The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 24 – Lt. Col. Allen West

Episode 24: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode of the Dr. Jeff Show, host Dr. Jeff interviews retired Lieutenant Army Colonel Allen West, a decorated military veteran, former Florida Congressman, and Texas gubernatorial candidate. West discusses his upbringing in 1960s Atlanta during the civil rights movement, where his parents taught him never to see himself as a victim and to exceed standards rather than use his race as a crutch.

The conversation covers West’s military service and how military experience taught him about mission accomplishment and commitment to duty. A significant portion focuses on West’s critique of critical race theory, and West advocates for black conservatism rooted in the principles of Booker T. Washington: education, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance, arguing that conservatives seek to make people victors rather than victims. The episode concludes with an overview of West’s work at the Hope Center.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey gang, it’s Dr. Jeff. Welcome back to the Dr. Jeff Show. This is the show where we believe that worldview changes everything, and I have the opportunity in this program to interview people who are thought leaders in all different areas of life.

Today, my guest is a retired Lieutenant Army Colonel, Allen West. He was a warrior, a highly decorated military veteran. He has been a member of Congress from Florida, moved to Texas, became chairman of the Republican Party there. He’s also been the director of the Hope Center, which enables nonprofit organizations to work together to share the gospel of Jesus Christ. He’s touring the border as we have the conversation, and you are not going to want to miss a minute of it. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show. Colonel Allen West, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Lt. Col. Allen West (00:52):
Thank you for having me on, Dr. Jeff. Pleasure.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:55):
I’m really glad to visit with you. I know you’re in a car, you’re touring the Texas border right now, but I’m really excited for our audience to have a chance to get to meet you. You’re a highly decorated military officer. You’ve been a United States Congressman from Florida, and now you’re running for governor in Texas in 2022. Yes. How’s the campaign going so far?

Lt. Col. Allen West (01:14):
It’s going very well. We are in our third week of the campaign. The response has been incredible. A lot of people signing up to volunteer and getting out and about and continuing on traveling across Texas is the same as I did as the chairman of the Texas GOP.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:31):
Well, I’m excited that you’re there in Texas now and looking forward to our conversation. I know the connections may not be great because along the Texas border, sometimes you get a good connection, sometimes you don’t. But we’ll just make the best of it because I’ve really been looking forward to having this conversation to talk with you about a lot of things about your military experience, but also about race relations in the United States of America.

Before we dig into that, Colonel West, you were born in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1960s, right in the middle of the civil rights movement. And I’m curious, how did your parents, as you were growing up, how did they view that struggle?

Lt. Col. Allen West (02:10):
Well, my parents never wanted me to ever see myself as a victim. I was born in a Blacks only hospital in 1961, Atlanta, Georgia. And my daddy always taught me that never see or use your color as a crutch. One of his great quotes that has always stuck with me is that you find out what the standard is and you exceed it. And so that’s how he challenged me, at the age of 15, to be the first officer in our family because he was a corporal in the Army in World War II. Our older brother was a Marine infantryman in Vietnam.

And so I started out in high school, junior ROTC, went on to the University of Tennessee, earned my commission there. And on 31 July 1982, I became a commissioned officer in the United States Army. So it was important that the neighborhood I grew up, it was Dr. King’s neighborhood also, the old Fourth War neighborhood. And I think that his “I have a dream” speech which talked about being judged by the content of character and not the color of your skin. That’s how my parents raised me.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:13):
Colonel West, how did the fact that your father or brother, your mother all being involved in the military, how did that affect their view of the world at that time?

Lt. Col. Allen West (03:24):
Well, their view was very simple. I never heard them say anything disparaging about this country. My dad, when he challenged me to become an officer, said that there’s no greater honor than to wear the uniform of the United States of America. My mother served a little over 25 years civilian service with the Sixth Marine Corps District headquarters in Atlanta. And now my nephew, my older brother’s son, he’s also a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army. So our lives and our family has been about service, sacrifice and commitment.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:53):
Colonel West, you served in Operation Desert Shield, Operation Desert Storm, and then you ran for Congress and you were a member of Congress from the state of Florida. It occurs to me that 50 years ago, a majority of people who were serving in Congress had military experience. Now, it’s far less. It’s been steadily declining. What did military service teach you as a member of Congress?

Lt. Col. Allen West (04:23):
Yeah, I served 22 years active duty service in the United States Army. And upon retiring, my wife, her dad was a career military guy as well. I told her wherever you want to go. And so she got a great offer from Raymond James. So we moved out to South Florida and I ran for Congress there. And you’re correct. I think that the military teaches you about mission accomplishment. I think the military teaches you that you don’t see obstacles, you see opportunities, but the most important thing is that you have a commitment to the oath that you take and you get the job done.

And that was one of the things that was kind of disheartening being in Congress because we never really solved the issues. We never really get things done. I call it the self-licking ice cream cone and that people continue to perpetuate the issues and the problems like what we have here on our border, and they never want to solve these issues.

(05:13):
And I think that’s one of the main reasons I’m running for governor, because the people here in the state of Texas deserve to be in a state where their sovereignty is respected, and then they can have safety and security in their lives. They’re not worried about illegal immigrants and people that mean them harm and danger trespassing on their property.

Dr. Jeff Myers (05:31):
A lot of people I think today don’t even know the Constitution. They don’t respect the Constitution. I saw one survey that said 51% of people think the First Amendment should be scrapped to the Constitution, the Bill of Rights. And lately, we’ve been seeing a big influence in the military related to critical race theory, a lot of the kind of training that students are receiving in schools around the country. And if we had a chance to get to that and you’d like to comment on it, I’d love for you to be able to do that.

But I wanted to talk about your book briefly, because you wrote a book called We Shall Overcome about the Black Conservative Movement that I think a lot of people don’t really know about, that there is a conservative resurgence in the Black community. Could you speak to that a little bit?

Lt. Col. Allen West (06:22):
Well, sure. I mean, when I wrote the book, We Can Overcome, a lot of people think that conservatism in the Black community is a Johnny Come lately issue, and that’s not the case. When you go back and you look at the man that I call the father of black conservatism, Booker T. Washington, who all he wanted once he became free was an education because he understood that that opened up the doors of equality of opportunity.

But in establishing the first institution of higher learning for blacks down South Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute, he had a three point agenda or plan. And that was education, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance. And I think if we go back, and we look at the strength of the black community, we will see that it was education, entrepreneurship, self-reliance, strength of family, individual responsibility.

But slowly over time, especially since the great society programs of Lyndon Johnson, you’ve seen the family get decimated, you’ve seen quality education in the urban centers being decimated, you have seen economic opportunity dwindle, and those have had adverse effects.

(07:27):
So I think that you’re starting to see a resurgence of conservatism in the black community because they’re tired of being seen as victims, which goes back to this whole critical race theory crap, which basically says that because you, Dr. Jeff, are white, you’re evil, you oppress me, and because I am black, I’m supposed to be oppressed and be a victim. Conservatism is about making people victors and not victims. And I think blacks are tired of being seen by progressive socialist leftists as victims and being used and being taken for granted.

Dr. Jeff Myers (08:01):
I saw a new poll that was done, I think it was just done this week, saying that race relations in the United States of America are at their lowest levels in decades, that about half the number of people think that race relations in the United States of America, black people, white people, about half of them, as in 2001, think that we’re moving in the right direction. If race relations are getting worse, what is it that critical race theorists are hoping to achieve?

Lt. Col. Allen West (08:29):
Well, critical race theory is the new Marxism. It is a division of people, this nation, not based upon socioeconomic status, but based upon race. And when you think about it, like I said, being born and raised in the same neighborhood that produced Dr. King and he talked about the content of character, not the color of skin, we’re going backwards from what his dream and his I Have a Dream speech was all about.

And this is all about manipulation. This is all about trying to exert power and control over individuals. And like I said, when you think about this critical race theory, when you think about this belief system that says that I, as a black person, am incapable or incompetent enough to go out and get a picture ID so that I can go out and vote. This is insidious and we’ve got to stop it.

(09:16):
And what is really disconcerting and disturbing is that you have the head of the American Federation of Teachers, Randy Weingarten, who says that they’re going to go after parents. They’re going to attack parents because they will teach critical race theory K through 12th grade in public schools. I thought the parents were the ones to determine the education of their children, not the teacher’s unions and not Randy Weingartner determining they want to indoctrinate children.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:44):
Is there a belief in the American Teachers Federation that they’re not their children, that the parents are somehow irrelevant to the education process, that it should be about the teachers? Is that what?

Lt. Col. Allen West (09:56):
Well, of course, that’s the collective mentality. And when you go back and you look at other totalitarian individuals and regimes, look, you can read Adolf Hitler, you can read Lennon, Stalin, Chairman Mao. They all talked about control of young people and control of their minds. And look at what is happening in our country here in our system of academia where we see failing systems of education. Our kids aren’t reading at grade level. Our kids aren’t doing math at grade level. And so what does the teacher union want to do? They want to talk about divisiveness.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:31):
Right. So I remember when I read Communist Manifesto the first time, communist manifesto, I was shocked a little bit. I was probably in college at the time. The fact that Carl Marx used the word abolish 30 times in manifesto. One of the things he wanted to abolish is the parental influence over kids, because as long as parents are raising kids, they will always raise them to perpetuate the existing system and you’ll never be able to have revolution. It almost sounds like that kind of revolutionary mindsets come to our own schools.

Lt. Col. Allen West (11:03):
It has absolutely come to our shores. And I always ask people when I’m going out and speaking, if they had ever read the communist manifesto from Carl Marsh, because when you talked about abolishing parental rights, what does he also promote? He promotes state control of education. And so that comes back to what you just saw with Randy Weingartner, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, is saying that we will teach this to your children. And if not, then we will abolish your parental rights by using the legal system to go after you. And so now we have teachers’ unions declaring war on parents, basically.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:40):
Colonel West, I know as you’re running for governor, you’re going to be asked questions like this a lot, but what are parents to do? What are some steps that we should be taking right now, those of us who have children?

Lt. Col. Allen West (11:52):
Well, I think you already see it happening. Two years ago, you would be hard pressed to find anyone showing up at school board meetings, but now it’s not just that people are showing up at school board meetings, people are running for school board. And we’ve seen incredible success with the last municipal level elections here in Texas where we had people really going out, constitutional conservatives, parents wanting to reassert their control over the education of their children and running for school boards. So I think you’re already seeing that happen.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:23):
So exercising their power as voters to have an influence on the schools that are teaching their own children.

Lt. Col. Allen West (12:30):
Yeah. The most important elected position is the American school board, but normally the election that has the least amount of voter participation is also the school board.

Dr. Jeff Myers (12:40):
Now, I know a lot of people are probably thinking, “Maybe I could run for school board, maybe I could get involved there.” And when they do, they’ll find themselves in the middle of a whole lot of controversy. In fact, there’ll be a lot of people like in Loudoun County, Virginia where they say, “We are not even teaching critical race theory.” I mean, how do they navigate that?

Lt. Col. Allen West (13:01):
Well, first of all, that’s a lie. And I think that Randy Reingarden has just confirmed that that is a lie because she said that that’s what they will be teaching to our students. And so they can try to manipulate the language, but the bottom line is I’m a proponent of teaching people history, but not teaching people an ideological agenda, such as telling people that the United States of America was founded in 1619 and not July the 4th of 1776.

Because what the left is looking to do, if people don’t know from whence they came, they don’t know where they are. And if they don’t know where they are, they don’t know where they’re going. And so this is an incredible, like you said, collectivist, Marxist endeavor to erase, not just revise, but erase the history of America and rewrite history.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:52):
How does this apply? I know a lot of the media attention has gone towards sports these days, and Black Lives Matter are involved in sports, the Black national anthem. I wonder if you have any comments on what you’re seeing there.

Lt. Col. Allen West (14:06):
The Black National Anthem is a spiritual song. And growing up at 4th Street, United Methodist Church in Atlanta, at the end of every service we sang that song, it is not meant to be a national anthem. It’s not meant to be in competition with our national anthem because America is based upon E pluribus unum, out of many comes one, and we don’t need to have this separation of this division, which we exactly see what is happening.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:35):
Are you hopeful as you look at America in the coming years?

Lt. Col. Allen West (14:41):
Always hopeful about America because I think it was Sir Winston Churchill who said that you can expect Americans to do what is right after they have tried everything else. And so we have touched the oven of socialism, communism, Marxism, and I think we’re going to get burned and we’ll go back to being good old Americans.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:59):
I would love to see somebody in the administration, I don’t think this is going to happen, but I would love to see them have a focus on small business. Small business administration, there’s a small business commission inside of Congress, and they have been able to show that black families that run businesses have 12 times the wealth of other families in their community. As you’re thinking, as you’re going through the state of Texas, how do you bring that entrepreneurial mindset that you mentioned that was common in early historically black colleges? How do you bring that into focus for people?

Lt. Col. Allen West (15:33):
Well, you have to teach that entrepreneurial mindset. You have to teach that rugged individualism, and you can’t have this fear of going out there and trying to endeavor to do something such as open up a business, and you’ve got to have the policies that protect it. Here in Texas, we lost some 10,000 small businesses last year because we had this magnanimous shutdown, and we don’t want to have that.

But most importantly, we’ve got to teach people that you don’t have to sit around and wait for something coming from the government. You can go out there and open up a business. And that’s what I saw growing up in my neighborhood was black-owned small businesses, but yet when you go into most of your major urban population centers, you don’t see that. And that’s one of the tenets of a socialist economic theory is to create and expand a welfare nanny state, a dependency society.

(16:21):
And now you hear the talk about reparations and things of that nature, which is absolutely absurd that we are going to pay people or give people money for something that generations have not experienced, nor any of the present generations today had anything to do with it. So I think it is about allowing people to go out and give them that entrepreneurial mindset.

I remember growing up, we had this thing called Junior Achievement, where you actually had the program where you were a business owner, you were given a budget, you had to interact with other aspects of the business street, being at a bank or insurance agencies. And we need to get back to teaching kids that early on.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:02):
Is there something that a state or local governments can do to encourage that, or is this mainly a message of self-empowerment?

Lt. Col. Allen West (17:12):
Well, it is a message of self-empowerment. That’s what constitutional conservatism is. That’s what Booker T. Washington talked about when he said education, entrepreneurship, and self-reliance. So we need to get back to that and start rejecting the voices of dependency. Who would have ever thought we’d live in a United States of America where the federal government is paying people to stay at home and not go out and work. But that’s exactly what is happening right now. So you have this conflict with conservatism and progressive socialism. I say one is for economic empowerment, the other is for economic enslavement.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:48):
One thing I appreciate about you, when you moved to Texas, you immediately got involved in politics, but you got involved in charitable work as well through an organization I’ve long admired called the Hope Center.

Lt. Col. Allen West (18:00):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (18:00):
And I’d love for you to just talk a little bit about what that does because if you could have an organization like that in every city in America, it could be transformational. Tell us a little bit about what it is and what it does.

Lt. Col. Allen West (18:13):
Sure. Yeah, sure. I was the president and CEO of the Hope Center, and before that I was a board member there for some four years. So a total of about five, almost six years with the Hope Center. It is the one of a kind and unique in the world, a place where 60 to 61 different Christian ministries under one roof collaborating together for the sharing of the gospel of Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, not just here in Texas or North Texas, but all across the world.

And so I think when you have those collaborative efforts in the Christian community, the body of Christ can be even more effective. And the categories, you had international ministries there, women’s ministries, cultural societal ministries, First Liberty, who defends religious liberty cases all across the country is located there. So those are the types of things that we need to look at doing because there is an onslaught against our Judeo-Christian faith heritage in America.

Dr. Jeff Myers (19:07):
I love that work. And I’ve been on the campus there and I was amazed. Josh McDowell Ministries is there as well, doing evangelistic work. So legal work, cultural work. I think the Association of Christian Schools International has an office there. So incredible to see all of these believers working together. I wanted to, as we start to wrap up our conversation, I have two questions I wanted to ask.

One is because we’ve talked a little bit about the Black Conservative Movement and I’ve watched as Black conservatives are able to gain traction, communicate a really positive message treated very negatively in the mainstream media called Uncle Tom’s. And you actually were part of a documentary called Uncle Tom, which was an oral history of American black conservatism. And I wonder if you could mention that because that might be something our viewers and listeners would want to check out.

Lt. Col. Allen West (20:03):
Yeah. It’s a powerful documentary. It tells the history of black conservatism and it also tells the history of the interaction between the Democrat Party and the Black community. And it dispels a lot of the lies and the myths and the innuendo that is out there. So I would just suggest to your listeners to follow and go out and download Uncle Tom. And Uncle Tom II will be coming out later on this year and Uncle Tom too really does go after the decimating effect that this new Marxism can have on the black community.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:33):
Wow, that’s going to be so timely. A lot of people who are watching and listening right now, Colonel West, are people who are in their 20s or maybe they’re late teens, they’re heading to the university. They’ve come through a Summit Ministries program. They understand what a biblical worldview is up against worldviews like Marxism and secularism. And they are facing sometimes in their university and in the workplace, a lot of opposition. And I wonder if you just have any words of encouragement for them.

Lt. Col. Allen West (21:02):
Well, first and foremost, we as the adults have to have their back because it is tough being on these college and university campuses. They’re up against their peers, they’re up against the professors, they’re up against the administration. But when you know that you’re standing on the side of what is right, you should be bold and you should be of good courage, as God told Joshua in chapter one, verse nine. But seek out organizations like Young America’s Foundation, Turning Point USA.

Here in Texas, we have the young conservatives of Texas so that you can have strength in numbers. But the most important thing is to expose all of this prejudice that is against them as young people. But the most important thing I want to tell to young people is that free does not equal freedom. A lot of people are talking about what they will give you and how you can have, but that does not equal freedom.

(21:48):
Free means dependency. Free means that you lose your rights and your freedoms and your liberties. And I think that’s one of the important things to get across to young people. And the other thing is that why would you want to hang out with a bunch of control freaks? They want to tell you where you can go, what you can have, what you can wear, what you can eat, what you can drive. American young people are all about liberty and freedom, your personal individual liberty and freedom. And do not get that conflated with the message of the progressive socialist left.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:14):
That’s right. Well, they’ve got to exercise freedom. The more I look at the left, I see that it’s sort of a progressive fundamentalist movement, that they’re sitting around living in mortal fear, that somebody somewhere is going to exercise their freedom and have a good time doing it.

Lt. Col. Allen West (22:31):
Well, absolutely. And I think that’s what you see happening in Cuba right now, that people are finally saying that the human spirit is an indomitable spirit and it wants to be free. It wants to have liberty. It does not want to be suppressed.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:44):
Colonel West, thank you for your service to our country. Thank you for taking time in the midst of your border trip to visit with us. Really grateful.

Lt. Col. Allen West (22:53):
Thank you, Dr. Jeff. All the best and God bless.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:55):
Thank you. A special thank you to Lieutenant Colonel Allen West for joining us on the Dr. Jeff Show today. You can follow him on Twitter @Allenwest, Allen, A- L-L-E-N, @Allenwest. And you can also see him in the news. He’s running for governor of Texas. You’re going to see him on new shows a lot. You can also visit the Hope Center. Their website is www.thehopescenter.org because maybe your community needs something like that.

The message from Dr. West today is powerful. Continue to be an entrepreneur. Continue to stand for freedom. Continue to work hard, run for office, get involved. There’s no excuse. There’s an old saying that on the ship of life, we are all crew. There are no passengers. Thank you for your time today.

Ryan Dobson (23:46):
Hi, everyone. I’m Ryan Dobson from the Rebel Parenting Podcast. When my parents, Jim and Shirley Dobson sent me to the Summit Ministries Worldview Conference when I was 17, we had no idea the impact it would have on my life. It changed me so much in two short weeks. I’ve returned every summer for 34 years. This summer, your student can attend an in-person conference. That’s right, in person.

Summit Ministries Worldview Conference challenges students ages 16 to 24 to think deeper about their convictions and their faith by engaging with today’s top worldview thinkers and apologists. Can you imagine in person with other students learning about the Christian worldview? If not, they can attend Summit’s virtual experience and it’s amazing. Change your students’ life forever by partnering with Summit Ministries Worldview Conference today. Find out more by clicking the link in the show notes.