolutionary.

No. He's not. No. He's not a revolutionary. Not a revolutionary. Yeah. I think my

next performance would be the one, where he did Steven Biko. I

didn't know who Biko was. No. And we watched that in school, and

it was very moving. He did an excellent job, an excellent

job. And,

he he helped dramatize, you know,

another system where racial oppression had dog's teeth

and not rubber bullets. And so, you know,

Well, and this is this is the thing with to it as they should. So

Well, this is the thing with Malcolm x. So Malcolm x

is assassinated in 1965. Right?

You have the riots of the late sixties, then

you have the the the

the black Panther party and Eldridge leaders and

Soul on Ice and all them boys come out in the seventies.

Mhmm. And then a weird thing happens, and I wanna talk about this a little

bit early. But a weird thing happens where

black culture splits between and I'm

gonna use 2 different types here. It's split split splits between

Bill Cosby before we knew who he was and the Claire Huxtable line of the

black of black book. And and then and then you get into

and then it splits between that and the more lower class

rap culture, hip hop culture that eventually winds up, washes up on the

shores of NWA and all those boys in the nineties. Right?

New Jack Libby, NWA, boys in the hood, all of that. Right? And

black culture visibly splits in America in a post

Malcolm x world.

My question here is, and I'm gonna ask you a what if,

would black culture have split if Malcolm x hadn't gotten

assassinated?

Because it did visibly split. But it's it's

to me, it's tough because

and, I mean, it's almost a cobble. There's just too many variables, but here's what

I mean. Right. Yeah. Would he have succeeded in his

revolution? Would he have succeeded in forming some kind

of separatist black community of

actual size somewhere in the United States? You know?

Like, a version of the free state of Jones. Right? Something like that. And there's

actually a book I wanna find that talks about various of those

separatist movements because there's more than 1. And I found that I find it I

found it fascinating just learning that because I I didn't know that. But, anyway, so

would would would they have succeeded? You know? And and who knows where it would

have been because I mean, he was certainly an urban creature. Correct?

Writers. You know, he's not Not just he's not out farming.

It's just, you know, I just don't

I get no sense from reading his words that he had much of an

understanding despite what he said about Texas and Mississippi of how life is in Texas

and Mississippi for blacks to live in rural areas. Therefore, it's hard for

me to picture, you know, his revolution producing something

like separatism, excuse me, within, you know,

urban spaces, certainly back east, right, rather than a

colony in the desert, like, where I am, something like that. But, you know, that's

so that's one of the questions. Would it have been successful? Okay. Assume it

would, but on what scale? And and we can't tell what scale. Then,

you know, are we also assuming are we assuming he survives, but king still

dies? Right? Kennedy still dies. And so that means

that, you know, this great because, I

mean, that was a decade it's a decade where our fathers were killed.

Okay? 2 Kennedy's king and x slain.

Okay? Because the changes they were pushing for,

people didn't wanna have, and people were willing to kill them and

did. And so those changes didn't happen followed

by, you know, drug malaise filled seventies

disillusionment. Right? And so it's gonna get to a point that you still

haven't readers, technically, but it's coming because I It's coming. Readers in

the script. But it it's, you know, drugs being part of the answer to that

question. So it's just like, you know, would

that would that split, that shift, you know, still have happened?

Probably. I mean, going back to

Invisible Man. Right? The Well well, what's weird is that yeah. Go ahead.

Well, what's weird is Eldridge Cleaver Mhmm. Turned

out to be a republican Uh-huh. After he got out of, like

after he after he went through all the stuff with the Black Panthers, and I

I think I think, if I remember correctly, he went to prison,

You know? And he's a republican now. Mhmm. Like, I don't I

don't think people have a concept of, like, how that occurs.

Mhmm. And it occurs, I think, because of well,

it's what you it's what you said, and we're gonna talk about this. This is

the it's sort of the after we talk a little bit about his his essay

on the ballot of the or not essay, but his speech, the ballot or the

bullet. Or tie that in. But we're 50

years on from getting everything we legally, we've

gotten everything we ask for Mhmm. As as quote,

unquote black people. We've gotten everything we ask for. Matter of fact,

we got it in a way that to

paraphrase from Martin Luther King Junior, who's paraphrasing from the book of

Isaiah, justice rolled down the, you know, rolled down the, the

mountain side like water. Right? Mhmm.

I don't know that Malcolm x would have known what to do with that.

Mhmm. Revolutionaries almost never know what to do once

they win. Lenin was the only revolutionary. Lenin

and Mao too. Lenin and Mao were the 2 revolutionaries of the 20th century

who knew exactly what they wanted to do after they won the

revolution. Whole Tom, they went there

too. He was, like, number 3. Okay.

Everybody else seems to have caught by the the whole, like, a bomb. Min Ho

Chi Minh knew what to do Yeah. And arguably actually did that better

than the other people you named. Yeah. His system is still going.

His system is still going. You know? Miles is fundamentally

modified, still oppressive, but fundamentally

modified, because of the because

Deng could read the writing on the wall. Right? So and did.

But yeah. I so I know what you Jesan. But so the examples I thought

of, though, revolutionaries who actually did have a plan.

Right? Yeah. And so I guess some of this, though, will

relate to, well, is it a real revolution or not?

Okay? Because as you just quoted x saying,

right, and I'm gonna find the actual full quote

because I circled it. Yep. Revolutions overturn

systems. Okay? Revolutions overturn

systems. Okay? And so if we wanted to be technical

or narrow, a revolution is successful just by

overturning a system. So if you burn it down, great.

You know, that may actually not technically mean you overturn the system. Okay?

And certainly in a digital age, we know it wouldn't be. You destroy all the

banks in America. Well, the money isn't really the cash. So

they're okay. You know? Right. You'd have to destroy a whole lot of servers and

other things to actually damage the banking system,

And that would just be temporary anyway. So,

they overturned systems. Right? But

a true revolution overturns one system and replaces it with

another. Right? And so,

there are revolutionaries who are prepared for that next step.

It's just ironically or not, where I would expect to

find them is functioning well within institutions

that are primed to then step in as the new

model and as the new actual institution. So the 2 who came

to mind, Thomas Jefferson came to mind first. He came to mind, you know, super

early, and then Hamilton came to mind this morning where I said, oh, okay. These

were people who one fought and one governed during

our, you know, great American Revolution, which contrary to

what x actually said, they're black people who

fought in that revolution, and, you

know, very many thousands. Okay?

Because that precious germ seed

of freedom meant something,

okay, meant something to

meant something to them that they were willing to put their lives online. So I'm

not talking about people who were enslaved, who were forced to

do fighting for their masters. I'm not talking about that. And there wasn't

nearly as much of that. My understanding is it wasn't nearly as much of that

during revolutionary wars. There would have been during the civil war. Mhmm. Okay.

Or and as then as did occur during the civil war.

With that, we're gonna go back to the book. Back to,

the speeches, selected speeches and statements of

Malcolm x. So, gonna pick up

from another one of his speeches that sort of backs up

what, DiRollo and I have been talking about.

And I'm going to pick certain areas here to

read because the the whole thing Sorrells sorta hangs

together, and it is a it is a long speech. It's called the ballot

or the bullet. And this speech was delivered,

by Malcolm x, to let me go ahead

and pull this up. 10 days

after Malcolm x's declaration of independence, the

he he delivered, a, a speech, right,

in Cleveland, given at the Quarry Methodist Church on

April 3, 1964. And, Malcolm

x in the ballot or the bullet here presented many of the themes that he

had been developing as he had been,

holding and speechifying at public rallies

in Harlem. And, he was forming the ideology

of a new movement. And in the ballot or the bullet, he lays

out some of the ideas in this new

ideology. By the way, an ideology different

than that of the NAACP, and ideology different

than that of, of core, which,

oh, gosh. And and an ideology that really

began his move towards

black nationalism and black separatism. And

I quote from the ballot or the bullet. It was a black man's vote that

put the president administration in Washington DC. Your vote, your

dumb vote, your ignorant vote, your wasted vote put in an administration in

Washington DC that has seen fit to pass every kind of legislation imaginable,

saving you until last and filibustering on top of that.

And your and my leaders have the audacity to run around clapping their hands and

talk about how much progress we're making and what a good president we have. If

he wasn't good at Texas, he sure can't be good at Washington DC because Texas

is a Lynch state. It is in the same breath as Mississippi. No different. Only

the lynch you in Texas with a Texas accent and lynch you in Mississippi with

a Mississippi accent. And these Negro leaders have the audacity to go

and have some coffee in the White House with a Texan, a southern cracker. That's

all he is. And they come out and tell you and me that he's gonna

be better for us because he's from the south since he knows how to deal

with the southerners. What kind of logic is that? Let Eastland be president.

He's from the south too. He should be better able to deal with them than

Johnson. By the way, pause. The, the

president he's talking about is Lyndon Johnson. This is following the assassination

of, of, Robert I'm sorry. Robert,

John f Kennedy in November of 1963.

Back to the book, or back to the speech. In this president administration, and

they have in the house of representatives, 257 Democrats to

only 177 Republicans. They control 2

thirds of the house vote. Why can't they pass something that will help you and

me? In the senate, there are 67 senators who are the democratic

party. Only 33 of them were Republicans. Why the democrats have got the

government sewn up, and you're the one who sewn it up for them. And what

have they given you for it? 4 years in office and just now getting around

to some civil rights legislation. Just now after everything else is gone, out of the

way, they're gonna sit down now and play with you all summer long, disable giant

con game that they call filibuster. All those are in cahoots

together. Don't you ever think they're not in cahoots together? For

the man that is heading the civil rights filibuster is a man from Georgia named

Richard Russell. When Johnson became president, the first man he asked for

when he got back to Washington DC was Dickie. That's how tight they are. That's

his boy. That's his pal. That's his buddy, but they're playing that old con game.

What does it make you believe he's for you? And he's gotta fix when the

other one is so tight against you so you never have to keep his promise.

So he never has to keep his promise. So it's time in 1964 to

wake up. And when you see them coming up with that kind of conspiracy, let

them know your eyes are open and let them know you got something else that's

wide open too. It's got to be the ballot or the bullet. The ballot or

the bullet. If you're gonna use gonna be afraid to use an expression like that,

you should get out of the country. You should get back into the cotton patch.

You should get back in the alley. They get all the Negro vote, and

after they get it, the Negro gets nothing in return. And all they did

when they got to Washington was give a few big Negroes big jobs. Those big

Negroes didn't need big jobs. They already had jobs. That's camouflage. That's trickery.

That's treachery. Window dressing. I'm not trying to knock out the Democrats for

the Republicans. We'll get to them in a minute, but it is true. You put

a Democrat first, and the Democrats put you last.

Look. Look at the way it is with the alibis they use as they control

congress and the senate. What alibi do they use when you and I ask, well,

what are you gonna do to keep your promise? They blame the Dixiecrats. What is

a Dixiecrat? A Democrat. A Dixiecrats is nothing but a Democrat in

disguise. The titular head of the Democrats is also the head of the Dixiecrats because

the Dixiecrats are part of the democratic party. The democrats have never kicked

the Dixiecrats out of the party. The Dixiecrats bolted themselves once,

but the democrats did put them out. Imagine these low down southern

segregationists put the northern Democrats down. But the northern Democrats are gonna put the

Dixiecrats down. Now no. Look at that thing the way it is. They have got

a con game going on, a political con game, and you and I are in

the middle. It's time for you and me to wake up and start looking at

like what it is and trying to understand it like it is, and then we

could deal with it like it is. Now I

wanna move forward a little bit in the ballot and the bullet.

He says, I say again, I'm not anti

democrat. I'm not anti republican. I'm not anti anything. I'm just

questioning this sincerity some of the strategies that they've been using on our people by

promising them promises they don't intend to keep. When you keep the democrats in power,

you keep the dixiecrats in power. I doubt that my good brother Lomax will deny

that. A vote for a democrat is a vote for a Dixiecrat. That's why in

1964, it's time now for you and me to become more politically mature and

realize what ballot is for, what we're supposed to get when we cast a ballot.

And then if we don't cast a ballot, it's going to end up in a

situation where we're going to have to cast a bullet. It's either a ballot

or a bullet.

It's either a ballot or a bullet

in reading that speech from Malcolm X.

I, I thought the more

things change, the more they remain regrettably the same.

Mhmm. I could hear these words coming out of.

Well, I could hear these words coming out of some black lives matter

activist gesticulating on Instagram.

But what Malcolm X didn't get because he didn't fundamentally

understand, and he was playing his own game of centralization,

what he didn't understand was that all politics are local, or maybe he

did understand that. I I don't know. Even

Washington DC politics are local, which is something we don't

understand in our era. And we actually saw this and explored this

a little bit on this podcast when we read

the letters or the the essay by Theodore Roosevelt

talking about how when he was in Albany, as a

senator, back in the early part of

the 20th century, and people would come to him giving him a critique

or asking him about a bill. They would come to him

in a way that didn't respect what he did as a

politician. The trends that

began at the end of the civil war and the collapse of reconstruction

continue through to today, wherein black Americans too often

look to the ballot and political power to solve cultural issues,

which is exactly what Malcolm x, I think, was

trying to do. Now this works less and less well over the course of

time because black Americans are experiencing, as I've said before,

the long term economic, cultural and moral effects

of winning basically the revolution with the

passage of the 1968 civil rights act.

This of course gets to the question that de Rolo and I have kind of

been talking about already. What do you do after you win the revolution?

What do you do after you've cast ballots or cast

bullets?

I am troubled. I'll put this to Durolo. Durolo, I am

troubled by Malcolm x's lack of vision.

I don't think he had a vision much past the revolution. I I really don't.

And I am troubled by the fact that that

that tick seems to have been picked up by future

revolutionary movements that ape, they ape the posture of

Malcolm X, but they don't have any of the, as you put it, rhetorical

skills. Mhmm. Comments on the ballot or the

bullet? Yeah. Yeah.

And, you know, it actually if I'm not mistaken,

that's I mean, it's it's most likely his phrase, but,

there's another you're gonna pardon the expression. There's another

old Negro revolutionary Mhmm. Who I believe said

this first. Yep.

There we go. Bear with me a sec. Yep.

Yep. There we go. Got

it.

Nope. Don't want that. Where is it? Where is the good part of the

quote? There we

go. From the first, I saw no chance

of bettering the condition of the freed man, meaning the freed black man, until he

should cease to be merely a freed man and should become a citizen. And this

is a point that x also brought up. Right? The difference between

being in America and being an American and how it didn't

take any legislation for a Polish man to become an American,

but apparently book legislation for African Americans to become Americans. And

he bent in the 20th century when he was saying it, not in 19th. Anyway,

I'll pick up. I insisted that there was no safety for him nor for

anybody else in America outside the American government that to

guard, protect, and maintain his liberty, the freed man should have the ballot, that

the liberties of the American people were dependent upon the ballot box, the

jury box, and the cartridge books. That

without these, no class of people could live and flourish in this

country. And this was now the word for the hour with me and the word

to which the people of the north willingly listened when I spoke, period. Close

quote. And, of course, what I'm doing is quoting Frederick Douglass.

My fellow Rochesterian and, that great

symbol of, American freedom, black American freedom, and

opportunity in the 19th century. So, but yes.

So it's weird because I

think I think X had real vision.

He had, you know, narrow experience, but real vision. Right? And

so, he was somebody who would,

in a monolithic sense, speak of the south and then extend it to

the four corners of America. Whereas I think that the

regional differences mattered then and still mattered even today,

that the type of experience you can have and the types of types of

opportunities that are presented to you or deny you or that you can the the

fights you have to get what is yours or what you're seeking, they

don't play out the same way in the 4 corners of of America. They just

don't. And so, you know, you said all politics is local. Culture

is also local. And so those local differences

matter. They're very real differences even between between Texas, Louisiana, and

Mississippi. There's differences that are significant. Oh, yeah.

Anyway, so it it's weird, but I I

think he had vision in his real, you know,

transformative moment, of course, was when he when he went abroad. When he went

abroad and his nation

of Islam influenced thinking

encountered orthodox Islam practice in,

Makkah, Medina and Jeddah, and then in other parts of of the

world, some of which I've been Tom. Mhmm. Some of which me, the Christian, has

been to. And that that started the shift in his

thinking. One of the reasons I think you're not gonna see people on

x or whatever who will have the force

and the power of what, and this is gonna be an

interesting dangerous statement, but the force and the power of what x was saying is

he actually seemed to be racist. And thus, when he's up

there saying the truth

that sometimes he will then close with this, you know, offensive rhetoric.

It's one of the reasons it had its power. You know? And again, I I

go back to the statement that he made more than once to white

members of the audience when he was speaking like, look, you know, if if this

is actually an issue as I'm identifying it, you go to the mayor and say

Tom, sicking the police dogs on, you know, black people, and then it

will stop. And so, you know He had a problem with we shall overcome. Like,

he mentions this several times in several different speeches. He had a problem with got

to him. It really goddamn. Song really got to him.

You know? And he's got a great line about revolutions, and

they're not being singing. It's in, message to the

grassroots. You know? It's actually so in our version, it's on page 9.

Right? Yep. You don't do that in the rep this is a quote. You don't

oh, actually, I gotta back up, because you know?

No. You need a revolution. Whoever heard of a revolution where they lock

arms as reverend Klij Mhmm. Was putting out beautifully singing, we

shall overcome. You don't do that in revolution. You don't do any

singing. You're too busy swinging.

You know? And it's just like it it's funny. And on one

level, I think he makes a point. Where it bothers me is

that, that's a song of hope.

And it's a song that essays, even though

these are our darkest moments,

the we're in jail chained to a wall on death row

moments, we shall overcome. That, you know,

with God's help, we will get through and overcome

all of this opposition because we

know that when God started this great

American experiment, you know, that

freedom, liberty, and justice were what he wanted for anybody who was

there. And therefore, we will overcome.

We will succeed in overcoming all of the

machinations and filibustering and hypocrisy of our

enemies, whom we also address, of course, in his speeches. Friends and

enemies. And friends and enemies. He says that. But it's great

because we have them. Right. Do I not talk to them? He

did. You know? Well, he he also says they pray,

they're talking at Satan because they're dealing with their actual

enemy. And there's something to that to recognize. Let's not

let's let's make no bones about this. This is who I'm talking to, and this

is what I'm saying with this authority. And so he would do that. And

I mean, so much of so much of what happens, you know, now and I

mean, of course, you know, we're talking 64. He's talking about the election of 64

and ballot in the bullet. This is 60 years later.

60 years later. Right. So someone up there talking,

okay, without, you know, the real someone

up there talking other than so this is obviously my

point of view, but other than in certain limited circumstances, almost none of

which are actually systemic. You can't get up there with that

moral weight that he had and talk about, you know, the the

United States of hypocrisy. Okay? Because it wasn't it

it's not that way now. I was at a rally,

so my wife is Ukrainian. I was at a rally over the weekend in

support of Ukrainian freedom, on the 2

year anniversary of Putin's invasion of of, you know, my wife's birth

country. Anyway, one of the men up

there with a big American flag, you know, no accent in English. I

I can't obviously comment if he had an accent in Ukraine. He didn't have an

accent in English at all. It sounds like normal white man from Ohio.

Okay. Talked about this being the land of freedom

and opportunity. But opportunity, of course, is something that,

isn't presented to you on a silver platter, like John the Baptist's head

was to Herodias. You know, you have to

chase it, you have to work for it. And it's not

just black and white people now in this dialectic or

dynamic or dichotomy trying to do this. There's all these

other groups. And in one of his speeches, he lumped them all together. He said,

oh, when I say black revolution, I Jesan, not white. Okay.

The problem with that is it obscures a multipolar world. That's one of the

problems with that. Okay? And so in a multipolar

America as it were, where you have literally

several generations of success for some

Asian groups or and and listen to me talking about

groups. Asian Americans, okay, of different Sorrells,

African Americans of different Sorrells, and even within our own community as it

were. Well, but what type of

black American are you talking about? Is this an African immigrant? You know,

I was actually I was at a presentation yesterday by a

certified financial professional who's from Beridi

in East Africa. Okay? And she's doing her thing and and making her

presentation. That's great. This woman has success. She has 2 master's degrees as she told

us in her presentation. Okay? That was not the reality that x was

fighting. The reality that he was

fighting was an oppression that needed to be overthrown. And

so now that as you pointed out, okay, the revolution's conceded. Great.

Okay. So where are we? Part of

the problem that people have who get up

there with their BLM stuff is that

the we and the where is now no longer monolithic.

Okay? And so now I'm gonna jump to the point that you still

haven't raised, but I I will I will jump to that point if you let

me. Well, one second. Before you jump to that point, I wanna I wanna make

one point. I wanna make one point from that same speech where you

mentioned, and this is the the message to grassroots. And I

I highlighted something in here. It's on page 12,

at the bottom of it. And I and I wanna when I hit when I

read this, I started laughing because you talk about we shall overcome

and how that just got in his craw, and this is why it got in

his craw. And this is a fundamental religious difference between

the reverend doctor Martin Luther King Junior and

the Islamic Malcolm x.

There is nothing in our book this is from Malcolm x. There is nothing in

our book, the Quran, that teaches us to suffer peacefully.

Our religion teaches us to be intelligent, be peaceful, be courteous,

obey the law, respect everyone. But if someone puts his hand on you, send him

to the cemetery. That's a good religion. In fact, that's an old Tom

religion. That's that old time religion. That's the one that Ma and Pa used to

talk about. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, and a head

for a head, and a life for a life. That's a good religion. And nobody

resents that kind of religion being taught but a wolf who intends to make you

his meal. That right there,

I laughed out loud because you talk about the

weight of moral authority. The weight of

moral authority came in both Malcolm X

and in the reverend doctor Martin Luther King Junior

from their religion.

Mhmm. That's where the weight of their moral authority came from. You're not going to

get in a modern era 60 years leaders, you're not

going to get the weight of moral authority from entertainment

or from media or even from any form of cultural Marxism.

You're not going to get the weight. That's why BLM frittered away. That's why

all these d e I programs are frittering away. They have no

weight of moral authority because they were based on something. They are

based on things that do not know. They were based on things that

rest on other things that we don't talk about anymore.

Has to rest on something else. It cannot just

be itself. There has to be an underpinning to

it. And this is something that I think we sense

in our era and leaders sense it, but we don't actually

know how to put it into words. Mhmm. I think we struggle with how to

put it into words. And then we look back and we try to adopt the

rhetoric and adopt the pose and adopt the flash with the

substance underneath is missing. And thus, you become a copy of a copy of a

copy. You know, what is it,

Coleman Hughes? I was listening to him talk the other day. And me and Coleman,

we don't share the same religious beliefs. We we just we just don't. We're not

that guy. But he he made a point. He

said, when you go out and survey people, black and

white, and you asked them how many

black men got shot each

year before 2020, they will say

a1000. Has to be a1000.

Mhmm. It's actually when you go and look at the numbers because all these crime

statistics are reported, it's like 12

by cops. 12. Now is that good?

No. No one should be shot. All the usual book fides.

Right? All the usual things we say to sort of buffer that.

But 12? 12 is not a1000.

Where is your moral authority? And this is the thing. When you win

the revolution, you have to establish your moral authority someplace else, and

it has to be something that's gonna be old time. I would prefer it be

in you. And I would prefer it be that old time religion, that old time

Christian religion, the new Testament Christian religion, preferably if

we're going to base it on something, but it's gotta be based on that old

time religion. And that was the thing that Malcolm x

had and that many of those revolutionary leaders of the sixties

that we lionize now, that's what they had. They had religion.

And we only make that point, as

boldly as we should. Cultural Marxism isn't gonna get you there. It'll get you

it'll it'll get you into a DEI shakedown of a corporation.

Somebody will get paid, and then they'll go buy a house. By the way,

that's what all you wanna know where all the money went? The all those corporations

donated to BLM and went to go buy BLM leaders' houses.

Wow. We know this for a fact. That's a shame.

Oh. Didn't go to communities. It didn't it didn't it didn't it didn't

help people get out of prison fast or didn't do any of that crap. It

just went to go buy some cultural

Marxist Mhmm.

Who's running a grift another house.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Yeah. It's tough. It's tough because it was such a

such a powerful hashtag, And then it

then ends up, you know, spawning this movement, and then

the movement starts going in these directions. And it's like, hey. It

was book up. When you're protesting the unjust

murder of a black man by a policeman, I got you. I'm there

with you. Let's do this. Okay? Because this shouldn't happen to anybody. I don't care

what color the person is. This is not how it's supposed to go. The police

are supposed to enforce the law. They're supposed to catch people, break the law. They're

not supposed to take the law into their hands. That's one thing, but they're certainly

not supposed to break the law trying

to achieve whatever end. We got that. We got that. We got that.

I mean, the whole the whole moral

impulse behind Watergate rests on that principle

that you're there, the law binds you too. But where

does the law come from? We never we never talk about where the law comes

from. This is a worldview issue. What worldview? Doug

Wilson, the pastor Doug Wilson essays it's either Jesus

or something else. That's it. You got it. And and and we

don't my god. One of the things I wanna do on this podcast this year

is talk about and we are gonna talk about it kind of in the upcoming

months on this podcast, but worldviews really do matter. Because

everybody's walking around talking about solutions, not talking about solutions, talking about

problems. Where are we going to base our

solutions? Right. What is going to be the foundational

rock? And you're you're gonna come coming back in July to talk about the foundational

documents. Those guys, the founding

fathers, the American revolution that that even Malcolm x mentions,

it wasn't based on Islam, kids, and it wasn't

based on secular atheism. Nope. It was based on

Christianity. Rock and rib Christianity. So

George Floyd's death, while tragic,

and the other 12 black men and the other

thousands of other men from of of

other hues and colors and different

levels and degrees of melanin, their deaths, while

tragic, if we're going to protest that, we have to figure out what our worldview

is from protesting that, and it cannot be based I don't think it can be

based on a Twitter hashtag. You don't have the moral authority.

Mhmm. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Mhmm. Yep. And I get I get I get excited. I get irate about this

because it drives me absolutely nuts. It

drives me absolutely crazy. And

so it it just it does it drives you crazy. That's why I get up

on my high horse about this. Sorry. Go ahead. That's okay.

Yeah. So, one of the, you know, issues that we're gonna

address is, you know, this a line of, revolution.

Yeah. That apparently is worn out among average black people in America,

still has some purchase for elites within black culture.

Right. So, you know Claudine

Gay thinks that she's fighting a revolution, making $900,000 a year as as

the as now the former president of Harvard, and I can name other people

too. You make a 900 k a year, honey. You're not you're not fighting a

revolution. Sorry. You're you're you're not. Yep.

Yep. I hear you. So

so the question for me is oh, okay. Well, but why has that

happened? Why, why is

revolution something that

black people on any kind of

scale black people in America, on any kind of scale with few exceptions,

just don't seem to be interested in. Okay? And, of course,

there's a line, and not just a line. There's a whole

dynamic within, the movie Jerry Maguire

for which, of course, Cuba Gooding Junior got his Oscar. And I

remember my father, my late father, who used to tell me from time to time,

oh, you know, someone book me for Cuba Gooding Jr, and I used to think

that it was the craziest thing he was saying until I was standing with him

once when it happened. And I was literally so mad at the woman.

So mad. Like, how can you not see this is my

father. No. He does not like anyway,

in the movie, though Yes. His character, his brother

was still militant. He's writers, TV, we love you. He was still militant. Of course,

he's standing, doing Great. Raising fist just like I am right now, except

I'm seated raising the fist. Yeah. You know Played by the great Harry

Spears. Yeah. But even then, right, that was

one guy in a family. Right. Right. That was 1 guy in a

family. Wasn't whole households, at least in that movie. Wasn't whole

households. Right? But it's just why is that the

case? And I think there's several dynamics that explain why

even from, you know, 1968 to 19

93, you know, that's when

the shifts happened. But, even and it you can even back

up. It probably the shift was probably done sometime in the eighties. But,

anyway, but then there's several dynamics that played

out that to me help explain why

revolution doesn't really sell. You can't sell

revolution to, most black people in

the street. Right. Or in the off certainly in the office, but even in

the street. It's just it's it's it's not a thing. Here's why. I think

it's because of mass incarceration, suburbanization, and drugs.

Okay? Plus the destruction of systemic racism or most

of it in America. And then the increase in economic

success that certain, you know, black individuals and families

and communities have experienced. And so because of that,

the we is now in quotation marks and then the location

where we are the place, you know, that's also in

quotation marks because, you know, you might be able to sell it to someone

who's still ghettoized, to someone who, you know, ghettoized, grew up

in foster care, you know, is dealing with a gang, but the right

way mean they're fighting them. You could sell that person on revolution. Absolutely.

What that's much easier to do than to sell that person on

opportunity. But, you know, why is that the case? Look at that

person's experience. Look at his experience. He's a man in my head, so look at

his experience. You know, this explains why, when you teach

him that America is about freedom and opportunity, he thinks you're crazy because that's

not what he knows. And then when you take him out

of those environments, right, and you introduce him to

another environment where people invest in

him, support him, instruct and

guide him into, more mainstream

experiences in American culture, then then

there's a real revolution, but it's an internal

revolution. And all of a sudden, his whole perspective shifts

and he can see, wait a minute. This this was here

this whole time. I just had to go 35 blocks that way, but

this is here the whole time. You know? And I can

make use of this and and and and then start to do

something, give back, have an impact, and live out those values

that he now has, you know, that

accord very much with the existing American system. You

know, it's it's it fascinates me. Did you ever watch

the show The Wire on HBO? Oh, yeah.

Okay. Alright. And not I probably saw 1 or 2

episodes. Okay. Alright. I watched all 5 seasons of that

show. Wow. I am a huge I am a huge the wire

fan. Huge fan of that show. And

The Wire number 1, I don't think we're ever

gonna do something as complex and as deep as

the wire on American television

again. Like, I I don't think we have the the capacity, the writing capacity to

talk about what your worldview is based on. The current writing that we

have in Hollywood, and in and in popular

culture in general is is just sort of cannibalizing off the

past because there's no foundational there's no foundational

elements underneath a lot of what is being produced now at the mass

culture, quote, unquote, level. Mhmm. With that being

said, The Wire and The Sopranos are probably the 2 best shows

of the early 2000 bar none and of the early 21st

century bar none. Great writing on both those shows.

There's a character in the wire who is on drugs, named

Bubs. Mhmm. And, Bubs tells one of the

detectives one time who's trying to get him off the street, that it's a thin

line between heaven and here. Right?

And I always think about that when

I would live in the kinds of places that you and I the kind of

place that you and I both came from. And I would see

people who have a university in their town that they have easy

access to, but they can't walk the 3 it's a long way from

I won't say the name of the high school, but it's a long way from

that high school. You know which one I'm talking about. In the downtown where we

were at, it's a long way from there to that that to that university in

that town. It's a long walk even though it's only a bus ride.

And the that was

demonstrated at the wire, through Bub's ex through the the through Bub's

experience, through a couple of the experiences in the, in

the of characters in the show. I mean, one character in the show, he starts

out as a drug dealer, goes to jail, and basically

talk about having his eyes open, has his eyes open because he starts

reading books like to kill a mockingbird because he finally has time to read.

Mhmm. And he was always smart. He knew how to play chess,

actually. There's a great scene in in in, in the

show early leaders in the first season where he's

explaining to the other the other the other drug runner kids on the

corner how to play chess because they're screwing it up. And he's like, nope. Nope.

Nope. You know, like, the king stayed the queen stays the queen and the

pawns move around, but the king stayed the king. And, you

know, there's all these sort of iconic iconic ideas there in the wire.

It layers in this depth. So, anyway, this character goes to jail, finds

out that his uncle basically betrayed him, and he he gets killed in jail.

But before he goes before he gets killed, he has that light bulb go

off of, oh, I could have had a middle class life.

He doesn't know that word. He doesn't know that Tom.

And, of course, he believes in racism and police, you know, brutality and da

da da da. And he doesn't tie it to the life choices

he's making. He's just existing inside of this system,

and it's a long way from where he is in the Baltimore housing projects

Mhmm. To University of Maryland.

Or Johns Hopkins. Or Johns Hopkins, which is literally right over there. Yeah.

Johns Hopkins is right over there. It is very long way. Yes.

Yes. And I don't think we do a good job.

No. I won't say we don't say we do a good job. I think that

the full realization of the victories of the revolution is

this conversation we're having right now. I think this is the full revolution

the full revelation of the results of the revolution.

I mean, I've said this before. You you you've been to Cornell. I I

went to I went to, you know, I went to college. I was talking

about my net worth with somebody this weekend, and he was kind of surprised that,

like, his net worth was as high as it was. He's like, I don't really

think I should say this out loud, but I'm gonna tell you about it because

I really wanna whisper it because, like, where I came from, I didn't imagine that

any of this was going to happen. But he did all the right

things. Right? Mhmm. Like, he he he's had, you know,

stayed married, built up assets, you know,

had his kids, got his kids out of the house. He did all the

things that you're supposed to do. And what's weird to me is now in our

era, we tie that to systemic racism

or whiteness, and none of those things are color coded.

Mhmm. They're just the elements of success.

They're not color coded. Being on time to a

meeting when you're expected to be on time to a meeting is not color coded.

Being on time is not acting white. Mhmm.

It's just not. Mhmm.

And, you know, I I I look at all this as, you know, my final

victory over all those black people years ago, all my,

you know, fellow travelers who were trying to be whatever.

Mhmm. And I wasn't part of that.

Except on time, behaving, and getting the question right. Yes.

Right. Anything but those three things. Writers? Anything but those three things because

well and even this you would see this in the decline in rap culture. Right?

Like, Kanye was the first rapper Mhmm.

Who kind of Sorrells of

pulled the the the the cover off of the game

Mhmm. And said, I'm not my

mama had a job. I didn't sling drugs. I'm just the

greatest rapper ever.

Like, I'm just great. My pain does not

have to be a part of this struggle because there was no pain. I lived

a middle class life in Chicago. Mhmm. I'm doing this because I'm the greatest at

it because I have talent at it. That's why I'm doing it. That was

Kanye's fundamental before he went off the rails. Kanye's

fundamental sort of mindset. Right? And that turned the world

that turned the world of rap culture inside out. Mhmm.

Mhmm. Along with Eminem, I think Eminem had a lot

to do with that also because who expected a white boy to be able to

spit like that? But, you know?

Yep. Yep. Yep.

And there's still the NBA and the NFL.

Yeah. There's all those things. They're my they're my examples of

why we don't re we we don't really believe

in affirmative action. Don't

lay that out. We you can't you can't just you can't just you can't just

drop that on the folks. You gotta lay that out. Go ahead. Why why don't

we believe in affirmative? We're actually trying to get over a playground in the inner

city and we see a basketball court

Mhmm. We have an idea in our minds about what the player's gonna look

like. Mhmm. They look like me. But when they don't,

well, those boys can really play ball.

That's how we see it. That's it. There's no other way of looking at it,

and it's just showing people that all you

need to do is just expand that mindset to every single industry venture

and endeavor, and all of a sudden it's cool. All of a sudden it's cool.

You know? The people who don't get it are people who

when they find out I think I remember where

I was. But when they find out, for example, the Eminem is not

black, because I I thought he was black. I listened to him and thought he

was black, and then I had to be informed, no. This guy is white. What?

It was a trip. Okay? Literature, it sounded

like Urkel rapping, but could rap. That's what

and I remember being in a car listening to this, like, oh, wow. Okay. Wow.

Wait. What? He's what? Okay.

The people who then say, okay. This is either not legitimate

or even worse. Because that that, I can understand

aesthetically or otherwise somebody taking that position. I think they're wrong, but

I can understand that. I can't understand. I'd like this

until the moment I learned the identity of the person who is

producing all of this rhetoric and music and

beats, etcetera. And now because I know who he is, I no longer

like this. That. And it's just like, you know, those people,

they're they're they're not going to get it. No. But the rest of

us, which is certainly most, people in America who

have lots of Jesan. Okay? When when we when we go to

an an inner city basketball court, when we go to an NBA

game or a college game, okay, where the college has enough students,

okay, at least 20,000, there's certain things we're expecting to see in a

basketball court. Mhmm. And when we don't see them, we

expect the people we do see there to be really good. K.

Fine. Well, that's why that's why Larry well, that's why Larry

Bird well, that's why Larry Bird is the greatest white man to ever play

basketball in the history of the NFL or, I'm sorry, the NBA. He just

is. He just was. Like, he was just better. He is

he embarrassed everybody. You know, the, you know, the, the

the the you know, the story of the, of the when he come when

he, the, I think it was in the 1984, I think. I don't

remember. But Michael Jordan tells this story, because it was when he

was either a rookie or in his 2nd or 3rd year in the NBA,

at the all star game. They have the 3 point shooting contest, and, Larry

Bird walks in in his zip up, walks onto the court in his zip up,

walks past the Leaders players, walk past the Celtics players, walks past

everybody. And then you're talking about Robert Parish, Magic

Johnson. You talk about all those old boys. Right? Jordan was

just in the league, and he looks at the entire row of

town. He goes, who here wants to come in Jesan?

Goes out, wins the 3 point, wins the doesn't even take his zip

up off. Yep.

Dunn comes in 1st, takes takes

his award, holds it up above his head, and then keeps a

zip up on, just walks right back out again.

That's brutal. That's Larry Bird. Yep. Wow.

Who here wants to come in second? Mhmm.

Yep. Because you don't and at that Tom, in the NBA, you

did not expect a white guy to be that good. You just didn't.

Now it opened up the door for Dan

Majerle and Christian Laettner and Bill Laimbeer and all these

other guys that wound up being really, really talented and really,

really good because they worked on their

craft. Yeah. I

would love it, and I and I think the franchise is expanding anyway.

You know, the franchise is expanding. That's why I said, well, yeah, we have sports,

but the franchise is expanding away from that. I mean, black people are moving

into more and more areas, and it's just eventually, like I said, at a certain

point, we're just gonna be Americans. That's

coming much to probably Malcolm x's

surprise. Well, I don't know. Because some of his last

comments, he's got one on interracial marriage, and he basically

Yep. Does some delicate dancing to

avoid having to say, yeah. I was wrong.

But, you know, gets to the point where he admits, you

know, that, you know,

people are people. And so he didn't have an issue with a man marrying a

woman or a woman marrying a man regardless of what their colors were, you know,

the colors of people, which to thankfully, to, you

know, very many of your listeners may be as basic as what they're gonna eat

for dinner. That's great. But it just not only was it not like

that, you know, 60 years ago. I mean,

the Supreme Court decision that,

struck down,

racial intermarriage prohibitions on a state level throughout the united states that

decision isn't even 60 years old yet, you know, loving v virginia is not 60

years old yet So, it used to not only be significant for

very many people used to be the law in very many places

anyway, yeah, but it's interesting because

it take it brings me I believe the comments were made the month before he

was killed. But it it brings us to a moment where we can

tie together, you know, his vision that, you know,

grew over time. And, frankly, I think a commitment

to certain notions of

freedom and justice that he had those and thus

as he became more informed on,

how well, as he became more informed on human nature,

he was able to get past that, you know,

what do I wanna say? Do I wanna say protean?

But, basically, the the white black

racial dynamic that Fueled so much of

of his thought and rhetoric. Okay. He was finally able to get past that and

see okay. Look There's more to life here. There's more

to humanity here. There's more to America than just this dynamic.

And it's ironic because at that point when he

began to affirm that,

What equality means is, you know, you have these other peoples too

And they have their identities Tom, and they have the same rights as well

all of a sudden he he actually became dangerous because now you have

his Background his rhetoric his platform. Okay, you have

his his to his credit his commitment to

islam went through

the Nation of Islam version with their prophet Elijah

Muhammad, right, to orthodox Islam with,

you know, Mohammed Mohammed, right, that prophet, from 6,

1400 years ago. But the

beliefs held, you know, and he continued to practice continued to pray

his, you know, one wife and a, you know, I believe they have 5 children

And so he continued to show that moral

example, continued to show that commitment to the belief system that he self

identified with for so long. Okay?

And now that he saw,

hey. So all of us in this boat and all of us have these

rights, not black and white people are in this boat, and we have the same

rights they do. It's a very different posture, you understand. But once he got to

that point, now he was actually dangerous because now he can no longer be a

mouthpiece for somebody's for somebody else's

political agenda. Okay, the political and the power

agenda of The people who wanted to to make

little kingdoms out of just black people whom they could then run and control

Okay Arguably not very different from a plantation at all in

very many respects just the color of the master

anyway at that point he became actually

dangerous and Then he was killed. It's just so, you know,

it does does it I would be shocked if if you know

evidence were produced, certainly, because it's, you know, almost 60 years ago,

59 years ago. Actually, this month, 59 years ago.

Actually, last week, if I'm not mistaken. 59 years ago. Last week. Yeah.

Wow. That's terrible. February 21st.

RIP to Shabbaz.

Well, then let's It's, yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Well, we're we're so I

wanna well, I I want because this ties into, what we were gonna

we were going to talk about in the question that we we've sort of been

sort of been answering through the entire, through this entire episode today.

And I wanna talk I wanna go into this a little bit deeper, but

let's go back to the book. Let's pick up, from Malcolm

x's speech, with missus Fannie Lou Hammer. So,

he gave this speech, at,

let's see, in December 1964,

right, during the time when representatives of the

Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party toward Northern Humanities seeking moral,

political, and financial support for their campaign to block the seeding of

Mississippi's 5 segregationist US representatives when congress

convened on convened on January 4, 1965.

So he he gave this speech in

response to the

the the the violence

that, missus Fannie Lou Hammer, the

MFDP candidate for congress, had,

had experienced. And her testimony that she gave before

congress about racist brutality, that had attracted wide attention at

the Democrat Party National Convention in August of 1964. So he's

giving this speech, in response,

to, the events that occurred to missus Fannie

Lou Hammer. And I quote Malcolm x,

reverend Joseph Coles junior, miss Hammer, honored guests, brothers and sisters,

and as Drolla pointed out, friends and enemies.

Also, ABC and CBS and FBI and CIA.

I couldn't help but be impressed at the outstart when the freedom singers were

singing the song, Ohinga Odinga, because Oginga Odinga is one of the

foremost freedom fighters on the African continent. At the time he visited Atlanta,

Georgia, I think he was still the minister of home affairs in Kenya. But since

Kenya became a republic last week and Jomo Kenyatta ceased being the prime

minister and became the president, the same person you are singing about, Oginga

Odinga, is now Kenyatta's vice president. He's the number 2 man in the

Kenyan government. The fact that you might be singing about him to me is

quite significant. 2 or 3 years ago, this wouldn't have been done. 2 or 3

years ago, most of our people would choose to sing about someone who was, you

know, passive and meek and humble and forgiving. Oginga

Odinga is not passive. He's not meek. He's not humble. He's not nonviolent,

but he's free. Oh,

Gingko Odinga is vice president under Jomo Kenyatta, and Jomo Kenyatta was considered to be

the organizer of the Mau Mau. I think you mentioned Mau Mau in that song.

And if you analyze closely those words, I think you have the key to how

to straighten out the situation in Mississippi. When the nations of Africa are

truly independent, and they will be truly independent because they're going about it in the

right way, the historians will give the prime minister or rather president

Kenyatta and Mau Mau their rightful role in African history. They'll

go down as the greatest African patriots and freedom fighters of the continent ever knew,

and they will give credit be given credit for bringing about the independence of many

of the existing independent states on that continent right now.

There was a time when their image was negative, but today, they're looked upon with

respect. And their chief president their chief is the president, and their chief is the

vice president. I have take I have to take time

to mention that because in my opinion, not only in Mississippi and Alabama,

but right here in New York City, you and I could best learn how to

get real freedom by studying how Kenyatta brought it to his people in Kenya and

how Odinga helped him and the excellent job that was done by the Mau Mau

readers fighters. In fact, that's what we need in Mississippi. In Mississippi, we need a

Mau Mau. In Alabama, we need a Mau Mau. In Georgia, we need a

Mau Mau. Right here in Harlem, in New York City, we need a Mau

Mau. I say it with no anger. I say it

with very careful forethought. The language you and I have been speaking to this

man in the past hasn't reached him, and you can never really get your point

across to a person unless you learn how to communicate with him. If he speaks

French, you can't speak German. You have to know what language he speaks, and then

speak to him in that language. When I Jesan to missus Hammer, a black

woman, could be my mother, my sister, my daughter, describe what they had done to

her in Mississippi. I asked myself, how in the world could we ever expect to

be respected as men when we will allow something like that to be

done to our women, and we do nothing about it.

And then a little bit further down. When I was in

Africa, I noticed some of the Africans got their freedom faster than others.

Some areas of the African continent became independent faster than other areas.

I noticed that in the areas where independence had been gotten, someone got angry. And

in the areas where independence had not yet been achieved, no one was angry.

They were sad. They'd sit around and talk about their plight, but they weren't mad.

And usually when people are sad, they don't do anything. They just cry over their

condition. Now he goes on

for a bit, and he talks about the Democrat party. By the way, he

calls them the cracker party. And then a

little later on, once he breaks that down,

he talks about the differences between the republicans and the democrats. And

so a little bit later on, he says this, and I

quote, they said, don't rock the boat. You might get Goldwater elected.

I had this bit of suggestion. Find out what Wagner is going to do on

behalf of his resolution that you're trying to get through before January 4th. Find out

in advance where does he stand on these Mississippi great congressmen who are illegally

coming up from the south to represent democrats. Find out where the mayor of the

city stands and make him come out on the record without dillydallying and without compromise.

Find out where his friends stand on city of the Mississippians who are coming forth

illegally. Find out where Ray Jones was one of the most powerful

black Democrats in this city. Find out where he stands before January

4th. You can't talk about Rockefeller because he's a Republican, although he's

in the same boat right along with the rest of them. I say so

I say in my conclusion, as missus Hammer pointed out, the brothers and sisters in

Mississippi are being beaten and killed for no reason other than they want to be

treated as first class citizens. There's only one way to be a first class citizen.

There's only one way to be independent. There's only one way to be free. It's

not something that someone gives to you. It's something that you take. Nobody can

give you independence. Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice

or anything. If you're a man, you take it. If you can't take it, you

don't deserve it. Nobody can give it to you. So if you and I want

freedom, if we want independence, if we want respect, if we want recognition, we

obey the law. We are peaceful. But at the same time, at any moment that

you and I are involved in any kind of action that is legal, that is

in accord with our civil rights, in accord with the courts of land, in accord

with the constitution, when all these things are on our side, we still can't get

it, is because we aren't on our own side.

We don't yet realize the real price necessary to pay to

see that all these things are enforced where we're

concerned. And then later on

on the next page, and I'll close with this, they've always said that I'm anti

white. I'm for anybody who's for freedom. I'm for anybody who's for justice. I'm

for anybody who's for equality. I'm not for anybody who tells me to sit around

and wait for mine. I'm not any I'm not for anybody who tells me to

turn the other cheek when a cracker is busting up my jaw. I'm not for

anybody who tells black people to be nonviolent when nobody is telling white people to

be nonviolent. I know I'm in a church. I probably shouldn't be talking like this,

but Jesus himself was ready to turn a synagogue inside out and upside down when

things weren't going right. In fact, in the book of revelations, they got Jesus sitting

on a horse with a sword in his hand, getting ready to go into action.

But they don't tell you what Libby about that Jesus. They only tell you and

me about that peaceful Jesus. They never let you get down to the end of

the book. They keep you up there where everything is, you know, nonviolent.

Now go and read the whole book. And when you get to revelations, you find

that even Jesus' patience ran out. And when his patience ran out, he

got the whole situation straightened out. He picked up the sword.

That's that old time religion. That's brilliant.

I have Brilliant. To paraphrase from the movie Patton

by with the great George c Scott when he was yelling about,

he went to, Corsica or maybe it was Sicily. I can't remember right

now. And he was looking at, the results of the

tank battle, from the German, the German,

tank commander. I cannot remember his name, but he yells out, I read your

book. That's what I thought. That's what I thought when I read this.

Rommel. Rommel, I read your book. That's

right. And, I don't know if Patton did. Montgomery

actually did. Oh, I think Viscount Montgomery of Alameda

actually did. Did. Like, he he in his tent in North Africa

had a picture of his enemy in the tent because he was

that much in the zone. Truly impressive. Not

that Patton wasn't. He was, you know, flamboyant, very much an American.

Very much. And and very effective. And, of course, also bearing

the seeds of our culture's issues. And then, you know,

that, in part, makes it tragic. It does. So, you

know, Malcolm Jesan leadership. Right? Well, you know,

all that's show up and open his mouth. You know?

Alright. So point I wanna make,

and I think it's it's one it's one that struck me in reading

reading that speech, about missus with missus

Fannie Lou Hammer. And we read the Invisible Man

and and talked about Nameless. And you mentioned something in that

episode, which I which which kind of triggered my brain. He

said what that would be, it would be a different invisible man would be a

different book if, if

nameless or the invisible man had opened up one of those letters,

read what it saw, and then gotten on the train, gone right back to

doctor Bledsoe with an ax, and just fixed the problem. Right?

Yep. The Yep.

Malcolm x is the person that the invisible man transforms into once he's out of

Ralph Ellison's basement.

Yes. I I see what you mean.

But he has to get out of that basement first. He does. Which

is the hardest part. And I think that that's what Malcolm x

saw. He saw that or no. That saw. He confused

nonviolent struggle with Ralph

Ellison's Invisible Man and being trapped in that basement.

Not struggling. Not struggling. Being violent. Right. Just not being

violent. Just just hanging out, keeping the lights on. Just hanging out. Right?

And and look. I I even wrote this in my notes. You know,

nonviolent struggle has always been an anathema to non Christians,

and and a foolishness to a person who believes that violence is

the logical response. Right? You know, we preach Christ

crucified, you know, a stumbling block to, to the

Jews and foolishness to the Greeks, I believe, was how Paul put it. And

so, Right. Hold on. Finish the quote. Finish the

quote. I don't know the But to we who are being saved, it

is the power of God. This is the power of God. There you go. There

you go. But this is

also why nonviolent struggle really only worked worked. And

I I put that in air quotes, but worked in, like,

twice in the 20th century. You know, you had doctor

Martin Luther King Junior, and then you had Gandhi,

and that's really it. That's it.

And man, you know, revolutions may be driven initially by the desire to correct

injustice, but too often they are hijacked by people with other motives. And

usually those other motives are the 7 deadly sins. Again,

from that great actor, Morgan Freeman, that great black actor, Morgan Freeman.

There are 7 deadly sins, de Rolo.

And, you know,

the revolutionary is angry at the oppressor. Yes. But they're also angry at their

own doctor Bledsoe's. Mhmm. Oh, yeah.

And and so Yep.

And so now you have now we live in a world we live in a

in a in a Black Lives Matter world. We live in a DEI

world in America anyway, which I think is the last gasp

of of nonsense. I I don't think it's going

It will morph into something else. I would bet you money. I'm not a betting

man. I would bet you money. There will be the new iteration. It will continue

until Christ returns. Okay. Yes. Yes. Those

efforts to get everybody's attention, get everybody angry

about what really isn't an issue. Or when it is an actual issue, great.

Oh, okay. It's a particular issue. Deal with it. Deal

with the issue. Okay? The so at the

protest I was at over the weekend, the woman I was speaking to, one of

them, we brought up North Charleston. Okay? North

Charleston refers to one of these incidents where,

policemen shot and killed a black man. Okay? Then lied about

it and everything was going one way until a kid shows up with

a video that shows that this man lied. He said this man was running toward

him. The video shows the man running the other way and being shot in the

back and killed. Okay? Policeman was fired. The policeman was

arrested. The policeman was prosecuted. That's the system

working. Right. The jury acquits the

man. That shows brokenness in the system. Okay? It's

really straightforward in terms of the evidence, but okay?

That's one thing. That's a particular circumstance that needs to be dealt

with. Okay? And, to then take it

and extrapolate it over the whole country. Now remember where this happened.

South Carolina, local matters, regionalism

matters. Okay? Yeah. That's where the competitors started in South

Carolina. This happened in South Carolina. K? Tom then extrapolate that throughout the

whole country, to cover every single incident where

somebody claims the police did something wrong. It's just it's infuriating.

Right? Right. But it it also obscures the issue. North Charleston,

that's a tragedy. That's an issue that needs to be addressed there.

You know? And you can't do that via social media. You can't do that from

from a television studio in Los Angeles or wherever. You have to do that on

the ground in North Charleston living there. You talked

about paying the price Mhmm. Of the actual

revolution. That's some of the price, some of the cost. You know? Okay. If I

actually care about these people and these issues, I gotta

put roots in the ground. I gotta put boots not just boots in the ground

I put roots in the ground like a tree and and that takes the thing

that's awesome about trees One of the things they take

time to grow Writers. There's no quick fix

to what happened in in in north charles. There's no quick fix to

that. No. You know, I think it could be done in a generation, but

with the right sacrifice, with the right type of investment,

with institutions. One of the reasons I don't find invisible to be like

Malcolm x is for better or for worse,

his moment of revelation of change happened when

he then got integrated into into an institution.

And it's the institution of the nation of Islam that gave him

a platform on upon which he could stand. And then

with all of his rhetorical brilliance, you know, communicate to

people and then was leading. He needed an institution. He

got one from the beginning. Invisible had no institution. The institution

he was part of was morally bankrupt. Both of them,

the one in the south and the one in the north. The one in

the south that was an education institution and the one in the North that was

a political one. Each of them was morally bankrupt.

And, you know, it's it's more means justifying

matter Your

only utility comes from how you will help us achieve our goals. And when we're

done with you, we don't care what happens to you. Turn it over. So You

know? So what is what is the so

solutions to problems. Right? Mhmm.

I am a I'm a, obviously, a partisan for

Christianity. I believe that that is the thing that

changes people's hearts, and changes people

from, from.

It changes people, it changes institutions. It's the most revolutionary

Tom about revolutionary. It's the most revolutionary

religion on the planet, full stop, period. Yep. Full

stop. Yep. Nothing else gets close. It just doesn't. And

I'll take the Pepsi challenge on it against anybody who's

listening to me on that. You can't find me a more revolutionary

religion than Christianity. You just you just can't.

Here in the west, and we talked a lot about this last year on the

podcast, but here in the west, we

we collectively decided we were gonna walk out,

Frederick Nietzsche's quote about killing god. Right? We decided collectively

we were gonna do that over the course of a 100 years. Mhmm. And now

we're at the end of all of that. I firmly believe we're at the end

of postmodernism, and we're casting around for something else, and we're not finding

it. And the thing that we I believe, fundamentally, I think we have to go

back to is Christianity,

but at a very narrow level for black people in America.

Mhmm. We caught the car of

racial justice. We caught the car of equal protection under the law. We

caught the car of broad social acceptance, and even

interracial marriage. Right? We've we've caught the cars that we were

chasing like dogs down the street. We we've caught them. Right?

And there's no prize for coming in Jesan. And

I'm worried that

we have a bunch of people who are riding on

the coattails of past revolutions and past racisms and past this

and past that to cover up for their incompetence

and their, quite frankly, their mediocrity. Mhmm.

And in my shorts episode that I released this week, one of the things I

said because I I do lay out a vision for black people, 5 step

vision for black people moving forward into the future.

And, you know, it's all common stuff, but one of the parts of the

vision is don't go get a job being a government bureaucrat. We don't need more

government bureaucrats. We need more entrepreneurs. Mhmm. Mhmm.

Don't don't go get a government job. Don't go get a corporate job. Go work

for a small business. Mhmm. Go go start something from the ground

up. Do a side hustle. Something. Anything. We

don't need more of you in the civil service. Politics will not protect us

anymore.

Mhmm. So here's how this ties into leadership. You mean the government won't

protect us anymore? Is that what you mean? I don't think so. No.

Either protect us in terms of giving us sinecures

that are with guaranteed salaries and pensions more protect

us in terms of even getting, you know,

justice from a jury. I

at long last, black people have become just Americans.

Mhmm. Mhmm. And you can see it most notably in our current

era in how united everyone is about

illegal immigration being a real problem. Mhmm.

Mhmm. Yeah. So

I guess my question to close out is, what

what do leaders what should leaders take from Malcolm x? What what can they take?

What can they use? How can leaders

solve this problem of what to

do after you win the revolution, but not in the way you

expected Tom. Right? Like, you got what

you wanted Tom paraphrase from Amy Mann, the great singer

in that song in Magnolia. There's a great line in that song from the

1990 film or 1999 film or

98, maybe, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, where

she sings you got what you wanted, and now you can hardly stand it. Like

Yeah. And I'm dropping pop culture references all over the place in this sucker.

But what do leaders what can

leaders learn from Alchemax? Let's start with that. What can they apply to

their real lived lives from the words and the statements and

the speeches of this man?

Well, he obviously knew what leadership was,

but one of the most powerful I think one of the most powerful examples

that we came across in his

speeches in this book edited by George Brightman.

Mhmm. Ironically or not, is him talking about

the mainstream civil rights movement. And what I'm just gonna

call this section is the Carlyle Group. Okay? And, of course, I'm not referring to

the financial services entity or,

you know, private private equity fund, whatever they are. Though they

take their name from the same place. Okay? The Carlyle,

aka the Carlyle Hotel. Okay? Even though it's

Sorrells, proper name was the Carlyle. Okay?

He, in about 2 pages, describes, apparently,

how somebody created a committee

that they then financed, that they then use to recruit,

popularize, and then suborn a march on Washington

So that, like a virus, this committee infected its own

ideas into the host, and then all of a sudden,

their version of the movement was what the movement was. And I thought it was

a brilliant example of how leadership actually works. I thought it was a brilliant

example. Okay? How,

a committee of people can lead better than one person in this type

of sense. Okay? Because it's not about

decision making only. There are other aspects to leadership,

and this committee apparently just they did an excellent job.

Whether you agree with what they did or not well, actually so my assumption

is what he's talking about is relatively accurate. Okay? Mhmm.

And so whether you agree with what they did or not, Tom me, it was

a brilliant example of leadership. Okay? And I thought

that I thought that was worth something, okay,

As an example of how this worked, and how leadership

works. Okay? Then there's

also the lesson that the leader's personal life actually matters. Okay?

One of the reasons that

one of the reasons that

Malcolm X had a moral resonance

is because morally speaking, once he became

Muslim, his life was pretty clean. Okay.

One wife, here are the kids, a respectable

family man who then gets up there and then launches into his

rhetoric. Right? Just pounding people over the

head with his rhetoric, around the notion that the

Tyrian oppression that was that had been plaguing black people, as

he said, for 310 years, needed to end and needed to end

now and that we would end it. Whether it was by

voting or by shooting, we will end it. And so it

it had he had a force in his life, and the

things going on in his personal life help explain why he had such

force. Okay? And then

what's his MO for leadership? Well, apparently, it was speech making.

I don't see that he did anything else. I don't see that he did anything

than show up and talk. Literally. It's

brilliant. And not even show up in lecture and you have to get

through content in a curriculum, not even that. Show up

and deliver your insights on topic x. Bang.

Next. Bang. Next. It's it's brilliant.

Okay? And so, but it's

not not really brilliant. It's also leadership. Right? Mhmm. Because

he gave a voice to what many people were

feeling, certainly, and what they obviously couldn't put into

words as as brilliantly as he did. And it

caused things to change. And so those are, you know, among

the measurements for me that show that it's leadership. Okay? He's

giving a voice to people who had these feelings, didn't know how to put

them into words, but then it's provoking action. Okay? He shows up

and he talks and things start changing. I

wonder how and we'll never know, obviously. But I

wonder what Martin Luther King Junior

thought of him when they both sat down without cameras around and the other

followers and all. Like, I wonder what that I would have loved to be a

fly on the wall for that conversation because and it

had to happen at least twice because

what we now know is the FBI and the c not the

CIA. He he he claims CIA. And maybe they were watching him

when he went overseas. They probably were. But the FBI

actively was what had a file open on Malcolm x

and found nothing, by the way. Nothing. There's never been

anything that's ever been revealed to to to your

point about anything. I think Hoover was looking for it. Hoover who

Hoover knew what to look for. By that point, I mean, he would run-in the

FBI for, like, 20, 30 freaking years. He knew what to look for. Nothing.

On Martin Luther King Junior, though Mhmm.

We know there are things the FBI found on him that

that that if they had been revealed at the time Yeah. Would have

discredited Martin Luther King Junior from

doing the work that he did. Okay. We know this for a fact. Yep.

I wonder if that asceticism

came through in Malcolm x's interpersonal interactions

with, with Martin Luther King, junior

or or if it was just, you know, 2 gals on a stroll on a

Sunday. Mhmm. You know, we're just 2 gals having a chat.

Yep. Like how much of that personality that was in the

oratory carried into now? We're just going to have to sit here and talk

1 on 1 and figure something out. I always wonder about that with guys like

that because you're right. The personality was so strong

and seemingly unscripted, which means it was natural talent.

Mhmm. And he would say things, like, as an

orator will do. He will say things, watch the

crowd, and then give them more of that. Hitler did the same

thing. He that's why he was a great he was he was a great orator.

I mean, book here. There's all everything else, please. But, like, he knew how to

move the crowd. Yep. You know? You cannot take

that away from him, and he knew how to move the crowd in a way

that Roosevelt didn't and Mussolini didn't. Those guys did

Churchill probably got close close second on that. Churchill knew how to

move the crowd, but that's because Churchill worked on

it for so long. Right? Mhmm.

Whereas Malcolm x, man, he

he seems to have just shot from the hip. He seems to have literally just

showed up. You point him at a microphone, and that man just goes.

Mhmm. Yep. But he kept he

kept learning. Right. He kept learning.

And, you know, ultimately, I think that led

him, you know, on a path

that was certainly more truthful, but was wending

toward the truth, which is, you know, which is exciting.

How much do you short. So How much do you think

do you think that there could have been a rapprochement between him and doctor

King?

Without Malcolm X becoming a Christian? I doubt it. Yeah.

So I found some of his comments. So the the

comment you quoted where he's talking about Al Quran, I found

some of it, what the heck is this? Sorry.

Some of it, inaccurate.

And so, let me find it.

There it is. It's on page 12. It's still in message to the grassroots.

There's nothing quote there's nothing in our book, Al Quran, that teaches us to

suffer peacefully. Sorry, Paul. I believe that's true.

It's the next bits. Quote, our religion teaches us to be

intelligent, period. Be peaceful, be courteous, obey the law,

respect everyone, semi colon, close quote.

I don't believe that it teaches respect

for the law that is produced

in. Right? In in the realm of war, which is one of the ways

in in in orthodox Islam. The world is divided into 2 pieces.

Right? Correct. Islam, the realm of peace

or submission, and then the the realm of war.

Okay? And so I don't believe it teaches in the realm of war

when whoever is sovereign lays down the law and the person is a

pagan or an unbeliever that you need to obey. I don't believe that's what

it says. And so, I think there's a

particular dilemma that Muslims walk who

live within the west and thus who live within,

political and social structures that have a Christian base,

is that you know, how do you navigate that line? And

you know as as I believe

is the case with for virtually everyone, you have to ask them to

find out. Right? It's just from the outside, I see I

see a tension there. Okay? And it's a tension

that resonates when you hear some of the rhetoric

coming from other parts of the world where the things that the

Islamists, as as they're popularly called now,

when you you hear and read what they're saying, that

tension, all of a sudden, is resonating. It's like it's glowing. And it's like, yes.

There there's a tension there. You know? And so there's different positions that,

you know, Muslims is within the west take on it. But, anyway,

this is interesting because that's like, I I remember reading those comments and saying, oh,

okay. Agree with the first one. It's like, nope. Not this one.

Let's circle this right here. Somewhere in there are the

notions that give rise to the necessary

politicization of Islam. It's part of the

DNA of the religion. Right. And so,

you know, that's that's why there are states all over the world that happened to

be Muslim states, and it's it's not an accident. It's not an accident that happened

from marocco to indonesia. You know, it's not an accident. It's in the

dna of the of the religion, whereas the dna of

christianity as it were, is not

political it is in the bible, you

know to submit to the governing authorities is there. You know?

What, x what what

let's call him his second name, call him his third name. What,

mister Al Shabazz said. Right?

And what he what he was advocating for I would argue was

merely, you know, calling into

question the hypocrisies and the systemic oppressions of

a system where it's like, you say you're Christian. Well, do what Jesus said.

You know? And that would have put it frankly, I would have put it better.

Okay? You're a Christian to do what Jesus said. If you do that, we're good.

If you won't do that, do not turn to me and tell me that I

need to. Okay? Because apparently you're willing to

accept that we're gonna depart from this because this is how you're really behaving. And

then would be the devolution back to that

old time religion. Right? An eye for an eye or tooth for tooth, you know,

which is Reprisal and vendetta, you know, which is what

happened with with pashtunwali, okay,

which is probably my favorite way It's ever articulated. It's

an institution among the pashtun people in

pakistan and afghanistan and it's just it's really fascinating, but it's basically,

you know, me against you, you and I

against our cousin, you and I and our cousin against our uncle, you and our

cousin and uncle against the next house, against the next street, against the you know?

But what what is at bottom, right, is a

mechanism Mhmm. To produce some kind of justice when there's

an injury that's done to someone in that network. And so

yeah. Old time religion. Well and what's interesting

is as we've wandered away from old time religion and, again, I've

I've I've said this before on this episode, but I'll say it again. I

think that leaders need a baseline

of meaning that comes from something deeper than whatever their

current role may be. And

that baseline of meaning will keep you either

as close to pure. Right.

That yeah. As close to pure as you could probably get this side of the

grave. And that is a and

and that's a lot of weight to put on a system of meaning.

And I don't think a non religious system of meaning is gonna be able to

carry that weight. I just I don't I don't I

don't I don't the track record is not good. Let's just say

that. The track record is not in the positive. Alright.

Well, I think we've

covered everything. I think we've, we've gotten to the end of,

of our time here together today. So I'd like to thank to Rolo

Nixon junior, Esquire, for coming on and joining us once

again on our podcast. He will be

back in July talking about the

American founding documents, the USS constitution,

the Federalist Papers, the USS. It's not a ship.

10th. Yes. It's the ship the ship of state. Yeah.

And, of course, it's an election year. Who knows what will be happening?

We will talk about the ship of state and where it may happen to

be in July. Hopefully,

leadership of state will still be floating,

and I'll get into that a little bit later. But

Darula will be joining us in July. So pick up those episodes. Listen to those

episodes. Listen to the Invisible Man episode. Listen to the episode where

we talk about, the the global Appalachia.

We talked about that last year in our constitution and declaration of

independence episodes. And, of course,

go out and pick up or go ahead and read

online the speeches, statements,

and utterings of Malcolm x and see how you could apply

those to your real lived leadership life.

Once again, my name is Ehsan Sorrells. This is the Leadership Lessons from the Great

Books podcast, and we're out.