The Monk’s Podcast 79 with Hridayananda Goswami – American politics in the light the Bhagavad-gita

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Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Pradhan Maharaj please accept my humble obeisances thank you very much for joining the Monks Podcast yeah it’s an honor to have you a few months ago it is an honor to have you a few months ago and since then many of the devotees here and other viewers were longing requesting that they come and thank you for sparing your time so today I thought Maharaj we could discuss on the topic of the left the right and dharma oh that’s good it’s good we’re avoiding any controversial topics yeah it’ll be a miracle if we can avoid controversy while discussing this topic so maybe I’ll just start with my lay understandings of the terms and then especially as how they apply to a discussion about dharma and then you could elaborate on that so the way I understand it is that the left is concerned with say those who are left behind by existing social hierarchies political systems economic structures so that is their concern on the other hand the right are concerned with what is right with the existing systems be they political economic social and so in general the right tend to be more conservative and the left tend to be more liberal and dharma on the other hand talks about timeless principles for harmonizing ourselves with who we are and with reality so in that sense would dharma be more in terms of left or more in terms of the right at least in India as well as in America religion is associated with the right but at the same time bhakti traditions often did favor the disenfranchised many of the great saints in India were from the lower castes and so in that sense that is a broad context for the discussion so yes what I’ll begin with this if we look at Bhagavad Gita or if we just use common sense then what we find is that there are two realities to life one is hierarchy one is equality okay there are legitimate and necessary hierarchies for example parents and children they have equal importance as living beings but in terms of authority the parents have to govern the children and there are teachers and students there are experts and non-experts and so in any field so there are natural hierarchies some people are more talented than other people in many fields some people create businesses and they employ people and under proper circumstances the employees are very fortunate and feel they’re fortunate to have a good job and so everywhere we look in the world there are natural legitimate and necessary hierarchies at the same time there is an ultimate sense in which we are equal and so the real issue is how you balance these things so if we say that now for example what you said is sort of the general perception that religion tends to be more on the right but what we find is in studies of social science that religious people or people who claim affiliation with some religion tend to give more charity than people who are not religious and of course charity is generally given to needy people and so I think we have to get past a lot of non-scientific stereotypes and see what’s really happening so the real problem as Krishna explains in the Bhagavad Gita 1820 is not that there is a group of people who care about let’s say the less fortunate or the karmically disadvantaged I mean that’s good obviously society has to care about people who are not doing as well and it’s also important and necessary that there’s a group that maintains certain principles and hierarchies and because the idea that somehow you have justice by tearing down hierarchies is of course false because if you give equal opportunity you will not have equal outcome because everyone doesn’t have the same abilities like in India people are applying for IIT if there’s you cannot have everyone admitted and there’s a selection process it’s hierarchical and if you don’t allow a fair choice of the best students then in the name of equal outcome you have destroyed equal opportunity and so there’s a sense in which equal opportunity and equal outcome are in some ways mutually exclusive that’s true Maharaj perfectly true so at the same time just because someone let’s say doesn’t have an equal amount of ability doesn’t mean they do not deserve equal dignity under the law and an opportunity to have a good life so I think on the left and the right there are there are truths you know in saying that we should care about all members of society that’s true and saying that there are natural hierarchies that should be maintained that’s also true the problem is the problem is extremism the problem is on both sides left and right because for example on the right they in the name of freedom of opportunity they really do not show much compassion let’s say in terms of America for in terms of people who need health care and they’re not at all clear they say they oppose Obama’s plan but they’re never very clear on how they’re going to guarantee that everyone has good health care how can a civilized society allow for people including children, women, men to be unnecessarily in pain to be unnecessarily disabled when we have the science to help them I mean there’s an irony here in that the right tend to be much more than the left Christian and if there’s anything that Jesus would obviously support it’s the notion that everyone gets proper care I mean nothing could be a more Jesus position and so for people claiming to be followers of Jesus to fight against health care and they always say well no we are not against universal health care we just want to do it in a more efficient way but it’s never clear how they want to do that and almost all their energy is put into defeating an existing health care program and they put very little energy into establishing an alternative so hypocrisy which of course is one of the great famous historical characteristics of so called religious people, hypocrisy and so on the other hand the people on the left who claim they don’t really want equality because actually they are reverse racists and they raise up one class of people to some type of exalted status where they are, they can do no wrong even when they do lots of wrong and on the other hand anyone that disagrees with them is evil and bad and they hate them and so they don’t really want equality because they are so hateful I think George Orwell said that in communism all people are equal but some are more equal than others and anyone that disagree we see because just a moment about Marxism the fact that the greatest atrocities, the greatest the largest number of people murdered in history took place in 20th century done by Marxists by the way little factoid almost 100,000 people what’s that? almost 100,000 people it was more than World War I, World War II combined no it’s probably over 100 million oh yeah sorry 100 million not 100,000 sorry but what’s interesting is that what we always hear is that well Stalin wasn’t a good Marxist Mao wasn’t a good Marxist really? I think they were they were certainly very studious because here’s some facts about Marxism in Marxism beginning with the status quo which is capitalism I mean clearly in the past there were hunting gathering societies there were agrarian societies but if we Marxism begins with the present and the past history is just used in order to derive analytic principles hmm so we have a status quo which is capitalism and then the second stage is what Marx calls the dictatorship of the proletariat uses the word dictatorship yes that’s interesting okay yes good old Karl sweet Karl hmm because because capitalists won’t just give up and so you need a dictatorship and then the third stage is Eden you know the garden of Eden the third stage is the communist utopia the Marxist utopia now what we know what all scholars know you know that have that aren’t simply fanatics is that Marx was operating with was assuming a completely non-scientific anthropology in other words a completely illusory concept of human nature because after all Marx when was he born if you happen to have that number on the top here Karl Marx was born in 1818 he was born in 1818 and so that was Marx was born 100 years before there was even such a field of psychology and so on and so in terms of in terms of understanding human nature like what’s possible how do human beings behave and can you really have a Marxist utopia he had very little practical information of human nature and so we now know with psychology and social science and sociology and so on we now know that his whole plan is based on a notion of human nature which is just wildly inaccurate and unscientific in the sense that that humans are in what sense humans are somehow driven by intellectualized concepts of virtue or that people will just naturally act in somehow like some utopian almost like a before the fall like people used to act in the Garden of Eden before Adam and Eve you know bit the apple in other words what we know is that people know they’re selfish and they are sociologically under certain conditions or do certain things or won’t do certain things so the idea that people just behave like angels if you just you know have them read Marx’s books is of course turns out to be absurd it’s absurdly inaccurate in any case so here’s what you have you have capitalism and then the goal is the Marxist Garden of Eden and so in the middle actually it’s not a Garden of Eden because they have industry so utopia so in the middle you have a dictatorship now since the third stage the utopian stage is just absurdly impractical and will never happen until the next Satya Yuga therefore every Marxist country inevitably necessarily stops in the position of dictatorship okay and therefore every you look at Cuba Soviet Union, China Cambodia you know name your hall of horrors where you stop a dictatorship and Marx justifies it sometimes because there are recalcitrant in other words stubborn uncooperative social classes so those classes and because Marx was thinking sociologically if you look at western intellectual history sociology sort of got going quite a bit before psychology and so Marx is thinking sociologically and he thinks that in terms of social dynamics if necessary and it probably is necessary you eliminate social classes well the sort of like the unvarnished word for eliminating social classes is genocide okay that’s kind of like if you want to use plain talk plain language genocide so in the side of the classes who are in power yeah whatever social basically everyone that doesn’t have an I love Marx bumper sticker on their car you know so you eliminate entire social classes and again the simple word for that is genocide yes that’s terrible so on the left they plus plus Marx is you know conception of religion as a basically mental like a form of madness it’s like a drug it’s like when you take a drug you become basically crazy so religion the opium the people because it has them thinking about the next life and therefore they don’t pay attention to this life yeah the other cheek and all kinds of very impractical things so but anyway it’s not just Marx I mean you have the real point is can I just respond a couple of thoughts so you know that two three things I could discern here from what you said is that you know the in the leftist ideology maybe their intentions are good but they are based on an unrealistic conception of human sorry I won’t grant that much okay okay fine you know okay no no I think I think to destroy religion is not a good intention okay now okay let’s say that if we presume that they have some concern for the underprivileged but the way they try to bring about equality that presumes that as you said if human nature if people are just educated properly they will all behave properly so that is a misunderstanding of human nature also and people that don’t behave properly even when they’re off of knowledge you just kill them the point here is that if you look at Marx his philosophy in gender hatred so it’s not equality it’s not equality because you hate and kill people that disagree with you so you achieve equality by killing everybody that disagrees with you and so it’s like using concern for power to exercise hatred toward the concern for the poor to exercise hatred toward the wealthy yeah actually what we find in sort of like this self-righteous not righteous western white leftist concern is that it’s based more on hatred than love it’s just like for example let’s say there are people in this world you care about let’s say your family your parents or your siblings or whatever your family extended family you care about them now that care is lifelong isn’t it yes I mean for your entire life you care about those people if they’re in special difficulty of course and the family kind of unites to help but even when there’s not some you know that kind of difficulty it’s your family you care about them or your dear friends you always care about them no matter what situation they’re in but what we find is that these leftists do not care about people once they have vented their hatred it’s almost like the government becomes God and you use it’s a totalitarian government which grabs power by using the excuse of concern for the poor for example in America they say black lives matter yeah that’s a very charged slogan now yeah I’ll ask a simple question do black lives simply matter which I mean of course they do or do black lives only matter when you have an opportunity to hate right wing whites and it turns out only when you have an opportunity to hate right wing whites because it turns out that of all the African Americans criminally killed in the United States 90% of them are killed by blacks but those lives never mattered in other words if you really care about black people say in America you actually care about them then all this time you would have been in those neighborhoods doing all you could to help those people trying to fix it trying to lobby the government for programs let’s improve the schools let’s you know ironically ironically the law abiding black citizens who are most of the black community the law abiding black citizens want more police not less because when you cut down the number of policemen the first people to suffer are the blacks yeah and so you know it’s interesting because generally I know I’m kind of left bashing but there’s just certain things need to be said for example behind there’s a type of philosophical sociological determinism which is behind the leftist position in other words if it’s the case as it is that let’s say in America that blacks kill white policemen almost 20 times as often as white policemen kill blacks which the press will never mention because it’s not politically correct but anyway without drawing any conclusions from that just simple statistics and in general commit many many times more murders than whites or Latinos and so it doesn’t mean they’re inferior but it does mean there’s a real problem now the leftist explanation of these facts there are many other similar statistics the leftist explanation is that it’s the fault of the white people somehow the white people have forced the blacks to commit these murders and the blacks are actually not morally responsible for it now I find this to be myself anti-black racism because legally if we talk now forget sociology just talk about legal terms the only conditions under which someone is not responsible for a crime they commit not morally responsible is if that person is mentally impaired or a child also when they are saying that the blacks are victims so when you said it’s like anti-black racism so basically they’re infantilizing the blacks saying that you don’t have any sense of agency yes no agency and also they’re introducing a deterministic view of history in other words that historical circumstances drive people beyond their free will to act in certain ways hence they are not morally responsible but my point is this if we are going to deploy here historical determinism and if we want to be scientific we also have to apply historical determinism to white racists and by this I mean because America in my view there is no systemic racism in my view I mean obviously there are racists but say the whole system is racist I think is actually scientifically not demonstrable but in any case and you can’t demonstrate it anecdotally that’s all we get in the press is anecdotes we never get actual statistics but the point is if you look at and I mean like the really low class ignorant repulsive white racists those are the people I’m talking about like you know a lot of the people went to Charlottesville I mean that group of people ignorant crazy white racists what we find is white supremacists yeah yeah let’s say white supremacists so what we find is that many of them come from very bad backgrounds oh so you are saying the same argument could be turned around I’m saying either historical determinism is valid or it’s invalid if it’s valid if you want to use a theory of historical determinism to exonerate one group of people you cannot apply that theory selectively because if you do apply it selectively and say well only blacks are subject to historical determinism and therefore are morally free of any culpability but white people are not in other words the sins of white people or Chicanos or Asians or whatever cannot be explained away by historical determinism then what you’re saying and this is extremely racist that black people are somehow more subject to be controlled by the forces of history and have less power or intelligence to assert their own will even in the face of difficult circumstances and therefore that’s racism that’s anti-black racism so if you believe that historical determinism or you could say well no it’s because the forces acting on blacks were much more severe but not always there are some blacks who are billionaires or millionaires or famous or powerful politically economically in the entertainment industry whatever and there are some whites who literally are starving there are blacks who are leading intellectuals and there are whites who are illiterate and truly stupid therefore and you know another thing with respect to historical determinism you could also take it backwards and say even whites were not always in comfort when whites were served in Europe even they were enslaved at a particular time in history so and sometimes by non-whites and you know what’s interesting is that slavery was abolished in America before it was abolished in Africa because black leaders you know we’re talking about sub-Saharan Africa here and of course the Muslims had a huge slave trade so black African leaders had black slaves and slavery was only abolished completely say in Western Africa around World War 1 oh so I also read somewhere Maharaj that it is not so much the whites went to Africa and enslaved the blacks there were blacks who were already enslaved by other blacks and those were sold quite often to the whites so in a sense it’s not exactly yeah so all I’m saying is just what you find with extremists is that they deny science they deny history so when you go again not sort of an educated liberal class that cares about disadvantaged people I mean I would say I’m one of them I would include myself in that group and there are many ways in which I’m not at all you know hard conservative and I’ll explain how I’m not so I believe absolutely that everyone should have a good life unless someone’s just really just shamelessly exploiting the system but any normal decent person which is most people of all groups should have a good life and but what we find on the left is massive science denial massively and that’s why if you read the leftist press what you’ll never find is real science real social science you won’t find real history so if you look on the right I’ll tell you what the big flaw on the right is and we can look at people like Ben Shapiro who I think sort of typifies one of the major oh he’s very smart but I think he has one fatal flaw and you can look at the sort of that Ayn Rand I won’t use a pejorative here Ayn Rand that author that wrote Atlas Shrugged and other books like that and so one I think one of the biggest blunders on the right which shows they actually don’t understand how the real world works is to assert that in society human beings should have negative rights but not positive rights and these are legal terms these are legal terms a negative right means the right to be free of some form of abuse the right not to have something happen to you for example the right to be free of let’s say being robbed or raped or murdered or abused in any way so the right not to have something be done to you that’s called a negative right a positive right is let’s say the right to medical care or the right to a good education and so on the right to be safe in your home so they say these rights people are not entitled to yes they do say that really yes slavery at the time of the American Revolution slavery was practiced in almost every country in the world certainly including Africa certainly so slavery was the norm perhaps the only country that didn’t have slavery was India but then they had a type of indentured servitude so basically you could say that slavery was the norm throughout the world certainly including Africa and as far as the founding fathers the majority of them held slaves I’d have to look that up I know Virginia was a very important colony and it was obviously a slave state systemic yes I would say at the time at that time it was definitely systemic institutional racism so that was America as I said ended slavery before Africa so if you look at if you look at the and ending slavery and even fighting a war over it and you know I don’t know thousands or millions of northerners actually dying in that war if you look at the whole abolitionist movement which began of course many years before the civil war what you find is huge numbers of people politicians ordinary people many many many Christians Christians played a leading role in the abolitionist movement that there was a huge part of the country that was adamantly against slavery and so and they even passed a law that because America was expanding there were more and more states coming into the union as the population went westward and they passed a law that all the new states had to be free states they could not be slave states so that didn’t end it in the south but it shows where things were going and so this drive against slavery the drive to abolish slavery the drive to prevent slavery from spreading in America was an abolitionist movement of white people it was an abolitionist movement of white people and so to say the whole country was just you know systematically it’s all I’m saying is we have to look at the real history I’m not saying that these things were good I’m not saying that people didn’t do things wrong they did many many things wrong they did things very seriously wrong but and even if the let’s say the constitutional principles were obviously followed hypocritically by not really giving freedom to everyone but they remained as a reference point in other words when you have when you have the right principles even if the society is not uniformly following those principles it’s good you have the principles because then you can be called to task you can be shamed you can be you know it can be shown that you’re not following your own principles that’s exactly what happened and so when I participated in the civil rights movement in the 60s the whole civil rights movement was based on demanding that existing principles be enforced and honored the civil rights movement was not asking for new principles the civil rights movement did not claim that America has all the wrong principles rather it was demanding that the principles be enforced that there be justice the famous speech by Martin Luther King you know justice quoting from the bible about justice so so many many white civil rights workers you know gave their lives and of course many blacks so I think the real issue here I think the real issue here I’ll get to the real point in my view is that I’m sure we can all agree that racism is bad I’m sure we can all agree that people should be judged by their character by their by who they are their ability not by some external factor and it’s not just racism by the way for example if you look at countries where everyone is the same race you find that certain groups of people who are easily identified either by the way they speak which is a big deal like in My Fair Lady or it can be what religion they have it can be their race it can be their economic position but the tendency of human beings and this is a demonic tendency the tendency of human beings to identify a particular group of people and discriminate against them and make their lives miserable and exploit them is something which is much bigger than racism race is just one marker one way to identify a particular group that you want to lord it over and there are many other ways that people do that so you find it’s very common in history that countries where everyone is the same race you have exactly the same attitude and exploitation and abuse and so on so it’s the general problem of human beings in the mode of passion and ignorance identifying identifying with their bodies this is the real point identifying with their bodies and then abusing people with different kinds of bodies and that you find throughout history and one of the ways that’s done is through race so we agree that there should not be racism however I think what we can disagree on without calling each other names is how do you get there what’s the best method to what’s the best method to achieve a Christian conscious society or even just a moral society in which people are not abused unfairly I mean abuse means unfairly where people are not abused either by race by religion by anything so how do you get there now the tendency on the left is that even if even if you are against racism strongly against racism if you don’t agree with their tactics if you don’t agree with all their assumptions then you’re a racist even if you’re not a racist so for example I read an article about Antifa you know which is one of the most fascist groups in the country ironically they call themselves anti-fascist definitely one of the most fascist groups in the country and they have an official policy that they reject anti-racist conservatives they reject anti-racist conservatives because this is the typical and just one word about the left the left the fascists by the way originally come from the left not the right I don’t know if people are aware of this yeah when I read that I was stunned for the first time it is actually somehow by historical maybe reconceptualization or whatever it was portrayed as if fascism came from the right but Mussolini was a Marxist yeah Mussolini who began fascism and Hitler was a student of Mussolini Mussolini was a Marxist but he noticed and other Marxists noticed that Marxist predictions were not coming true as Marx predicted that there will be anti-capitalist revolutions and although it happened in Russia it didn’t happen in Europe especially not in Western Europe and so the Marxists like Mussolini were trying to understand why didn’t Marxist prophecies come true and they concluded that there was a mistake in Marxism they didn’t reject all of it there was a mistake in Marxism namely they believed that people would be greatly motivated by identification with economic classes and therefore the working class would rise up against the owner class or the employer class so they thought that’s what will motivate human beings Mussolini concluded that there was another force in the world which motivated people more than economic classes and that was nationalism and we have to remember that during the 20s and back then when Mussolini was really getting going that nationalism was a revolutionary thing nationalism also by the way really began if you can go all the way back to Napoleon because nationalism was a was a leftist position not right wing it was leftist because nationalism was arose in opposition to divine right monarchy if you look at the history if you look at the history of European monarchy if you look at the history of European monarchy but if you look at nationalism because under the system of European monarchy it didn’t matter what country you were from for example the present queen of England and that house which is called the house of what is it not Winchester Windsor, the house of Windsor the present royal family of the United Kingdom actually was the house of Hanover they’re German and so when they so at a certain point in history going back to George the first the closest person in line for the English throne was German and so they brought over the house of Hanover and then during the World War you couldn’t have a German name in England so they changed it to Windsor but so the whole notion of divine right monarchy was that political power is not situated in a nation state it’s in a family which has been designated by God as having the right to rule, divine right monarchy so Napoleon ironically was the one that promoted nationalism as a in opposition to divine right monarchy and so if you look at the history so nationalism then of course you have German unification in the second half of the 19th century and then the Italian unification and so nationalism was a big thing nationalism was very strong probably more than today it was like the big ideology that was sweeping through Europe and therefore Mussolini concluded that people are much more nationalistic than they are identified with their particular economic class and therefore he took a lot of Marxism because he was a Marxist including dictatorship he liked that part he liked the part that the state controls everything including the economy and that you get rid of people who disagree with you and but he just made it nationalistic and therefore the Nazi party was the nationalist you know socialist socialist nationalist because that’s really what fascism is it’s national socialism and so and so anyway getting back to my main point what we see today is if like saying Antifa that even if you are against racism I mean strongly against racism you’re committed against racism and you even want to help solve the problem if you are not leftist if you don’t believe their version of history if you don’t believe their sort of unsubstantiated sociology about systemic this and that if you don’t just tow the party line then you’re evil then you’re a racist not because you actually think that a certain race should be exploited or should be kept down or anything like that you can be totally committed to equal opportunity you can be totally committed to helping everyone to achieve a good life but if you don’t buy into their particular interpretation of history which I find to be not at all very well founded if you don’t buy into their interpretation of history and if you don’t buy into their program of what should be done then you are a racist not because you’re a racist but because you don’t agree with them on certain historical interpretation on certain sociological or psychological principles and so that demand that you agree on every point or you will be hated and you will be rejected and you will be punished to the extent that we can punish anyone canceled or whatever that’s just, that’s normal communism fascism, that’s just that’s what they do I mean every country they took over, that’s what they do and when they have the power to kill dissidents they do kill them and so that’s my position my position is actually moderate liberal and conservative on some points and so yeah, no one is disagreeing that we have a problem in fact this modern society you know, sort of greed and lust and just making hell on earth we know that, and that’s why we joined the Hare Krishna movement so my position is, I’m not saying there’s not a problem it’s just that my you know, I feel my I have certain intellectual integrity, at least I try to have, I hope I’m succeeding, but I try to act with intellectual integrity and therefore because, I mean I care very much about the facts, I care very much about the history, the real history and there’s certainly fault on all sides, the real history as far as statistics, KD, my old friend KD, mentioned the statistics, and of course I mean statistics aren’t everything, and you could say human side, but there when there’s disagreement there has to be some reference point, something you can refer to which is reasonably objective, so yes, we agree there’s a problem, I mean that’s why that’s why we’re trying to promote Krishna consciousness, that’s why I am I mean, I’m trying to do my best, whatever that is to spread Krishna consciousness because the world is in a horrible situation, and there is all kinds of envy and hatred on all sides and but again I reserve the right and I really do reserve it, the right to read history and come to my own conclusions I don’t think that people on the left necessarily are just much better than me analyzing history I just don’t see it that way based on what I’ve heard from them and so I can disagree on what the history is, not radically, not disagree in the sense that by saying something idiotic like, you know the blacks had no disadvantages or slavery was actually, you know, many of them were happy as slaves, I mean, I’m not saying stupid things like that we understand the problem however, what was the real history what’s the cause of the problem today Obama, for example, was shouted down because he said the real problem, and this actually is borne out by social science is the lack of black paternity, you know, having children and the father leaving, and actually that’s the real indicator, and then of course you can take it back a step and say why do they do that, what’s the source of that behavior, is it caused by historical, you know, we can go on and on and on but in fact this problem which Obama, which any serious social scientist is going to agree with that the real indicator because, you know, certain black people become very wealthy, very successful highly educated, and have great lives and so you have to, you know, if they were if you actually had real slavery like everyone is kept down, no one is successful because no one is permitted to be successful everyone is kept down, I mean for example in the best American universities everyone knows, and even the courts have had to intervene that there’s massive anti-white racism in university admissions and that’s been proven in many court cases, I mean legal court cases, and you know, the huge you know, this, so there’s been a huge push for diversity, the whole diversity movement you know, I mean if you come on, you know, many campuses in America, if you even just try to give a talk with a different interpretation of history regarding racism, you know, you’d be lucky if you’re not physically assaulted or thrown off the campus, and so and so the racism certainly is not systematic or systemic in the university system, if there is, it’s the opposite. Yeah, it seems there’s also anti-Asian for Asians, Indians and Chinese, now to get into Ivy League universities is extremely difficult.
There are some court cases going on also because of that. Yeah, but no one cares about that. Yeah.
And so you could say, for example, you could ask a simple question, is the NBA racist? Nobody will ask that, it’s prominently black. No, because I, you know, as being trained as a scholar, I just want to be fair and look at all the facts and what’s really going on. We know, for example, that the absence of black fathers raising their children is scientifically, not ideologically, the single biggest problem.
The single biggest problem because it’s the powerful indicator that children that grew up without a father are much more likely, statistically, statistics again, are much more likely to commit suicide, much more likely to become criminals, much more likely to be incarcerated, much more likely to be poor. So that’s a huge indicator. And what we find is, and this is interesting, and I’m not drawing conclusions, I’m just pointing out that if you’re a serious thinker, if you’re not just sort of like a wild ideologue, if you actually want to be rational and not just sort of give yourself a cheap thrill by self-righteousness, then the fact is that this problem, this main problem increased, the problem increased as civil rights increased.
Civil rights. Yes, if you look at the black community, say in the 50s or the 40s, the 30s, if you look at the American black community before the civil rights movement, there was just a fraction of the divorce there is now, or not even divorce, just, I mean, out of wedlock, just people having babies when they’re not married and have no intention of staying together. Black families were much more stable.
Criminality was very low. Unemployment, there was more unemployment among whites than among blacks. This does not mean the civil rights movement was a mistake.
That’s not the point. I think along with the civil rights movement, there was a big emphasis on social welfare. I think, yeah, that’s part of it, I think, but those are the kinds of questions, if you’re actually an open-minded thinker, if you’re not enslaved by ideology and self-righteousness, and you’re really willing to just open your mind and look at all the facts and try to come to a conclusion, why is it that the black community, in some obviously, in very obvious ways, was in a humiliating, abused position, and in other ways was doing better in terms of families staying together, in terms of employment, in terms of, I mean, there were black colleges opening up.
There’s a whole discussion of the philosophy of Booker T. Washington, who was one of the main black leaders toward the end of the 19th century. Very famous. Actually world famous.
He was an American black leader. He founded probably the best black technical university still today, perhaps in the world, or at least in America, I should say, Tuskegee Tech, and you had a dramatic increase in the number of blacks who were becoming scientists, who were becoming engineers, and just becoming and so he had a certain philosophy of how he thought blacks could be emancipated, how blacks could be raised to a position of equal dignity and justice in the society. And then you had other views like Du Bois in the northeast, and they were friends, but they sharply disagreed, and Du Bois is more the voice that won.
It was like, you know, political action and everything, and so I’m not saying that one was absolutely right, and that it was absolutely wrong, but there were different philosophies. There were different interpretations of, you know, what’s the best way to get out of this mess? What’s the best way to achieve the maximum possible justice and equality of rights and equality of, you know, justice and all that stuff, and there were disagreements. In the black community, there still are disagreements.
There are very learned black voices, very learned black voices, scholars, who are conservative, and who feel that the leftist, I would say the far left approach or the hard left approach to racial equality is in many ways a disaster and is actually not good for anyone. But those conservative voices, even though they’re absolutely in favor of equality and all that, they’re not really, they’re not listened to. They don’t get air time.
They’re called all kinds of bad names and everything. And so, I think what we’re seeing, all I’m really objecting to, in a sense, is the leftist tendency that we saw in the Soviet Union, that we saw in Cuba, that we saw in Cambodia, that we see in China, and that is to drown out free speech and if anyone doesn’t agree with the party line, you’re a racist, you’re a bigot, you’re this, you’re a sexist, blah, blah, blah. You’re not allowed to disagree.
There cannot be a rational, ladylike, gentlemanly discussion or debate. If you disagree, you’re just a bad person. You’re evil.
And, of course, when the right takes, when the radical right takes power, you get something. So, I think, in many ways, the strong right is an existential threat to the country, too. I mean, I’ll just say that, why I think the, I don’t know like, where does the hard right end and where does the right begin? But as far as the right, I think, among other things, they’re probably the biggest hypocrites in the country.
Because, I mean, the biggest hypocrites, I think the left are not hypocrites because they don’t, you know, they don’t really believe in much in free speech. But I think the people on the right are actually massively hypocritical because they tend to be Christians. And as I say, if there’s anything at all that Jesus would endorse in the current political landscape, it’s medical care for everyone.
You know, all these programs, they help people. Jesus talks about the Good Samaritan. And the right will say, well, these things, you know, people should be taken care of in the private sphere, not in the public sphere.
We don’t want government doing it. And they’re such hypocrites because they always get elected on small government, a small government platform, and they always increase the national debt massively. Like Clinton, for example, actually balanced the federal budget inconceivably.
We had a balanced budget. And now, and then you get, you know, the first, you get, you got Bush in office, George W. Bush, and then the current whatever it is, that thing that’s inhabiting the White House, you know, whatever kind of creature it is. So then you, and they massively increase the debt.
So incredible hypocrisy. And what’s the problem with increasing the national debt, which the right always does hypocritically after they get elected on a platform of a small government? Because when you have a huge debt, like in America, this crazy debt, it means that the national budget, like all the money the government has to spend that comes from taxes, a huge amount of it goes to paying interest on the debt. And therefore, and you even have this class of philosophers that said, no, it’s good that, but what that means is, there’s actually not that much money to help people that need help.
There’s not that much money to keep infrastructure in good repair. And so it actually cripples the government’s power to help needy people, even if they wanted to. And so that’s a Republican thing, you know, hypocrisy.
And also in their espousing of negative rights by not positive rights, first of all, one of the main flaws in that argument that should be done by private charity is that it it’s grossly unrealistic. It’s just like Marx didn’t understand how the world really works. Neither did the far right.
Neither is the far right. And so in other words, if you’re lucky, if you’re lucky and there are a lot of charitable people in your town, then you won’t starve or you’ll get medical care or your kids will be able to go to college. And if you’re not lucky, then maybe you will live a life in terrible pain.
Maybe you will see your children suffering because you can’t get the medical care or you have a pre-existing condition and so on and so forth. And so they just sort of gamble with the most basic well-being of other human lives. Their argument, which is a good one actually, is that government tends to be just wickedly inefficient.
And when the government has programs, then what you do, what happens is that you waste a huge amount of money. Most of the money goes to an inefficient government bureaucracy and people aren’t really helped that much. I mean, there’s evidence.
For example, Lyndon Johnson had his new society or whatever his program is called. I mean, we can prove that the government wasted trillions of dollars and did not actually significantly improve the welfare of the target populations. But in answer to that, I think the answer to that would be that states can be much more efficient because they’re directly in touch.
States, counties, and so there is a way. If you’re determined to help people, then you can find a way to get a much more efficient ratio in terms of how much taxpayer money is spent and what are the actual social benefits. So it is possible, in my view, to actually dramatically increase the efficiency of that.
Or all kinds of tax incentives, all kinds of incentives can be given to the private sector to give charity, which is still a government supportive program. But I think they’re right and they also give all kinds of arguments to justify or depict as benign the radical polarity of wealth distribution. Radical polarity of wealth distribution.
The real fact is that when you have radical extremes where you get a lot of people with very little money who are struggling, and some people who are literally filthy rich and just throw their money away on idiotic, hedonistic things, then people on the lower end no longer identify. It’s not a team. It’s just like if you have, let’s say, a basketball team and you get one player that gets like half the budget, half the team’s budget for salaries, it just… Hierarchy is one thing, but hierarchy can become so extreme that it no longer is perceived by people at the lower end.
They don’t feel that we’re all in the same system. If you perceive that, let’s say, okay, here’s a leader and the leader is really making it all happen, people in general do not begrudge that leader certain benefits, certain privileges. There’s a natural human acceptance of legitimate hierarchies and equitable even hierarchy of rewards where even Marx said that to everyone according to their need or their… In other words, if someone really is doing more, people in general don’t begrudge that person a certain higher level of compensation.
However, when the compensation gets to be too extreme, then it dissolves the solidarity of the system. People no longer feel we’re in the same system. And when people no longer feel… Just like the Bhagavatam says that a leader should be like a father.
A leader should be like a father. And so if you’re working in a company or in a government or just you live in a society, you want to feel the people who have special power and special rewards are using that power for the good of everyone. And when it becomes obvious, they’re not.
When it becomes obvious, tough luck, I just have a lot of money, you don’t. And so that’s just sorry, I don’t care. And when people lose that sense of solidarity, when they no longer really identify with the system, the society, it starts to come apart.
And so I think one of the reasons that you get this sort of, some of the crazier radical leftist activity is because of the radical greed on the right. And so I think the people on the right, in a sense, are responsible for weakening the social bonds that keep us, hold us all together as a nation or as a society. Another thing they’re incredibly hypocritical about is they, their, what’s the word, disdain.
Their disdain for animal rights, for the welfare of other forms of life. And so in a sense, they are stupidly humanistic. It’s funny because humanism is generally seen as sort of a leftist academic position.
But there’s more of human exceptionalism that it’s more of. Yeah, that’s what humanism is. And so, yeah, so, but not only exceptional, because for example, there’s American, I mean every country, and the Indians think they’re exceptional and they are in a sense, there’s an American exceptionalism, but most Americans, even thinking America exceptional wouldn’t justify genocide of other countries.
Yeah. And so it’s not just being exceptional, it’s like you, it’s being the exclusive recipient of moral consideration. And so it’s, and so, and so the, or for example, take gun rights.
I’ve heard, you know, the person probably considered to be the most brilliant conservative legal mind of our time was Anton Scalia, who was on the Supreme Court who recently died, and I heard him give an argument that I thought was really foolish. Because he was a big hunter. I mean, you know, a big meathead.
And big hunter, super enthusiastic hunter, died at a hunting lodge. And his argument was that, anyway, I won’t go into all the details based on the Bill of Rights and so on, the right to bear arms, which really meant the right to have a people’s militia. Anyway, it’s a whole issue.
But he had a very bad argument, a very bad argument to justify. And we know for a fact, we know for a fact, that the more people in a society own lethal weapons, the more people will use them against innocent people. We know that societies, like say the UK, where they have very strict gun laws, have exponentially, exponentially fewer criminal killings.
Because most people, you know, some people use knives or this or that, but the weapon of choice is obviously a gun. I mean, you know, killing someone with a knife is, to me, very messy. And so the weapon of choice is a gun.
And so even knowing that if you have these crazy, these insanely liberal gun laws, so no background checks, you know, you maybe just escape from a psycho ward, but you can buy a machine gun. I mean, these crazy, crazy laws, we know that it causes thousands of deaths of innocent people, and yet they fight to preserve it because of the gun lobby. So they’re right.
And then again, they’re against abortion. So they want to save babies, but they can kill everything else. And so my conclusion is, yeah, on the left and right, the heavy, I mean, the moderate left and right, I think they’re both, they have some intelligent points.
The moderate left and the moderate right, I think they both have some good points and some mistakes. But when you start to become extreme, because what drives extremism? Extremism means you cannot, by definition, be way on the left or the right unless you’ve divided the world into two parts. You have this sort of this infantile, binary worldview in which you divide the world into two parts, and we know that is flaming mode of passion.
And Christian himself says in the Bhagavad Gita that people in this state of mind, ayatavad prajanati, that they understand things inaccurately, they cannot see clearly. And so by definition, it’s like, this is psychological determinism. That if you are really on the left or way on the right, you are not seeing things accurately.
By definition, you have a warped view of the world. And so therefore, just last conclusion, then I’ll turn it over, but my conclusion would be that we need Krishna consciousness. Left to their own devices, left to their own devices, the hard left and the hard right will destroy society.
Both of them. Both of them tend to be, in my view, ignorant, self-righteous, not righteous, self-righteous, and both of them are an existential threat to the world as history has shown. And so the middle, I think the middle position with Krishna consciousness is a solution.
Yes, Mahesh, thank you. This has been a very exhaustive discussion analysis, I would say, of both left and right. So you know, if I may summarize, as you said, about one and a half hours, you started by talking about the problems of the left and you mentioned about, basically on both sides, the problem is extremism.
And then we went a little bit into the history of the left, how it gets stuck in the dictatorship of the proletariat, and that’s why the leftist ideologies have caused the greatest massacre in world history, genocide. And then the overall problem with the left is that it is operating based on, so a form of determinism, but it’s selective social determinism, that blacks are, that blacks’ behavior is determined, but not other races. So either it is true, it’s not true.
So there is, it’s interesting, left accuses the right of science denial, but you pointed out how the left also operates on science denial. And the idea is not only that we have to work against racism, but we have to work against it in our way. So in a sense, it becomes not so much sympathy for, it is caring for the poor, masquerading as a way to grab power.
And then even, like you said, the Antifa is against black conservatives or anti-racist conservatives. So the problem is, their opposition is not so much to racism, it’s to conservatism also. It’s just the ideology.
So we talk basically, left, as an extreme level, it is quite disruptive. Then at the right side we discussed, I think, three, four main things. One is, there’s a lot of hypocrisy because there is not concern for poor.
So even basic care is not provided for, and the idea is made that people will give charity, but there is one ignorance of human nature, that people will automatically take up, all people will behave equally on the left side, but on the other side, all people will behave, wealthy people will behave charitably. That’s the presumption which is also utopian on the right side. And then on the right, also there is the almost, not just acceptance, but glamorization of radical polarity between the wealthy and the poor.
Like I said, in a team, if one person gets 50% salary, so in the sense, the extreme polarity, which is advocated by the right, leads to the extreme polarity on the left. And the right is also oblivious to animal rights. So it’s not only human exceptionalism, but human exclusivism almost.
So now, this kind of dividing the world into polarities, that is indicative of the modes of passion and ignorance. So in a sense, if we bring about Krishna consciousness, then at least people come to the mode of goodness, and then we can have moderate left, moderate right, and then there can be reasonable discussions, and we can have responsible policies being made for the welfare of society. I appreciate very much you give me this opportunity to get myself in trouble with so many people.
I just want to say that I am strongly committed, my personal views, to the principles Krishna teaches. Krishna emphasizes equality in Bhagavad Gita. It’s all over the Bhagavad Gita, equality.
He says, Pandita Samadarshanah, the wise, the Pandita, see everyone equally. Krishna says, Atmo Panyena Sarvatra Sanam Pashyati Jo Arjuna Sukum Vajjati Vadhukam Sadyogi Paramamata. Krishna says, I consider the greatest yogi to be the one who has universal empathy.
Universal empathy is literally what he says. Atmo Panyena Sarvatra, universal empathy. And Krishna says that in order to please me, in order to achieve the perfection, in chapter 12 he says, you must be Sarvabhutahite Ratah.
You must be dedicated to the well-being of every creature. Of every creature. Obviously, regardless of what kind of body they have.
Race or species. So Krishna says that Samoham Sarvabhuteshu, I am equal to all creatures. Krishna says, Samak Sarveshu Bhuteshu Madh Bhaktim Labhate Param.
That in order to achieve the highest bhakti, you have to be equal to everyone. So unless you respect the equality of all living beings, you cannot achieve Krishna. You cannot be a wise person.
According to Bhagavad Gita, equality, you know, deeply being committed to equality, is a requirement to become Krishna conscious. And so I may have sounded like demonic to some people by some of the remarks I made, but all that I’m really arguing for here is just being objective and reasonable and looking at all the facts. We want to create a society that is just, that treats everyone with dignity, that gives everyone equal opportunity, that makes sure that everyone has access to good medical care, education, everyone is respected, everyone receives justice.
That’s absolutely the society we want. The question is, how do you get there? And I believe that the far right and the far left are both delusional. They’re both delusional about how to get to that strong society.
But nowadays, if you don’t accept the far left, then you’re a racist and a sexist and every evil thing in the world. Not because you really are, but because you just don’t mindlessly repeat all their slogans. And because you care about real history.
And you care about the numbers. Like what does social science show? What’s really going on out there? So if you just care about those things, and have a balanced view, but are totally committed to equality, you’re evil. And if you enter the point of view of the irrational right, if you defend and fight for positive rights, everyone has a right to good medical care.
A right. Everyone has a right to a good education. Everyone has a right to justice.
And if you strongly defend those things, and according to a lot of people on the right, you’re subverting the constitution. So the real problem, the real problem is the modes of passion and ignorance. That’s the real problem.
The modes of passion and ignorance. A society can only be efficient and just and fair and merciful when there’s a strong mode of goodness. I must say, one last little kick at the left, I have to say.
It was the left which ironically, ironically created the conditions for an Ayn Rand type of… Oh, let me mention Ayn Rand very quickly. Sorry. Ayn Rand was this refugee, I think, from communists in the Soviet Union.
And she became sort of like this very famous person. And she was the prophet of just like absolute individualism. It’s the strong individual that gets all the credit.
And anything which hampers the strong individual is wrong. And her obvious mistake was that she was completely unbalanced in terms of how much of your success is due to your own ability and initiative and how much of it is due to opportunities created by society. So, for example, let’s say Henry Ford who started this car thing.
But he could only do that because he was standing on a pedestal that was held up by previous history, by the age of reason, by the scientific revolution, by the scientific, you know, by the age of reason, the scientific revolution, the application of the scientific revolution, which was called the industrial revolution, and all the battles that were fought to free industrialists to do their work, to escape the feudal system. And so you have centuries and centuries of people fighting and working to create more freedom, more opportunity, and he stands on a pedestal. He’s standing on centuries of history and to say, no, he gets all the credit.
He gets all the profit. No, that’s, well, I can’t say this publicly, but I’ll use a word. That’s nonsense, let’s say.
That’s the polite word. That’s nonsense. And so because, let’s say, I mean, I don’t want to bash Henry Ford because one of his relatives is my good friend and a great Vaishnav.
But let’s say anything, you know, J.P. Morgan, let’s go to J.P. Morgan because as far as I know, one of his descendants is not a great Vaishnav. So, I mean, all these, like, robber barons, you know, or the, you know, the Russian oligarchs, the billionaires. The point is that anyone who’s individually successful is standing on the shoulders of history of so many people that fought so many battles, that invented so many things, that had so many great ideas, and therefore to say, I get all the credit, I get all the profit, is delusional.
It’s evil. And so for me, this type of out-of-control capitalism, of Ayn Rand, is insanity. Because, yeah, you get some credit because you made it, but you owe a huge debt to society.
And so we are simultaneously individual and social. We are simultaneously private and public. And every one of us has an extraordinary social debt, which ultimately is a debt to Krishna.
That’s why this, you know, like, just let loose, you know, the robber barons, you know, the capitalists. And that’s not a right-wing thing. They don’t want anyone stopping the robber barons.
And that’s just based on a delusional, ignorant understanding of how history works. The relationship between society and the individual. So, it’s this passion and ignorance.
Because when you’re in passion and ignorance, you have to hate somebody. You’ll go crazy if you don’t find someone to hate. You know, back in the 60s, when we had the San Francisco psychedelic rock bands, and so one of the big hits by the Jefferson Airplane was Don’t You Need Somebody To Love.
If you don’t know that song, it’s on YouTube anyway. So, great song, Don’t You Need Somebody To Love by the Jefferson Airplane. But the song of the hard right and left is Don’t You Need Somebody To Hate.
And the answer is yes. Their passion and ignorance forces them. They need someone to hate.
Because when you hate, it’s like, you know, for them, that’s their drug. Hating is a drug. Because it’s like a narcissistic drug.
It’s collective narcissism. Because when you hate another group of people, whether they’re Blacks or Whites or whoever, when you hate a whole group of people and you hate as a group, you’re lording over. It’s like because you are absolutely virtuous and they are absolutely evil and you get to just totally lord it over half of the world.
And so therefore, you know, all these, as you start to go towards the strong left and right, it’s like a gateway drug. And then once you get into the hard right or left, you are intoxicated. You are on drugs.
You have become a collective narcissist. And you get a free pass to lord it over by hatred. Because hating is one of the main ways we lord it over things.
We hate them. And therefore, we’re absolutely superior to them. So as far as I’m concerned, the hard left and right are both simply totally drugged out collective narcissists who exonerate themselves from all historical responsibility.
I ran into a Marxist student at UCLA in a Joppa walk. And I couldn’t believe it. He actually tried to, because they come, they demonstrate at UCLA campus, you know, they have shouting rallies.
And he was trying to convince me that Stalin was actually a good guy. And all the reports of his atrocities and genocide were just, that’s all, you know, fake news. Yeah.
So that’s what it is. You have these collective, hateful, drugged on hatred. They’re totally tripping on hatred.
And so therefore, devotee, in my opinion, has no business in these dark extremes, political extremes. And that we should be in the mode of goodness, we should see equally, we should see everyone as part of Krishna. And if we do want to help to correct injustice, we should be very, very careful not to slip into these partisan positions.
We should know history, we should know social science, we should know what the hell we’re talking about, and not just filter out all the contrary information, which is what the hard left and right do. It’s called confirmation bias. It’s a well-known, well-established psychological principle.
You filter out anything which doesn’t support your meaning, but your brain filters out anything which doesn’t support your position. So you have to be in the mode of goodness. You have to be equal to everyone in order to actually be a thinker, a sage.
Krishna says, Pandita, that means scholar, that means sage. Those who are actually wise and intelligent, they see everyone equally, and they check their facts. Check their facts, yes, Maharaj.
So, thank you very much. Thank you very much, Maharaj. I’m not in too much trouble now, but… Oh, no, it is wonderful.
Thank you for sharing your wisdom, Maharaj. Humble obeisances. Hare Krishna.