Values vs. Clickbait: Allen West

SPEAKER 01 : 0:03

Welcome to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Ron. She’s a master educator and author leading the conversation to restore the American mind through wisdom, virtue, and truth.

SPEAKER 04 : 0:16

Well, hello, everyone. Welcome to Restoring Education in America. I’m your host, Priscilla Ron, and I’m so glad that you’ve decided to join the conversation today. This fall, there is a new school opening in the Centennial area. It’s called Excalibur Classical Academy. They are a new private classical Christian school. And they are starting with kindergarten through third grade. So if you have a young child that is starting in the early grades of elementary, please go to their website to learn more and to get a tour of the school. Their website is Excalibur Classical Academy dot org. and their mission and vision is restoring america’s heritage by developing servant leaders who are keepers and defenders of the principles of freedom for which our founding fathers pledged their lives fortunes and sacred honor they’re going to learn a lot and you know what there’s something that is a better teacher than anything and that sometimes is failure And we’re going to talk a little bit about lessons learned and failure. And to talk about that is my guest that I am bringing to the stage, Lieutenant Colonel, retired Army, Mr. Congressman, my mentor, Allen West. Hello. Hello.

SPEAKER 02 : 1:39

How are you doing, Priscilla? You’re very kind. Thanks for having me on.

SPEAKER 04 : 1:42

Well, it’s always an honor to talk to you. We always have really wonderful conversations and I really appreciate your mentorship. But there’s been some exciting things happening in the news. Everyone knows that you’ve served time in Congress. You are a conservative. You are the chair of the Dallas County GOP. And so you’re the perfect person to have this conversation with. So Let’s get into it. So as America approaches its 250th anniversary, the first Black members of Congress were Republicans during Reconstruction. But today we’re seeing prominent Black Democrat members like Jasmine Crockett and Al Green, I call him, Al, good trouble, Green. They’ve either lost or they’re in a primary. So what does that say, if anything, about how political representation and party dynamics in the Black community have evolved?

SPEAKER 02 : 2:38

Well, it’s very interesting what you’ve seen. I’m there in Dallas County, and of course, Jasmine Crockett, her congressional district was centered there in Dallas County. And for whatever reason, she thought that she was ready to run for a statewide Senate office, and now her political career is over. And I think you will see the exact same thing happen with Al Green down in the Houston area as well. I think that more in the urban communities and urban centers are starting to wake up and think about the policies that have affected their lives, their safety and security, educational opportunities. Because when you talk about those two individuals, and really when you talk about the current Congressional Black Caucus, why is it that they don’t support parental choice in education? That they prop up the teachers unions over kids getting a good quality education. And we see all across the United States of America and all these major urban population centers, the lack of young black children being able to read and do math at grade level. So I think that a lot of people in these communities are waking up to it. You’re not going to turn it overnight, but at least some of these old guard, I call them old chuckleheads that are running around right now, people start to reject them.

SPEAKER 04 : 3:54

So Jasmine has quite the education. She went to private schools her entire life. When you look at early videos of her speaking, she was this beautiful young lady, intelligent, carried herself with class. Then she goes to Congress. And she becomes ratchety and like hood rat. And you look at her videos and she’s cussing in Congress and she’s she’s just not carrying herself like a stateswoman. But here’s my question for you being in Dallas. What has Jasmine Crockett delivered for the citizens of Dallas County?

SPEAKER 02 : 4:28

uh nothing just a charlatan just a an imposter a lot of good videos if that’s the type of stuff that you like but she has not delivered anything i mean when you look at the economic security economic prosperity in her district nothing the educational opportunities nothing safety and security nothing i mean she does not believe in closing our borders and getting rid of criminal illegal immigrants that do thrive in these these major urban population centers. Dallas County is a sanctuary county within the state of Texas. So she does not speak out about these things. And you just brought up an incredible point that here’s a young lady that has all of this great background in education, private school. education. But for some odd reason, she got caught up in this aura, this character that is not reflective of, I think, what people want to have in a quality statesman or stateswoman, as you just said. And so I think that that has led to her downfall as well.

SPEAKER 04 : 5:29

You know, I was looking back at, you know, as a young Black girl, I remember when Condoleezza Rice became our Secretary of State. And I looked at her and I said, wow, what a beautiful, intelligent, articulate woman that I can look up to. And I’m really excited. She’s part owner of Denver Broncos and she’s- She’s back here. And I’m looking for that in the next generation of young women. And it’s a shame because she had her future was there for her. She could have really made a path for herself politically. But then you look at someone like former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who admitted that she got caught up in a lot of the rhetoric and the toxic environment in Congress. And so Do you think that young politicians believe that this needs to be the way that they need to make a name for themselves? Or do you think that we’re going to start to see a change back to more decorum?

SPEAKER 02 : 6:30

Well, you know, you brought up Condoleezza Rice, what an incredible person, the classical pianist, which of course is near and dear to your heart, you know, fluent in Russian, but we have lost the value of that. And so what do we value now more? How many clicks you can on social media, TikTok, Instagram, what have you? And I think that brings about a lot of this sensationalism when you look at congressional hearings and how everyone, when they get their five minutes, they’re all about making that sensational little video clip from C-SPAN that will go out on YouTube or what have you. So we don’t see that in-depth debate on issues. And you see people that are an inch deep and a mile wide. And that’s very sad because we need to have intelligent and competent people in order to make sure that we preserve this great constitutional republic. And 250 years of American independence, the only way that happens if you have astute young men and women that are able to understand the foundations and the principles and values of this great nation. And hopefully we can get back to that. But right now, with all the social media, the clickbait and everything, that’s what people are after.

SPEAKER 04 : 7:43

Well, you and I have spent a lot of time learning our heritage in America, understanding the Constitution, the foundation and origin of our rights, how to identify the threats to our rights and how to defend against those threats. And I look at someone like Jasmine, and you would think she’s a lawyer, she should know what the Constitution says. But time after time, I’ve seen clips where she said things that make me believe that either she doesn’t really truly understand what the Constitution says, or she’s just willingly trying to play for the blue jersey, so to speak. So fast forward, she’s in her primary. I saw a video of her blaming even the Democrats, accusing them of being racist, saying they intentionally made me darker than I am. But then here’s election night. I’m going to play this clip.

SPEAKER 03 : 8:37

Because there was a lot of confusion today. And so, you know, our Democratic Party Chair, Cardall Coleman, he beat me to the punch, as myself and Colin Allred were about to file a lawsuit to keep the voting polls open. We were able to keep the polls open, but I can tell you now that people have been disenfranchised. The reason that we knew that there were problems is because we were receiving the phone calls and the emails. The polls were supposed to stay open until nine, according to a court order. The Supreme Court, just a few minutes ago, just said, shut it down. Knowing that Dallas County is a big dump of votes, we, in my opinion, will not know the election results overall tonight. If it comes in and I’m losing Dallas County, then we know kind of where this thing is going. So that’s my news, is that we’re not going to have election results tonight, in my opinion, based upon what specifically is taking place in Dallas County. Unfortunately, this is what Republicans like to do. And so they specifically targeted Dallas County. And I think we all know why.

SPEAKER 04 : 10:08

Chairman West, why were you picking on Jasmine? Why did you steal this election from her?

SPEAKER 02 : 10:16

Well, you know, I never knew how much power that I had. that I could go into a Democrat primary and cause someone to lose in a Democrat primary. I thank her for giving me that credit, but I don’t accept it. Look, this comes back to understanding civics. And our county executive committee voted last fall, September, that they wanted to have a non-joint primary and they wanted to have precinct-based voting on election day. The only time we could do it was election day. And we did everything that we possibly could to inform our Dallas County Republican voters to let them know how we would be combining some of these precincts so that we could get precinct voting done instead of having, you know, a thousand different precinct locations. And, you know, without a doubt, there are some people that don’t pay attention to the political process, electoral process. And we did everything we could in that day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. to inform voters, to correct them. I was at the Dallas County GOP headquarters all day, election day, until about 8 o’clock that night. Only had one person. One person came by to say, hey, look, can you help me in finding my precinct? The Democrats, on the other hand, obviously, they showed their incompetence. They were not able to execute their own primary election. They did not inform and educate their voters. And the problem was that uh the uh chairman that she mentioned mr coleman went behind the back of the dallas county elections department did not coordinate with their legal counsel and went and judge shopped and got someone to uh extend those voting hours which if you you can’t just say we’re going to extend it just for the democrats i mean it has to be extended for everyone across the board. And that’s why the Texas Supreme Court shut it down. So once again, the party of projection, they want to talk about cheating. That’s what they tried to do. They tried to keep the polls open just for themselves by going to a Democrat judge in a Democrat county. And let me help anyone to understand, there are no elected Republicans in leadership of Dallas County, Texas. So this whole thing about Republicans being able to cheat in Dallas County, that’s ludicrous, that’s absurd, that’s delusional.

SPEAKER 04 : 12:29

Wow. Well, Representative Crockett has suggested racism. And I like if she really, truly believes this. I’m wondering if she might change jerseys. Does she come across to you as someone who is going to look at the truth and realize that maybe she’s been playing for the wrong team?

SPEAKER 02 : 12:52

No, never. I mean, she’s just a whiner. And instead of her admitting that she did not win that statewide election and, you know, she was not going to make up all of the votes in Dallas County. I mean, she lost by a pretty good margin, almost 10 percentage points. So Dallas County was not going to win it for her. She completely lost across the state of Texas to a representative, James Tallarico, who, if you’ve been listening to some of his speeches, I mean, he’s kind of like woke Jesus, you know, possible out there. So he’s not going to play very well in the general election either.

SPEAKER 04 : 13:24

Yeah, I was about to talk about him. I mean, it is crazy the things that has come out of his mouth. People really need to go and listen to some of his videos and hear how preposterous his claims are about what’s in the Bible. It’s actually pretty scary. I’m wondering if he’s going to end up… How successful do you think he might be once…

SPEAKER 02 : 13:49

people find out a little bit more about him i don’t think he’ll be successful whatsoever i think that he will have a campaign that absolutely craters texas is still the uh the belt the buckle of the bible belt and when you have someone out there that quote unquote you know professes to be a pastor and he’s talking about the bible uh supports abortion you know all the way up to the time of birth that uh we need to make sure the bible says that trans people need to have abortion rights i mean i don’t know where this guy gets this stuff from but it reminds me of second timothy chapter four verses you know two through five which talks about these false prophets and false narratives that would be out there tickling people’s ears he’s not going to go very far sure he’s going to get the uh i’d say the the 40 to 45 percent of the uh sycophants out there of the progressive socialist leftists that we do have in the state of texas But he’s not going to be able to go down to South Texas and talk about open borders. He’s not going to be able to go out to Midland and Odessa to talk about climate change and shutting down oil and natural gas. He’s not going to be able to go anywhere outside of his little bubble, Austin, Texas, Dallas, and potentially Houston. That’s it.

SPEAKER 04 : 15:02

Yeah, left wing media has been propping him up, saying he’s claiming a lot more Hispanic votes. But I think if the Hispanic population starts to see some of his clips, they’ll say that doesn’t align with my values and principles at all.

SPEAKER 02 : 15:17

Yeah, the Hispanic pastors will completely reject him. And furthermore, two years ago, Donald Trump flipped 13 of 15 border counties. because border security is very important. They do not want to see the drug cartels and Trenderagua and all of these different various Asandra groups running amok in their community. So, again, Tallarico, he’s still a Marxist leftist. He is not going to play very well.

SPEAKER 04 : 15:41

If you’re just tuning in, my special guest today is retired Lieutenant Colonel Allen West, Congressman and Chairman of Dallas County GOP. And we’re talking about the recent elections in Dallas. And now let’s turn to Houston, Mr. Al, I don’t feel no ways tired green, who is in a primary with a younger black male Christian menifee. And, you know, I’ve been seeing this trend in Colorado where the quote unquote, younger Democrats are accusing the more veteran Democrats of being too old, which I find that- The old guard. The old guard, right. But this new generation is obviously more radical. The Democrats in Dallas are trying to make Tallarico look moderate, but he’s just crazy. But what’s going on in Houston? Why is this young guy challenging Mr. Green?

SPEAKER 02 : 16:39

Well, again, I think that you do see that desire for the old guard to to go away. And, you know, once upon a time, I remember some of those members of the Congressional Black Caucus, you know, the Maxine Waters type, I forget her name, Barbara, Barbara Lee out in the Oakland, San Francisco area. You know, they’ve kind of just run their course. And so you’re getting a lot of these young, more radical black Democrats out there, the Black Lives Matter crew, if you want to call them that. But again, that radicalism, I mean, we see it out of, I believe it’s a state representative out of Memphis, Tennessee. That radicalism is not reflective of the black community. Yes, they may be popular, but they’re popular in a very small area or very small zone. But One of the things we got to do better in the inner cities is we got to do better with voter participation, you know, participating and understanding civics. And again, I think that we’ll start to see more of that as people start to understand and see how these policies are affecting them and affecting their children. You know, if you’re up there and you’re not talking about better educational opportunities for these young black boys and girls, then, yeah, you may seem popular. You may get a lot of hits on TikTok or whatever, but eventually people are going to reject you.

SPEAKER 04 : 17:59

So there is this divide. You’re talking about this divide in the Black community, Black Democrats versus Black conservatives or Black liberals and Black Republicans. Why do you think we still have this huge divide? Where’s the disconnect in communication and messaging?

SPEAKER 02 : 18:19

I think it comes from a party not understanding its history. One of the things that I’ve always told folks is that the largest state Republican Party in the United States of America, the Republican Party of Texas, was founded on Independence Day 1867 by 150 Black men in Houston, Texas. And when you tell Republicans that, they shake their head. They never knew. A party that was started to do one thing in 1854, to end slavery, But yet we have allowed the other side to usurp so much of that history and so much of the policies. I mean, you know, it was a Republican president that stood in support of Brown versus the Board of Education. That was Eisenhower. It was a Republican senator, Everett Dirksen, that made sure the Civil Rights Act legislation in 1964 passed. But when you look at the left, and I don’t call them liberals because they’re not. They’re not truly the classical liberals that believe in life, liberty, and property as John Locke put forward in his second treatise of government. What they are are Marxists. They’re progressive. They’re leftists. They’re socialists from an economic standpoint. They’re communists from a societal standpoint. We have to start articulating that to help people to understand because there’s nothing cool about socialism. There’s nothing cool about Zohran Mamdani or these people that are supporting Islamic jihadists and especially the black community should not want to, you know, people that are saying Jesus never happened. Jesus was never died on the cross for our sins. But that’s what the left has gotten in bed with with these Islamists. So I think it’s very important that we study to show ourselves approved, as it says in the Bible. that we understand the history of this country. We understand its fundamental operating systems. We understand what it means to live in a constitutional republic. And I think that truthfully, that needs to be learned very much so in the Black community. There’s only one party that has been completely against the success of Black people in America.

SPEAKER 04 : 20:15

I just can’t understand where the disconnect is because when I talk with Black folks on the liberal side, and I’m sure you see this too, they want the same things. They get it. They’ve got family values. They were raised in the church. They want, like you said, better education. They believe in strengthening families and fatherhood. But there’s clearly, the Democrats do a really good job of going into the inner city communities and just being present and doing the handouts and obviously ultimately making those in our community more dependent on the government rather than developing independent, successful, entrepreneurial, creative young people. And that’s why I’m not mad about a lot of these changes that are coming from DC about ending DEI, ending CRT, decreasing the size of the Department of Education. But with that, I was really hopeful that it would happen. We know that it takes a vote from Congress, it’s probably not high on the priority list in Congress, but what do you think it’s going to take? Is this a pipe dream that Congress would ever actually eliminate the Federal Department of Education? What is it going to take? Because I’m trying to figure out what the glitch is.

SPEAKER 02 : 21:32

Well, you have to have the will and the resolve to do that. One of the things I always talk about is restoring constitutional governance. When you read the Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, it lists the 18 different enumerated powers, jurisdictions, duties, responsibilities of the federal government. And we have gotten so far away from that. And I think that if we would just sit down and say, show me where it says that the federal government has a jurisdiction for in the arena of education. And then go back and understand, why did we have a Department of Education in the first place? Well, during the Carter administration, him coming in, we had Health Education Welfare, HEW. But the teachers unions got to Jimmy Carter and said, we want to have our own department, Department of Education. And when you look at the standards of education, since we created a federal government Department of Education, it’s gone down. So we pumped in more government largesse into this thing that the government has no jurisdiction over, no enumerated powers over. That’s why you have local school boards and things of this nature. It’s a local issue. But yet we have allowed the federal government to usurp so many things. And now we have a system of indoctrination and not education. So I think it’s going to take men and women who are constitutionalists that understand, you know, the right duties and responsibilities of the federal government and get back to having that. There’s so many agencies up there at the federal government level that should be eliminated because they’re not constitutionally aligned.

SPEAKER 04 : 23:01

So I am loving 2026 because it’s America’s 250th birthday. It’s really allowing me an excuse to talk about our history and to engage people in a conversation about not just our history, but our heritage, our American heritage, because we know that we could know our history, but it’s different to know your heritage and to be able to defend that. and you are the Executive Director of the American Constitutional Rights Union. Can you talk a little bit about this organization and some of the active work that you do?

SPEAKER 02 : 23:39

Yeah, it’s an incredible organization. It was founded in 1999 by two members of the Reagan administration, his attorney general, Edwin Meese, and also his welfare reform legislation author, Robert Carlson. And the whole point was to get us to focus on defending and supporting our constitutional rights and freedoms and liberties. And it was supposed to be kind of like an opposition, a bulwark against the ACLU. which is very nebulous. I mean, once upon a time, they did believe in free speech. Now they don’t. As a matter of fact, ACLU is going after a lot of sheriffs all across the country to include sheriffs there in Colorado, preventing them from enforcing the law. And that’s one of the big things we’re working on right now with the ACRU is to support our sheriffs, what we call the Defender Initiative, to make sure that they are out there and they are able to enforce the law and not have Attorney generals, governors, state legislatures, and other people bringing the hammer down on them and trying to prevent them from protecting the American people. So that’s one of the critical things. Also, all of our First Amendment rights, our Second Amendment rights, we just want to see us get back to constitutional governance. And what we try to do is inform, educate, and activate people. I do a lot of traveling around the country. helping people to understand those issues. Matter of fact, I’ll be out in Colorado pretty soon at the Center for American Values out there with the Medal of Honor recipient who started that incredible organization. So it’s so important that we get back to understanding those fundamental documents. And again, when you look at America’s 250, when you look at our Declaration of Independence, Priscilla, there is no other country in the world that was founded on the premise that the individual is sovereign because their rights come from a sovereign God, the Judeo-Christian faith heritage God. And it is about the consent of the governed. It is not about the government. But the challenge we face in America today is that there are people that believe that government is sovereign over the individual. And we have got to make sure that we have that right relationship restored.

SPEAKER 04 : 25:40

That is amazing. I’m looking at the time, and we’re almost out of time, but I want people to know how to get a hold of you or follow you on social media. What are some of your handles?

SPEAKER 02 : 25:48

Sure. If you would go to theacru.org, the American Constitutional Rights Union, weekly I put out a constitutional brief talking about some of the issues. Then I’m on all the social media platforms except for TikTok because I don’t support TikTok. 90s Party. You can find me on Substack, and you can also find me on my measly little podcast, not like your great podcast, but it’s called Steadfast and Loyal.

SPEAKER 04 : 26:14

So this conversation is one of the reasons why I am opening a private classical Christian school because we need to change the trajectory. We need to raise up servant leaders like yourself who understand how to defend our nation because our public schools are failing. We’ve got teachers teaching students how to protest ICE, not even understanding what ICE stands for. And it’s pretty scary out there that parents can’t trust the safety of their children to our public government run schools. And so I just want to thank you for all of the advocacy work. I know you also, you do commercials for the conservative senior organization, the opposite of the AARP.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:03

Oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER 04 : 27:06

I’m not old enough.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:07

AMAC, the Association of Mature American Citizens, yeah.

SPEAKER 04 : 27:09

Yeah, I’m not old enough to participate in that.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:13

One day you’ll cross the military. I hope I have enough. 30 years from now, huh? 30 years from now.

SPEAKER 04 : 27:19

Right. I hope I’m old enough and have enough birthdays to do that, as my father would say. If you have enough birthdays, then maybe you will. But thank you so much for your time again and your mentorship and wisdom.

SPEAKER 02 : 27:32

Priscilla, anything that I can do to support you in establishing your classical education academy, please let me know. And I will be on the first plane out of Dallas-Fort Worth to get to you.

SPEAKER 04 : 27:44

Thank you so much. I will take you up on that. Thank you. To my listeners, catch me next time. And remember, educating the mind without the heart is no education. So seek wisdom, cultivate virtue, and speak truth.

SPEAKER 01 : 28:00

Thanks for tuning in to Restoring Education in America with Priscilla Ron. Visit PriscillaRon.com to connect or learn how you can sponsor future episodes to keep this message of faith, freedom, and education on the air.